Exclusive Stream of the re-issued A.R. Kane EP 'Lollita'

“I remember we were sitting there with our beers wondering what the fuck was happening.” Rudy Tambala, one-half of the seminal shoegaze pioneers A.R. Kane, recounts the band’s signing to 4AD in 1987. “How could we actually be on this label because we wanted to be? We had no background, we were hardly even musicians! It was really cool. They were a fantastic, fantastic label to be with at the time. They were really at their peak.”

Oft described as one of the most under-recognised bands of their era, A.R. Kane’s intoxicating blend of reverb drenched feedback and woozy dream-like melodies was underpinned by an undeniable dub influence. Releasing their first single ‘When You’re Sad’ on One Little Indian in 1986, its follow-up ‘Lollita’ was released by indie giant 4AD before the duo signed an album deal with Rough Trade. With constant playful experimentation over three albums they continually evolved through rock, indie, pop, dub, hip-hop and many other styles well into the 90s. One Little Indian are set to release The Complete Singles Collection compilation which spans A.R.Kane’s entire career including the Robin Guthrie produced ‘Lollita’ which you can stream in full below.

The Complete Singles Collection is available through the One Little Indian store now and comes complete with in-depth liner notes and commentary from the duo. An excerpt of which features below, with Rudy Tambala recounting Robin Guthrie’s involvement with the recordings.

We went to Robin and he was the other kind of producer, the kind who has a sound and is going to give you that sound and who knows better than you what your songs are about. It was hard to take that but we trusted him wholeheartedly and he was like a genius at the time. He was out there. No one else sounded like him, no one else even knew how to make a song sound the way that he made it sound. This big kind of spacey thing and it was perfect for that song. It had really quite gentle bits and then an explosion of noise and then it could be really quiet, gentle and soft.

He had the sound but also, he was a really good musician and he made us perform in a way that we had never had to perform before. He made us play in time properly and really work. He’d say “No, that’s not good enough, do it again” over and over until you’re almost crying and your fingers are bleeding until you got that solo, or that little riff bang on. He’s a perfectionist. That’s hard but when you listen to their music and you listen to all these other kind of shoegazing, dreampop bands that are out now and you listen to the Cocteau Twins – oh my god! – its worlds apart. A completely different world, a different order. They can’t aspire to that because they don’t have the same level of perfection. So that’s what he brought to the table. A level of professionalism and a sound that no one else had.