have earned him a reputation as a ferocious industrial rocker, singer/songwriter
. Born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland,
up to the point punk exploded on the scene. When he was only 14 he joined
. As
evolved, their use of spoken word samples and raw-sounding synthesizers brought them in line with the output of the Chicago-based Wax Trax! Records, original home to
. Hoping they would be interested in releasing a single,
's music to Wax Trax!'s London office. It was there he ran into
. By the end of the day he'd recorded a demo with the three, and it wasn't long before he was leaving
In 1991, the label released his solo debut,
Whiplash Boychild. The ambitious effort was unlike anything
Connelly or Wax Trax! had issued before, recalling
Bowie and
Bolan at times and experimenting with avant-garde song structures here and there. Also that year he hooked up with another Chicago-based industrial label, Invisible, and became involved in their
Pigface,
Murder Inc., and
Damage Manual projects, which meant he was now rubbing shoulders with
Geordie Walker of
Killing Joke and former
Public Image Ltd. drummer
Martin Atkins.
Atkins would then become involved in 1992's
Phenobarb Bambalam,
Connelly's dark and introspective sophomore solo effort.
Shipwreck from 1994 was much more uplifting and referenced the singer's early love of glam rock with sharp guitars and Bowie-esque vocals. As the Wax Trax! label began to implode,
Connelly spent 1996 working with industrial giants
KMFDM for their
XTORT album and recorded an a cappella version of the
Wire song "A Mutual Friend" for
Whore: Tribute to Wire. With Wax Trax! out of the picture, 1997's
The Ultimate Seaside Companion (Revisited) appeared on Invisible. The album was more acoustic, more folk, and featured multi-instrumentalists
Chris Bruce and
Jim O'Rourke as members of the loosely knit backing band
the Bells.
Bruce would return for a second effort with
the Bells,
Blonde Exodus, which landed in 2001 with a much more muscular sound. Also appearing in 2001 was
Largo, an album with
Bill Rieflin that the two first imagined in 1990.
In 2002,
Connelly was back on his own with
Private Education, an album released by the Invisible-related label Underground, Inc. That same year the label also released the two-CD
Initials C.C., which collected "outtakes, rarities and personal favourites" from all the various projects
Connelly had been involved with, save
Ministry. He was back on Invisible proper for the 2004 release
Night of Your Life, which received rave reviews across the board. In 2006 the six-CD set simply titled
Box Set appeared on Invisible. The box collected all of
Connelly's work for Invisible and Underground, Inc. along with the new live disc
Lounge Ax, Bottle, and Elsewhere. Members of
Joan of Arc,
U.S. Maple, and
Town and Country appeared on his improv-minded 2007 effort
The Episodes. The album was released by Durtro Jnana -- home to eccentrics like
Current 93,
Nurse with Wound, and
Antony and the Johnsons -- and was recorded partially outdoors.
Connelly returned to somewhat more conventional song structures for 2009's Pentland Firth Howl, a collection of songs about his native Scotland, whose titles were all latitudinal and longitudinal geographic points. The gloriously lonely album was pretty much performed on acoustic guitar and harmonica.
Connelly is among the most restless -- if soft-spoken -- musicians when it comes promoting his own work. In 2010 he released the wonderfully ambitious How This Ends on Lens Records. It is a two-part suite comprised of two long parts of the title track.
Connelly produced it at a number of Chicago studios and enlisted a group of friends -- including James "Marlon" Magas, Tania Bowers, Zak Boerger, Sanford Parker, David Levine, Gordon Sharp, Izi Coonagh, and Brent Gutzeit -- in the recording process. The more straight-ahead rock album Artificial Madness followed in 2011.
–
David Jeffries, Rovi