Fond Farewell to Rob Moles of Aemotii Crii
May 17th 1960 to July 14th 2024
I recently heard from Tim (Bricheno) that he’d attended the funeral of Rob Moles, who passed away in July.
I only met Rob a couple of times. One of those occasions was when he came to see All About Eve play in his then home town of York. We never made it, as a tour hangover thwarted our plans, but Rob and I had arranged to go to a museum the next day, to see an exhibition of a ‘bog man’. Tim tells me that was very ‘Rob’. A man musically way ahead of his time, with an inquisitive eye on history. Rest in peace.
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming memoir, but shared now in memory of Rob.
In order to pursue music, and at the comparatively tender age of 17, Tim Bricheno left both art college and Yorkshire. Not yet ready for the Big Smoke, he moved to Brighton, which he imagined to be a kind of “baby London”.
“I called a phone number from a sticker on a lamppost. It had a Caravaggio image and a ‘vocalist needs musicians’ request. That sticker led to Aemotii Crii, i.e. me and man-of-that-moment, the one who’d put that sticker on the lamppost, vocalist Rob Moles.”
The pair moved back to Yorkshire where Rob acquired a flat with a basement which served as their rehearsal space. Musicians spend a lot of time in basements. No wonder so many of us end up asthmatic. Tim then roped in his college mate Andy Cousin, on bass.
He compares the revolving-door exit and entrance of drummers as a rather ‘Spinal Tap’ process, adding that the departures sometimes arose “...in bizarre circumstances”, and describes some of the music Aemotii Crii made as “...spectacular, large-scale epics drenched in religious imagery; goth before goth had been tagged.” You can’t argue with that, nor can Google Translate as it tells me that Aemotii Crii is Latin for ‘I cried with emotion’. It doesn’t get much more goth, really, and it’s certainly emo way before emo.
Aemotii Crii played gigs in and around Yorkshire, and even ventured into Lancashire to play at Frank’s Club in Colne. The club owner, Frank James, recognised the band’s potential and offered to manage them. He was instrumental in sourcing a less accident-prone drummer, namely Rob Stroud of Brixton-based post-punk band, Sex Gang Children. Rob had played at Frank’s with SGC, and when he and the band parted company, Frank got in touch with him. Of Rob’s audition, Tim says;
“It was ace. Rob Stroud just knew how to play that fast tribal drum stuff, and we got on great. He and I lived together in a bed and breakfast in the same room in beds separated by a toaster on the floor, which is where we cooked potato waffles; our only source of food.’
But the B&B bromance drew to a close and Rob Stroud moved back to London where he found himself a girlfriend, Michelle Yee-Chong. The pair formed a band called Pink and Black, a band of which Andy Cousin was briefly a member.
With Rob loved up in London, Aemotti Crii carried on with Steve Rushton doing a superb job on drums. On 7th December 1983 the band travelled to London to play support to Specimen at the celebrated goth club, The Batcave. Record company types were notoriously difficult to cajole into attending midweek gigs, and that night was a Wednesday.
The experience seemed to put a suitably gothic nail in the coffin of the relationship between Aemotii Crii and their manager;
‘He lost interest after he spent a bomb on that trip and none of the record labels turned up. Andy moved down to London after Aemotii Crii naturally dissolved. It’s a shame no proper recordings exist from that period.’
It really is a shame, and Mick Mercer agrees, hoping that ‘...one day a bootleg of their demos will emerge, as this is a Great Lost Goth Band’.
At the time of writing, the band’s aurally fierce ‘Gifts For All’ is still to be found on YouTube. It is testament to the Aemotii Crii being masters of dynamics, with the song opening with a twinkling music box tune that is eventually utterly pulverised by a distinctly Bauhausian orgy of dissonance, a little reminiscent of the title track of the In the Flat Field album by Peter Murphy’s gang. But the similarities to Bauhaus didn’t end there… (To Be Continued).
Tim has uploaded Veils On Sunday to YouTube, with the message: “Previously unreleased Aemotii Crii song from 1982. In loving memory of the band’s vocalist Rob Moles.”
Mick Mercer - an early champion of Aemotii Crii - will be playing a track on his radio show this on Sunday 25th August.
A lovely tribute to Rob with great potted history of the band thank you