Before playing Melt, Peel read out a press release from Backs Records, the label handling the distribution of The Daniel Grade’s 3 track EP, Pest which revealed that the record was due to be released in 1991, but fell victim to the crash of Rough Trade’s distribution arm. Backs Records picked up the pieces in order to get the record out for further attention, describing it as “not sounding like anyone else”. Peel thought the record was great, but wasn’t too impressed by the band’s name.
The whole Rough Trade fiasco sounds like the kind of fate that might befall an unlucky, new band and it could have been particularly galling in the case of The Daniel Grade because the tracks on Pest are all superbly recorded, wonderfully produced and had they slipped on to the correct playlist, I would not have been surprised to see its lead track, Suntrap, sneak into the Top 40. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be for The Daniel Grade who never again saw a release picked up by an organisation with the potential reach of Rough Trade. But the curious thing about The Daniel Grade is that the botched attempt to hit the mainstream may very well have been part of the plan all along.
Since at least 1982, the core of the band - vocalist Graeme Gill, keyboardist Brian Monger and guitarist/bassist Adam Pitt - had been collaborating with a changing cast of contributors within Drey Grade, who released a series of cassette only albums with titles like Obscures Cake/Abstract Sponge + which were a mixture of industrial post-punk synth soundscapes, MIDI-beat voice sampling and what I can only describe on some tracks as an early form of beatless Trip hop. All the earnest seriousness that is ascribed to the cliched perception of early 80s alternative music, though having listened to Obscures Cake/Abstract Sponge + today, I found it continuously compelling, occasionally unsettling and in the case of one track, MKUltra, surprisingly prescient with its samples of 1960s US radio news reports of riots and over-zealous police response having a chilling contemporary parallel.
Drey Grade remained one of Sussex’s best kept secrets. When a copy of their cassette A-D-E-M-O (geddit) arrived on the desk of an unidentified Melody Maker journalist in late 1982, their chances of a front cover seemed remote when the journalist delivered the verdict, “I played the tape and nearly strangled the cat.”
But around 1985, Gill, Monger and Pitt hooked up with guitarist Bill Waller and drummer/songwriter Daniel Grade to form The Daniel Grade, a more melodic off-shoot of Drey Grade and judging by setlists from Daniel Grade gigs of 1985/86, a way of combining the avant-garde material of Drey Grade with more conventional songs. Again, the group put out a number of cassette only recordings - given that none of these have turned up on Discogs, I’m assuming that most of these were only
available to buy either at gigs or through mail order. Daniel Grade himself appears to have left the band by the time it recorded the tracks which made up 1989’s Pure tape, but the band replaced him with Tim Hall, while Garth Moyle also took up bass duties in place of Bill Waller and this was the line-up that recorded Pest.
Melt is the best track on the record. It’s rock shapes doing a good job of making a lyric about dying sound far more enticing than it might otherwise do. I have to chuckle at the repeated use of the title line being presented as a completed chorus, but the ferocity of Gill’s vocal in the coda alongside some monolithically jagged guitar work and piano chords which sound like sheets of ice crashing off the side of a mountain is particularly arresting.
By 1992, The Daniel Grade were building up enough recognition to get some eye-catching live work supporting bands like New Fast Automatic Daffodils as well as radio airplay from Annie Nightingale but by the end of the year, the band went on hiatus until 1999 when Drey Grade was revived and the band set up the Fete Records label to curate older recordings and put out newer material under both Drey Grade and a number of other aliases. The Fete Recordings website is well worth a look around. It contains extensive recordings by both Drey Grade, who are still continuing to record though their work tends more towards field based recordings now - some of which will be ideal for anyone susceptible to ASMR - as well as unreleased tracks by The Daniel Grade.
Video courtesy of Graeme ATG
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