Red Box (band)

British band

Red Box is a British pop group founded by Simon Toulson Clarke and Julian Close. Active from the early 1980s to the present day, they scored two UK top ten hits with the singles "Lean on Me (Ah Li Ayo)" in 1985 and "For America" in 1986, both of which were included on their debut album, The Circle & the Square. Red Box returned briefly in 1990 with the single "Train" and the second album Motive, and again in 2010 with the third album Plenty, released in October 2010. The group is now led by singer songwriter Simon Toulson Clarke with a third line up of supporting players. In February 2019, the band released "This Is What We Came For", the first single from their fourth studio album Chase the Setting Sun, due for release in September 2019. In July 2019, they released a second single "Gods & Kings", also from Chase the Setting Sun.

Simon Toulson Clarke formed his first band, aged thirteen, at Harrow School with his friend Paddy Talbot (another member of the band was cricketer and insurance executive Matthew Fosh, who recognised,"two of the guys were talented and two of us were rubbish. I was one of the rubbish ones"), playing covers of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple as well as some self penned material. Other early influences are cited as being Marc Bolan, David Bowie, Cream, Pink Floyd, Cat Stevens and particularly Buffy Sainte Marie. On leaving school, he moved to Middlesbrough and formed another band in the vein of New York Dolls. The band later took the name Red Box, after some deliberation, from a box left behind by the rock group Slade following a performance at college (and in which they had since been storing microphones). It also reached number 1 in five countries and the top 5 in a further 12 giving worldwide exposure to the band. It was promoted with an unusual video (nominated for Best Video at the Brit Awards 1985) in which a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter provided a translation of the song's lyrics, which led to a feature on BBC Two's Newsweek programme. In 1986, the band released their debut album The Circle & the Square, mixing traditional musical styles – brass ensembles, choral music and chants – with modern rock and synthpop. Among the vocalists drafted in to create the multi tracked backing vocals (or "Box Vox") is English actor Anthony Head. The album received praise for its "evocative lyrics" and "global political intelligence" and is notable for introducing 'ethnic rhythms' and elements of World Music into the 1980s pop milieu alongside established artists such as Paul Simon (Graceland, 1986) and Kate Bush (The Sensual World, 1989). It includes a re worked version of the 1984 Buffy Sainte Marie cover "Saskatchewan", as well as "Chenko", which was given a more sombre, stately treatment bringing chants to the fore and featuring Alexander Balanescu on violin. Toulson Clarke and Close, however, found themselves at odds with their record company regarding what it perceived as a lack of mainstream appeal in their choice of material, as well as alluding to American military involvement in Grenada and Nicaragua. The song was not a hit in the United States, though it did worldwide outsell "Lean on Me", reaching number one in six countries and the top ten in several others including the UK, where it spent twelve weeks in the chart peaking at number ten. combined with the cultural and political allusions of the previous record. The opening track and first single "Train" begins with the sound of a locomotive gradually picking up speed (and subsequently shunting to a halt at the song's end) and includes samples from the Voix Bulgares, "O Fortuna" (also known as the theme to the Old Spice advertisements) and T. Rex. The hook is provided by singer Jenny Tsao's eccentric vocal refrain during the chorus. "Train" was selected as the first single and released in the autumn of 1990. The video was aired on the ITV Chart Show, and the band performed on the re vamped Juke Box Jury hosted by Jools Holland, with the panel proclaiming the song a hit. in the Red Box back catalogue, a petition was created to show support for the reissue of both albums on CD. A new recording of "Lean on Me" by Toulson Clarke and Close was made available through iTunes in September 2007. The Circle & the Square was re released on CD by Cherry Red Records on 20 October 2008. It features all 12 tracks from the original album, along with the Cherry Red versions of "Chenko" and "Valley", plus four additional bonus tracks. The second album, Motive, was reissued in the UK in March 2011. The album includes 12 tracks in total, two of which are bonus tracks, the B side to the "Train" single, "Hello, He Lied", as well as "Train (Fantasy Island Version)".

In 1990, Red Box scored a club hit with "Enjoy" which was essentially a remix, by Paul Oakenfold, of an old B side, under the Solid Gold Easy Amex name. This record was charted at Number 75 on Independent Radio's Network Chart (also used by Number One Magazine) but missed the Gallup UK Singles Chart as used by the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles.