Artist Biography
by Mark Deming
Aztec Camera was the brainchild of
Roddy Frame,
a Scottish songwriter and vocalist whose precocious talent -- he was
still in his teens when the band cut their acclaimed debut album,
High Land, Hard Rain -- earned the band a loyal cult following. With
Frame's knack for catchy, upbeat melodies and wordplay that often invited comparisons to
Elvis Costello,
Aztec Camera
became a major critical favorite in the U.K. and the U.S., even as the
band went through frequent personnel changes.
Aztec Camera was formed in 1980 by
Frame, then just 16 years old and living in East Kilbride, South Lanarkshire, Scotland. The initial lineup of the band consisted of
Frame on guitar and vocals,
Campbell Owens on bass, and Dave Mulholland on drums.
Aztec Camera
made their recorded debut on 1980's In and Out of Fashion, a
compilation cassette of Scottish bands released by Pungent Records in
association with Glasgow-based Fumes Magazine, and in March 1981, the
group released a single through the respected Scottish indie label
Postcard Records, "Just Like Gold" b/w "We Could Send Letters," which
rose to number ten on the U.K. Independent charts. The British music
journal New Musical Express gave
Aztec Camera their seal of approval by licensing an alternate acoustic version of "Just Like Gold" for
C-86,
a cassette-only compilation curated and released by the magazine. After
issuing a second single through Postcard, "Mattress of Wire" b/w "Lost
Outside the Tunnel,"
Aztec Camera
signed with Rough Trade Records, who released the single "Pillar to
Post" b/w "Queen's Tattoos" in 1982. 1982 also saw the departure of Dave
Mulholland from the group, with John Hendry taking over as drummer.
In 1983,
Aztec Camera's debut album,
High Land, Hard Rain,
was released by Rough Trade in the U.K. and Sire in the United States.
The album earned rave reviews (with many citing the fact
Frame was just 18 when he wrote most of the songs) and respectable sales (especially in England), and guitarist
Craig Gannon and keyboardist
Bernie Clark expanded the group's lineup to a quintet.
Mark Knopfler of
Dire Straits came aboard to produce
Aztec Camera's second album, 1984's
Knife, but as the group's sound became slicker and more ambitious,
Frame became disenchanted with his bandmates, and by the time he went on tour in support of the
Knife album,
Campbell Owens was the only other original member of the group left in the lineup, and it would prove to be his last tour with
Aztec Camera.
After a stopgap EP of live tracks and B-sides was issued in the United States in 1985, the third
Aztec Camera album, the R&B-influenced
Love, appeared in 1987. Though it was issued under the group's name,
Frame recorded the material with a handful of session musicians, and from that point on,
Aztec Camera would not have a consistent lineup on-stage or in the studio, with
Frame assembling a different set of players for each project.
Love
proved to be a commercial success in the U.K., rising to number 10 on
the album charts, but it barely made the Top 200 in the United States,
and the next two
Aztec Camera albums, 1990's eclectic
Stray and 1993's electronic experiment
Dreamland, didn't even chart in America. After 1995's
Frestonia, a low-key and primarily acoustic effort, failed to excite fans or critics,
Frame retired the name
Aztec Camera, and his next project, 1998's
North Star, appeared under the name
Roddy Frame. A compilation that followed the group's career up to Dreamla`nd,
The Best of Aztec Camera,
was issued in Japan in 1999 and in the U.K. in 2001; a more
comprehensive two-disc set, Walk Out to Winter: The Best of Aztec
Camera, followed in 2011. In 2013, AED Records brought out a 30th
Anniversary edition of
High Land, Hard Rain in the U.K., with Domino following suit in the United States in 2014; in support,
Frame played a handful of solo shows in which he performed the album's 13 songs in their entirety.
Tracklist
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