Born on July 24: Mick Karn, the bassist who made the sound of Japan

His real name was Andonis Michelines, the bassist of the English band Japan, was born in 1958 in Nicosia when Cyprus was still a British colony. He passed away in January 2011 at the age of 52.

As was often the case in England at the time, the idea of forming a band first emerged in the minds of four teenagers attending the same Watford Boys school in South London. In 1974, none of them was much older than fifteen. But the admittedly somewhat chaotic journey to what would become Japan had already begun with David Sylvian, Steve Jansen, Richard Barbieri, and, of course, Mick Karn.

As punk and new wave swept through Albion, Japan opted for glam rock references like Roxy Music and David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust era. Their first forays on the German label Hansa flirted with glam rock. "Adolescent Sex" is a fine example. Renowned Euro Disco producer Giorgio Moroder fine-tuned the sound of the track "Life In Tokyo" in 1979, but this in no way foreshadowed the more artistic direction the band would take with their next two albums, "Gentlemen Take Polaroids" (1980) and "Tin Drum" (1981). Their short career, lasting less than ten years, concluded with "Oil On Canvas," a live album on which Mick Karn's playing left its mark, notably on "Sons Of Pioneers" and "Visions of China."

Subsequently, the bassist continued to extract increasingly exciting, strange, and innovative sounds from his fretless bass. For the Dali's Car project (with Peter Murphy of Bauhaus) in 1984, his style was immediately recognizable from the opening notes of "His Box" and, of course, "Dali's Car." In the years that followed, Mick Karn's musical adventures, still prolific, became increasingly winding and demanding. While regularly reuniting with Richard Barbieri and Steve Jansen, he approached the excellence of jazzman Jan Garbarek.

Alongside more difficult experiences like "Beard In The Letter Box" and "Dreams Of Reason Produce Monsters," he also invited us into more accessible worlds, notably with "Bestial Cluster" (1993) and "The Tooth Mother" (1995) featuring guitarist David Torn.

Mick Karn passed away on January 4, 2011, in London following a battle with cancer...

(MH with Stéphane Soupart / Picture : © Etienne Tordoir)

Photo: Mick Karn during a Japan concert at the Aura Q of the VUB in Brussels (Belgium) in October 1982