The Restarts line up is Kieran, Robin and Bram. Originally The Restarts were spawned out of the misanthropic haze looming around London in the mid Nineties. The term 'Punk Rock' was the furthest thing from popular culture. New Punk bands lingered amongst the squalid squatted undergrowth where it attracted NO media attention, far from today's media-hyped attempt to re-invent Punk as just another commodity to market. In the late Eighties as far as the music press was concerned 'Punk' was just an insignificant anomaly that wouldn't die!
Kieran, Darragh and Mik all converged on the London Punk Scene in the late Eighties. Gigs were plenty and underground punk rock nihilism was at its frenzied height. Nearly half the Boroughs of Wood Green and Hackney were squatted with reckless abandon. The Restarts formed and started gigging around East and South London's squats and pubs, this soon branched out to playing Bristol, Bath and Nottingham quite regularly. In 1995 the first demo was recorded "JobClub" (11 songs) which we self-released on cassette tape. It was recorded at Zen Arcade Studios (Hackney) and engineered by Pete Lyons (Lippy from Anti Sect). He was amazed at how 11 songs could be recorded/mixed with vocals in just two days, at that time in the studio he had some self indulgent musicians who had spent over two weeks mixing ONE SONG!!! So The Restarts were like a breath of fresh(?) air to his ears. The anthemic Frustration was actually just made up on the spot, in the studio, to fill up the space at the end of the reel...thus capturing the spontaneity of the Punk Rock spirit. Mik's metallic chunky guitar style helped to define the early Restarts sound, and continued on into the Just Gets Worse, State Rape and Slumworld recordings. Regrettably the end of 2002 saw Mik leaving the band to focus on other projects. Alan from Scotland joined and his brilliant guitar work helped to create an exciting new recording "System Error CD" (Aug 5th 2003, Active Distro) but due to Alans conflicting commitments to the UK SUBS we had to part company. Back on the search again we landed on our feet with Robin, a suicidal bicycle courier punk from Utrecht, as our new axe man!
After several tours over Europe, the US and Canada, and over 9 releases the Restarts have found themselves playing a small part in a large world wide network of DIY Punk Rock, we are punks first, musicians second. We feel the social importance of Punk Rock takes priority over the "marketability" of a rehashed trend. We stand by our words and have NEVER stopped liking the music we listen to, live by and MAKE (even when it wasn't popular). Please feel free to get in contact, get involved and help the punk scene grow independently of the music industry giants!
We hope to be playing somewhere near you soon!
-The Restarts