Red Square

RED SQUARE is a pioneering free-improvising, avant-rock band, originally from Southend-on-Sea, Essex, that formed in 1974 and broke up in 1978, before reforming again in 2008 as a result of renewed interest in the band having been probably the first ever to take on the challenges of total free improvisation from a rock perspective.

Bridging the worlds of psychedelia, metal and avant-jazz and pre-dating the experimentation of Sonic Youth and Last Exit by a decade and The Thing by twenty five years, Red Square's railing aural assaults were once considered too extreme for commercial release.

Red Square revolves around the astonishingly original guitar playing of veteran sixties survivor, Ian Staples - tape and noise experimenter, action-painter, Grosvenor Square radical and wired denizen of the Middle Earth Club.

Not only does Staples’ iconoclastic sound palette encompass influences from delta blues and Hendrix through to Derek Bailey and Stockhausen, but a mongrel-blues strain of Trout Mask-inspired DNA courses virulently through every line he plays.

The Red Square line up is completed by Jon Seagroatt, (woodwind and electronics), member of the legendary psych-folk band Comus, and drummer Roger Telford.

Red Square continue to deliver free-form avant-metal through very big speakers with undiminished enthusiasm.

Red Square (1972-8), (2008 onwards)

A recording from 1974 that appears on the 2008 FMR 'retrospective' album 'Thirty Three'

Paramusic 3 (1974)

Shuttle Bag (2009)

A track from our 2010 album 'UnReason: live at the Vortex'.

Soap-Pump (2010)

Title track from our 2012 album 'Bird Haus'.

Bird Haus (2012)

Red Square is a remarkable, pioneering British group that was originally formed in 1972, broke up in 1978, before re-forming in 2009 as a result of renewed interest in the band’s ground-breaking bridging of the worlds of psychedelia, metal and avant-jazz. 

Pre-dating Sonic Youth by seven years and the Thing by twenty five, Red Square’s railing aural assaults were once considered too extreme for commercial release. 

Jon Seagroatt, Ian Staples & Roger Telford continue to deliver free-form avant-metal through very big speakers.

Paramusic 3 (1974)

Red Square (3)