Influential Post-Punk guitarist Rowland S. Howard passed away yesterday at the Austin Hospital for Liver Cancer in Australia. He was 50.
Howard was, for many years right hand man to Nick Cave in their early outfits – Boys Next Door and cult legends The Birthday Party.
His second solo record, ‘Pop Crimes’ was released this year to critical appraisal, and is hotly tipped for the Australian Music Prize, the antipodean equivalent to the Mercury Music Prize.
His harshly dissonant guitar-stabs, often layered with deep-gloomy reverb became his trademark, and he went on to influence ’90s slowcore band Slint and Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, amongst others.
In an interview with Australian paper ‘The Age’, Howard said of his influence -
”Usually when people say to me that a new band sounds just like me, I feel that they have missed the point entirely,” he said.
”It’s not just about being noisy and aggressive, it’s a whole aesthetic, trying to meld genres into something new. So doing something that is based on that 30 years later is fairly redundant.
”They [young bands] should be looking for something that is of their own.”
He is survived by a Father, Sister and Brother.
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