Raeo was formed in 1990 during one of my by then frequent trips to Barcelona to play with Gat´s band Buildings, and the name stems from my mispronunciation of the Spanish word for lightning, Rayo, on a stormy night on the road in Andalucia. It originally consisted of Gat and myself plus Anton Ignorant and Pepe Sarto, and a subsequent formation already without Sarto included Katie O¨looney on drums. Ignorant was an off and on member for several years but eventually the band became a duo. Musically there´s a definite continuity from Don King but this became more and more obscure and European over the years, partly due to Gat´s strong influence and background as well as my own conversion to Old World moods. Our recording output consists of a lot of one offs for compilations and singles along with two CDs on G3G records: Adios Jupiter from 1994 and Body Loops from 1999, from our show Body Tapes, in collaboration with Barcelona video artist, Josep Ma. Jordana. Raeo is currently in hiatus.
The following is an excerpt from The Wire review of Body Loops: "In describing the notion of a new classical music constructed from a broader cultural base, Jon Hassell cited a Mona Lisa which, on closer examination, turns out to be constructed from a series of Taj Mahal images. The sound of Raeo embodies a similar illusion: calm, plaintive and often melodic on the surface, in truth it is built on a foundation of carefully sculpted noise. Having started out with New York No Wave group Mars, who strayed as far as possible from rock music as possible while somehow retaning a semblance of it, trumpeter Mark Cunningham, with his accomplice Gat, a veteran of the parallel Movida trajectory in Barcelona, has crafted a form of Ambient noise that subverts the Ambient norm. Although this collection of seven pieces is the result of collaboration with a Barcelona Based video artist, the music is very much a self sufficient entity, invoking the artist's work even in its absence. The theme is human anatomy, the images apparently taken from scans, anatomical illustrations and surgical footage. Fittingly, the music has the same kind of frightening beauty and fragility as a medical picture. Despite its melody, its seductive rhythms and its flashes of humorous appropriation, there's a deep sense of unease about Body Loops, not unlike that of Journey Through a Body, the scariest of Throbbing Gristle's albums."
