The project Sorry For Laughing was initiated by American composer-multi-instrumentalist-producer Gordon H. Whitlow, a member of legendary American avantgarde audio-visual collective Biota, formerly known as Mnemonists or Mnemonist Orchestra. The music of this experimental collective was is a mixture of contemporary music, experimental sounds, noise, industrial, avant-garde, songwriting and free jazz, and the collective released a few albums via their own self-produced label Dys between 1981 and 1986.
By 1985 the group had split off into separate groups for visual and audio work and Mnemonists continued to operate only as a visual arts collective while Biota featured a few of the musicians involved with Mnemonists as well as many new members. In 1986 Whitlow released a cassette under the name Sorry For Laughing, re-issued by the Viennese label Klanggalerie in 2018.
Recently, Gordon reactivated the project and changed it from a solo effort into a new supergroup. Sorry For Laughing now features Whitlow, vocalist-lyricist Edward Ka-Spel of Legendary Pink Dots fame, vocalist-lyricist Martyn Bates of Eyeless In Gaza, Denver-based guitarist Janet Fede, the Dots’ violinist-violist Patrick Q.Wright and Biota’s vocalist Tom Katsimpalis. Remember You Are An Actor is the sophomore album of the newly incarnated Sorry For Laughing (following See It Alone, Klanggalerie, 2021) and is described by this band as a «nervous hike through the ruins of a remote monastery by the light of a full blood red moon». This restless but quite gentle hike navigates freely between dreamy British folk-rock reinventions of supposedly ancient songs and spacious Americana songs, with poetic spoken words and unpredictable ambient sounds. This cycle of evocative songs is timeless and seduces the listener to lose its way within its beautiful, cosmic flower-power landscapes and images.
Eyal Hareuveni
Janet Feder (el.g, eff.), Steve Tyler (hurdy-gurdy), Gordon H. Whitlow (org, acc, p, g, low whistle), Nigel Whitlow (tp, b), David Zekman (vio), Patrick Q-Wright (vio, viola), Tom Katsimpalis (v), Martyn Bates (v, bjo, tin whistle), Edward Ka-Spel (v)
