As someone who defies simple description, Glasgow one-man electronic band Tony Morris has been given a multitude of labels: ‘Chick Murray meets Dieter Meier’; ‘a Minimal wave Ivor Cutler’’; ‘King of the Avant Garde’ and ‘a mix of Leonard Cohen, David Lynch and Xiu Xiu’. Or, as the audience of ‘kids young enough to be his grandweans’ screamed while gathered within the intimate surroundings of The Berkeley Suite - a stylish Glasgow nightspot hidden behind an unassuming pawn shop in the city’s Charing Cross area - to see him perform a few Saturdays ago at eclectic dancefloor duo Optimo’s bi-monthly residency, he is simply ‘"Tony f****** Morris!" Thanks to a mixture of intermittent performances in the flesh and unremitting activity on social media, Tony Morris has, at 72 years young, achieved both cult status within Glasgow’s underground electronic music scene and viral fame online. Influenced by the likes of The Fall, The Second Viennese School, Captain Beefheart, The Beatles and Béla Bartók, Morris describes the music he produces as “kind of” songs with “a distinctive vibe but no meaning”, made using his own voice alongside “simple electronic backings” of his own devising.
And yet, despite confessing to spending a lot of time trying to situate himself within the world of art, his experimental music and sensual-religious outpourings on everything from his recent experiences of ‘Glasgow coffee howffs’ to Don Quixote and fabricated.
