My life in music spans indie, queercore, improvising and drone experiments.

A Scene Inbetween

I was there at the dawn of indie in the UK! I was a regular at The Living Room, sold t-shirts on tour with the Shop Assistants and played guitar and bass with The Legend. My zine Adventure in Bereznik was published for five years. You can find my work referenced by Pete Dales in Ripped, torn and cut: Pop, politics and punk fanzines from 1976, C86 & All That by Neil Taylor and A Scene Inbetween, by Sam Knee.

The Manic Street Preachers play a gig in a grotty pub room, they are wearing white stencilled stage outfits, backs of heads of a small crowd watching intently — Me, right in the middle at the front of the Manic Street Preacher’s first London gig, The Horse and Groom, Great Portland Street, 1989

Queercore

Six Inch Killaz were a white knuckle ride of drag, gender euphoria, trash and bad behaviour. I was a founding member and wrote most of the music. We are and were infamous.

Two transfemmes perform together in front of a glitter slash curtain. Jasmine, on the left is black with long hair and wears a shiny psychedelic dress, she sings into a microphone. Mona, on the right, is bleached out, emphasising her short blonde wig, eyelashes and lipstick. She plays a guitar. — Jasmine and I play a Killaz gig at Charlie Wright’s International Bar, Hoxton 1996

Cover of Different Times zine by Simon Murphy/Mona Compleine, blobby three-colour printing with a group shot of Six Inch Killaz in the middle, and the subtitle: Drag, Life, Rock 'n' Roll: Five Years in Six Inch Killaz, 1994-99

You can read my story in Different Times. The zine is out of print but copies are available in archives that have queer zine holdings, including Bishopsgate and the British Library.

There are plenty of pics on Mona Compleine Flickr and loads of links here: Six Inch Killaz – Where are they?

Later on I moonlighted with Charlotte Cooper, Jason Barker and Kay Hyatt in The Lesbian and Gay Community and The 123s. We played at Queeruption, Club V and Homocrime.

Improvisation and collaboration

I joined the second iteration of The A Band in 2007, the legendary ambient hardcore collective established by Stewart Keith, Neil Campbell and Richard Youngs ten years previously. I have also collaborated with Ziro Baby.

Simon is perched on a box, he plays guitar weirdly, theer is musical equipment around him and a microphone slightly out of focus in the foreground. he cpncentrates intently. He wears a t-shirt that says "T-Shirt!" — A Band recording at Ealing Studios 2009, photo by Stewart Keith

DJing

I love to DJ from my collection of 7” vinyl. I was one of the residents at Kitsch Bitch at Madame Jojos, and at SMERSH in cusp-of-gentrification Shoreditch. I’ve gigged at the Guildhall Art Gallery too, whoo!