David Cunningham
David Cunningham is a composer and producer born in Northern Ireland in 1954. He studied at Maidstone College of Art in the 1970s and became known as the man behind The Flying Lizards, whose deadpan cover of "Money" was an international hit in 1979. He later worked on sound installations, film scores and productions for experimental musicians. David Cunningham made Grey Scale, an LP of minimalist pieces, in 1976 as part of his degree show, and issued it on his own Piano label, which also released the first This Heat album.
The Yellow Box
As trans-Atlantic alchemists pulling from a shared dialectic that somehow encompassed both postmodern deconstructionist tendencies and a delightfully subversive sense of poptimism, it’s easy to see how David Cunningham and Peter Gordon immediately hit it off upon initially meeting each other back in the late-1970s at the height of their youthful transgressions. Having initially worked together on the second Flying Lizards’ LP fourth wall, with its ingenious fusion of dismantled rhythms and rearr…
Songs
"This is a good introduction to John Greaves' solo career and also stands up as an extremely strong album in its own right. It's almost entirely acoustic, and consists of reworkings of songs from earlier albums interspersed with some new material, with the assistance of an impressive roster of guest stars from the Canterbury scene. Greaves himself takes more of a back seat than usual - the core band for the sessions consisted of double bass, piano and acoustic guitar, the pianist and bassist pla…
The Secret Dub Life of The Flying Lizards
2023 repress. Jah Lloyd meets David Cunningham on The Secret Dub Life Of The Flying Lizards from The Flying Lizards. These legendary recordings from 1978 are now available on vinyl for the first time. "The source tapes for this LP were recorded in Jamaica by Jah Lloyd (Patrick Francis) as part of a series he made for Virgin Records' Front Line label. The original tapes were not released and were offered to me by Front Line's Jumbo Vanrennen with the suggestion that I should 'remix' the music. I …
Grey Scale
David Cunningham's first solo album, from 1976, made while he was an art student in Maidstone with fellow students who were not musicians: DIY minimalism, three years before his hit "Money" with The Flying Lizards.
One Hundred
*2022 stock* David Cunningham: guitar, footpedals, delays and kalimba. "When I'm having a bath I often feel strangely privileged that I can listen to music on the radio - a century ago I would have had to have a bigger bathroom and enough money to hire a string quartet." - David Cunningham
Yasuaki Shimizu: tenor saxophone, piano, delays. "He is a truly one and only performer, for power, spirit and pride. He has the ability to encompass any kind of music." - Haruomi Hosono about Yasuaki Shimizu