Martyn Bates (British singer/musician)

Martyn Bates (born 1957) is an English singer, musician and songwriter. Bates grew up listening to English folk music before as a teenager becoming excited by punk, getting involved in the more diverse and experimental post-punk scene. After releasing tapes of experimental, industrial music as Migraine Inducers he formed Eyeless In Gaza with Peter Becker in January 1980. The duo became known for their unconventional instrumentation and arrangements, and for Bates’s passionate vocals, which at times were whispered, howled, or stammered. Eyeless In Gaza released six albums on Cherry Red Records. These were Photographs as Memories (1981), Caught in Flux (1981), Pale Hands I Loved So Well (1982), Drumming the Beating Heart (1982), Rust Red September (1983) and Back from the Rains (1985), and then went on hiatus until 1992. A 2nd (unofficial) hiatus remains ongoing since late 2020, with Bates recording solo as Kodax Strophes. Picking up from 1982’s acclaimed Letters Written (1982) solo album, Bates then concentrated mostly on solo work for a while, going on to collaborate with Anne Clark (Just After Sunset 1998) – also starting the short-lived bands Cry Acetylene Angel, Hungry I, and The Sing Circus (with This Mortal Coil ’s Deirdre Rutkowski). He contributed to Derek Jarman's soundtracks The Garden and The Last of England. Then he temporarily relocated his main focus to Europe, releasing three solo albums on the Belgian based Antler Subway label – Love Smashed on a Rock (1988), Letters to a Scattered Family (1990) and Stars Come Trembling (1990), which musically offered initial glimpses of the acoustic folk roots of his youth. In 1993, Bates began working with former Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris, collaborating on a three album series of Murder Ballads, creating an innovative marriage of “isolationist” ambience with folk-song form. In the same time frame Bates created a virtually a cappella work – a two volume series of “song-settings” of James Joyce's Chamber Music cycle of 36 poems (released in 1994 and 1996). From 1992 onwards, Bates has run a parallel career recording and performing with a re-vitalised Eyeless In Gaza – with Eyeless deftly blending song with collaged soundscaping – while Bates otherwise continues to develop his own intense and possibly autobiographical solo work. Bates’s solo outings of particular note include the albums Imagination Feels Like Poison (1997), Arriving Fire (2014), and I Said To Love (2017). As Twelve Thousand Days, since 2000 Bates has also worked with Orchis/Temple Music/Nurse With Wound collaborator Alan Trench – producing nine albums of what they call “channelled wyrd folk, psych-musics & other curios”, including the They Have All Gone Into the World of Light (2024) album. Since 2020 Bates has resurrected his early, more freely experimental approach, under the name KODAX STROPHES. A new album is expected to be released following on his Christ in the House of Martha & Mary in 2024. Bates is the author of five books that he describes as "lyrics to songs heard and unheard, and other gathered miscellany". Bates writes: "In writing, my feeling is that the songs, words and music here are NOT discreet entities – they are elements in the same discourse – where each casts certainty or doubt, illumination or shade, upon the other". Solo albums Dissonance/Antagonistic Music (cassette as Migraine Inducers), 1979 Letters Written (10" album), 1982 The Return of the Quiet, 1987 Love Smashed on a Rock, 1988 Letters to a Scattered Family, 1990 Stars Come Trembling, 1990 Port of Stormy Lights (Sordide Sentimental, booklet by J.P. Turmel with CD), 1990 Chamber Music 1, 1994 Mystery Seas, 1995 Chamber Music 2, 1996 Imagination Feels Like Poison, 1997 Dance of Hours, 2001 Your Jewelled Footsteps (solo and collaboration works 1979–2006) (compilation), 2006 A Map of the Stars in Summer (lyric book with CD), 2008 Unsung, 2012 Arriving Fire, 2014 Fireworks & Jewels/The Colour of Amber, 2015 I Said to Love, 2017 Books Imagination Feels Like Poison, 1997 Plague of Years, 2000 A Map of the Stars in Summer, 2008 Notes on Mythic Language, 2015 November: Inky Blue Sky, 2015 Anne Clark & Martyn Bates Just After Sunset – The Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1998 Martyn Bates & M.J. Harris Murder Ballads (Drift), 1994 Murder Ballads (Passages), 1997 Murder Ballads (Incest Songs), 1998 Twelve Thousand Days (Martyn Bates & Alan Trench) In the Garden of Wild Stars, 2000 The Devil in the Grain, 2001 At the Landgate, CD-Ep 2005 From the Walled Garden, 2006 Insect Silence, 2018 Field’s End, 2020 The Birds Sing as Bells, 2022 The Boatman on the Downs, 2023 They Have All Gone Into the World of Light, 2024 Martyn Bates & Troum To a Child Dancing in the Wind, 2006 Martyn Bates & Max Eastley Songs of Transformation, 2007 Sorry For Laughing (Gordon H. Whitlow/Ed Ka-Spel/Martyn Bates) See It Alone, 2020 Remember, You Are An Actor, 2021 Sun Comes, 2024 Rain Flowers, 2025 as KODAX STROPHES/MARTYN BATES It Doesn't Matter Where It's Solstice When You're In The Room, 2020 Post-War Baby, 2021 Summer, Cat’s Cradle, 2022 Christ in the House of Martha & Mary, 2024 Martyn Bates, AllMusic "Eyeless In Gaza – Patterns under the plough". Eyelessingaza.com. Retrieved 12 July 2020. Martyn Bates biography, Eyelessingaza.com "MOOD MUSIC". Eyelessingaza.com. Retrieved 12 July 2020. Colin Larkin, ed. (1992). The Guinness Who's Who of Indie and New Wave Music (First ed.). Guinness Publishing. p. 29. ISBN 0-85112-579-4. "Martyn Bates Interview | IT". Internationaltimes.it. Retrieved 12 July 2020. "Some Notes On Writing | IT". Internationaltimes.it. Retrieved 23 May 2025.