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DAVID CLARIDGE
THE MOBILE SUIT
For the first six months of this year David Claridge,  an appropriately small and neat personage with an impressively varied and successful background in repertory acting and commercials design,  ran on of the more imaginative post-Blitz London clubs, The Great Wall.
Claridge had been a contributing DJ at Billy´s and Blitz itself before taking an extended holiday in Thailand.  Through Far East contacts he imported mainly Japanese new wave to play at The Great Wall; Jap band Anarchy performed, and a choice selection of Japanese rock artists -  Yellow Magic Orchestra,  Plastics,  Phew and Sandii - hung out there.
So he´s now starting a new portable musical entertainment.  The mobile Suit,  which features new wave from not just Japan but places as unlikely as Poland and the Phillippines.  He´ll be taking it to more upmarket London clubs like the Gardens,  Legends  and the Embassy before moving around familiar provincial venues in Birmingham,  Nottingham and Derby.
The Mobile Suit will ´illustrate and expose music that´s going to be on my own label.  The Great Wall Catalogue´ ,  says Claridge,  who´s negotiating a tie-up with EMI and plans  to put out a Japanese compilation.  ´ Holiday At The Great Wall´   to be followed by a Polish compilation and the second album by japanese singer Phew,  a fascinating record recorded at Conny Plank´s Cologne studio with ex-Can members Holger Czukay and Jaki Lieberzeit.
´ It really started off with me mixing some traditional Thai music I recorded with synthesisers.  What I´m really interested in,´  he concluded without a trace of weariness,  ´ is getting back to the roots of Asian music.´
pics - mobile stars : Phew and S Ken
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