Krankschaft
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GB Haverhill, Suffolk – Rock / Spacerock
Krankschaft

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The modern Krankschaft started as a vehicle for the long standing musical partnership between Dead Fred & Steve Pond.

In 1979 our intrepid duo first worked together in "Inner City Unit" the influencial punkadelic band fronted by Hawkwind founder Nik Turner.

In 1980, Inner City Unit played a month long residency at London's Marquee Club, Hawkwind frontman, poet & writer of all their best songs Robert Calvert was the support act. Members of ICU would don masks and become his band "Krankschaft".

In 1985 Robert would perform with ICU itself so for a while the band had 2 front men. When Robert was offered the chance to present a showcase of his solo works at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall he chose to use Steve & Fred along with ICU sleeve designer Mary Cason on synths to be his new band: "Krankschaft". (This line up pictured above)

The QEH show was a critical and commercial success spawning a live album and a tour of the UK which stretched into 1987. Reviews here. Sadly and unexpectedly Robert died of a heart attack in 1988. Steve & Fred moved onto other projects.

To mark the 20th anniversary of Roberts passing a show was organised by Nik Turner in Herne Bay featuring many people who had played with Robert over the years. We felt it was only right that we should donate our time and effort to once more perform his sonnets and poems using their original DNA. Whilst rehearsing for the show it became obvious that we were not alone, something was guiding us, pushing us forward and supplying inspiration.. The hand of Bob?

The Herne Bay tribute, was a brilliant surprise, and following the show we had the obvious idea to use the songs we'd worked up as the basis for an album of Roberts songs.. but once we got into the studio rock egos and bad taste took over electronica went out the window and our genteel approach was quickly discarded for a suite of Rock ideals not seen since 1974.

The Flame Red Superstar was a critical and commercial success, so Krankschaft decided to play some more live shows. Following an invitation from Hawkwind to play a series of gigs on their 2010 summer tour we wanted to expand the line up as a duo isn't very rock & roll.. So Mick Stupp who Fred & Steve have played with in Inner City Unit and under many other names rejoined his mates and brought the raw power of lives drums to the live line up.

The gigs were a reminder of just what we'd been missing over that last 15 or so years. To document all this fun a live CD "Live at the Sonic Rock Solstice 2010" was recorded at SRS in June on 2010 and released as a Ltd edition in July.

December 2010 saw the band gearing up to record the follow up to The Flame Red Superstar, when exposure to a documentary about the Song Poem industry of the 1960's & 70's inspired the band to issue a challenge to their supporters.. "Submit lyrics and we will turn them into songs" Lyrics submitted during the first 2 weeks of December 2010 were released online as a download only album on January 9th 2010, in it's first 6 days of availability the album had received over 4000 downloads.. What's next?

We expanded the live line up to include a real rythmn section, Alex Tsentides on Bass and Darren Butler on drums, bye bye to the machines for the first time in 26 years! it's a rebirth in a lot of ways, shortly after this was written Darren injured his hand which took him away from the drums, we replaced him with Kevin Walker, at first temporarily, but geography made the appointment permanent, Darren is still considered part of the family.

In 2013 Fred was asked to re-join Hawkwind, and so he did. At this time Krankschaft had built up some momentum and had half their next album already written, so they carried on undaunted as a trio, the 3rd studio album is currently being mixed and as is usual with bands we think it's the best thing we've ever done!.. we're also busy booking shows, hopefully we'll see you at one of them!