Simon Sez - Ballon d'essai

Christchurch, New Zealand - 1982 -1986

The band consisted of Mark Rastrick on Vocals (last heard of as a resident of Sydney), Scott Wilkinson - Drums (now a Graphic Designer / Animator type) Matt Campbell - Bass (Now an illustrator in New York) Steven MacIntyre - Bass/Guitar (went on to join All Fall Down, FN89) and Lindsay Davis - Guitar. Lindsay left the band after the first EP and was replaced by Lyndon Frasier (Lyndon and the Liars). The band were relatively entertaining live, doing the art school thing with props and performance. They were interesting for a while in their use of 2 bass guitars and the Peter Hook melody lines from that sort of line up. They eventually started to write more traditional songs and lost the edge they originally had from being completely crap at playing their instruments.

Ballon d'essai released 2 EPs on Flying Nun Records; FN007 Containing 4 songs, and a comic booklet and FN20 - Grow Up EP - 7 songs plus comic. The band recorded a bunch of other material plus a live show at the Hillsborough Tavern and much of this appeared on the Failsafe Records release 'Ballon d'Essai - RIP.' One track was also included on The 1984 Accident Compilation.

Taken from Failsafe Records Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.