Dirty Three
Rock / Instrumental
Dirty Three is an instrumental rock band, formed in 1993, in Melbourne, Australia by Warren Ellis (violin), Mick Turner (electric guitar), and Jim White (drums). Though each of the musicians has remained dedicated to the band since its inception almost fifteen years ago, Warren, Mick and Jim have contributed their respective talents to a multitude of artists over the years. In fact, the Three's influence can be heard almost every place one looks these days in independent-minded folk, alternative and instrumental rock.
Their music has elements of folk melody, rock energy, and 20th century classical music. Their early albums offered many aggressive, ferociously emotional songs, but since their fourth album, Ocean Songs, Dirty Three have gradually shifted their focus towards a slower, arguably more melancholic, style of playing.
Dirty Three have released albums on Touch & Go Records and have toured with Sonic Youth, Pavement, Throwing Muses, Cat Power, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Devendra Banhart and Shannon Wright to name just a few.
Since 1996, Ellis has been a member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Ellis and Turner have both released solo albums. In addition, Turner and White have released several EPs as The Tren Brothers, and appear as backing musicians on albums by Cat Power and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. Turner is also an internationally exhibited painter with his own work gracing the covers of all of their major albums except Sad & Dangerous. He also runs the band's own record label Anchor & Hope. In 1999, Dirty Three joined forces with Low to record an In The Fishtank session for Konkurrent records; the result has been called "some of the best material either unit has produced."
In late 2005, the band released their seventh major album, Cinder, which, though following in the spirit of Ocean Songs, drastically diverges from all of their previous works on several points. It was the first Dirty Three album since Horse Stories to feature vocals (those of Chan Marshall aka Cat Power and Sally Timms of The Mekons), though only on two of nineteen songs. The songs are also generally much shorter and more concise than their early work, which allows for the rather large number of tracks. Perhaps most notably, instead of the usual recording live technique, they opted, for the first time in their career, to record in the studio individually.
2007 sees a much anticipated live concert release on DVD, shot in Tokyo in HD by Taiyo Films with a multi-track sound record. Film director Darcy Maine also has completed a feature length documentary on the bands history to be released worldwide.
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