The Red Krayola

Founded by Mayo Thompson in Houston in1966, The Red Krayola is one of those groups that are little known to the general public, but crucially influential in the American music scene. With its very first album, The Parable of Arable Land (1967), the group ushered in its three buzzwords: “Experiment, no repetition, no reproduction”. The Red Krayola suggests a music that is fragmented, expressive and rowdy, not bothered by any technical restrictions: limited instrumentalists, vocals verging on the phoney, low budget recordings. Among the group's many cooperative ventures, writ large, in the 1970s, was the very best produced by the artistic avant-garde. The Red Krayola thus brought out, between 1979 and 2007, four albums with the conceptual artists' collective Art&Language, the last of which, Sighs Trapped by Liars , with its more pop overtones, was accompanied in particular by Jim Rourke and the leader of Tortoise, John McEntire.