Alan Replica (official web site)

The story so far... Alan Replica was born Marc A. Suaton on October 8, 1964, in the east suburbs of Lyon, of Bourgoin-Jallieu, France from an English mother, Opera singer and Swiss father, financier. His childhood was quite chaotic, forced to change environments, from town to town and soon countries (Asia, Africa), as father took on new missions every 5 year, and finally parents parted, leaving him and sister with their mother, moving abruptly from their usual mansion type houses to a very poor surroundings block of council flats. This is where his awakening to pop music and taste for underground and eccentricity occurred (thanks to his elder sister friends), and discovered The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Procol Harum, Elvis Costello, The Fabulous Poodles, Talking Heads, Roxy Music, to name a few still renowned, starting at age 11. This is also where he started writing, gaining his teachers praise for his sci-fi imaginative stories. His interest for bands was intimately linked with their use of the organ, and soon synthesizers with early Elvis Costello, Kraftwerk, Human League and Ultravox ! albums. His early fascination for synthesizers, famous among the keyboard dealers of Cheltenham SPA where Alan spent his holidays with grandmother, found his cult bands in the late 70's, with the advent of bands like Sparks, Ultravox, Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Visage and later New Order and Anne Clark (David Harrow), joining path with his literary taste for sci-fi writers, with the likes of A. Van Vogt, Aldous Huxley, Philipp. K. Dick, …

His youth was spent between France and the UK, from studies in Human Sciences (where as a matter of interest he also won a couple of university poetry prizes), to part time jobs as DJ or barman in post punk night clubs, sporting outrageously eccentric looks, hairdos and make-up, which earned him the nickname of “The Marquee”, and, after playing with a few short-lived bands, he soon started his first band in 1981 based in Reims, called “Then… Mask Decay”, soon reduced to “MASQ”. With his band MASQ, he toured for 5 years (1983-1988) in local clubs, and concert halls, delivering a futuristic-rock set, that can be described as a melodic and fast beat synthesizers anthems with a dark edge, heavy guitars and kick drum going on in the background, that lead back to the bands influences, from New Order, Anne Clark, Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Visage, Blancmange, Christian Death, Psychic TV and Virgin Prunes. The band was seen as an avant-garde act at the time.

The band has no other intention at the time but to make it through their live shows, rapidly growing popular, they also sporadically wrote for modern ballet companies, and also regularly sent live tapes to Mute Records, Gary Numan and Ultravox. The band's main event then, was to be called by Ultravox to support their 1986 European tour, starting from a test venue in France. The event did not happen, very unluckily (as Virgin France had selected some other band, and Ultravox kept their word to MASQ, so finally refused to play in France due to this support band issue with Virgin), so the band missed their chance to break through. Alan split the band a couple years after, due mainly to increasing drug addiction problems of co-front man guitarist, dropped the process of gathering a new band over again, and considered taking back studies and a daytime job, to earn the necessary means to rebuild a rig that would make him autonomous in making music. He started a career as an IT Consultant, settled his life and a family with all-time girlfriend Francine (the couple lives together since the age of 16!), 2 children, Lewis (8) and Eden (5). Alan and family now live in a small town south east of Paris, in the Burgundy area.

Alan recently changed his aim at building live gigs, due to his time consuming day job (more than 10 years had passed in the meantime), and finally considered recording his music to send it out. Songs at the time were pilling up, and Alan, due to his vintage instruments oriented rig, was becoming stuck with his earlier sound, with little latitude to progress without ruining the former songs settings on the instruments. So it became clear that releasing the sets would allow more freedom to evolve on new songs. He set up a home recording digital studio in a week, and recorded 20 songs within 2 days and began thinking who to send this to, knowing he was only looking for a distribution deal. This is when Alan first contacted David Richards at Ninthwave Records, quite by chance really (Alan had made a search for electronic music labels on the web and sorted it out by description of music that felt closest to him), and it came out a mutual understanding thing. Alan Replica rapidly had a distribution deal with Ninthwave Records, for Northern America only, but that also taking advantage of the internet facilities to expand distribution. The name MASQ was used a last time on Ninthwave Records compilation Electricity 2 with title ‘The Machines' (July, 2003). Mainly because the name MASQ had been disused for years, and the rights had fallen, and other bands had since used approaching names that could create confusion, not forgetting MASQ is a real put off to sort on the web, due to the Linux heavy usage of the word, and Alan finally changed to Alan Replica . After the fairly acclaimed title ‘The Machines' from compilation Electricity 2, Alan Replica released with Ninthwave Records the album ‘Clockworks, Juliet' (April, 2004), a set of his early songs, still marked with an 80's feel, with a particular raw organic edge to the sound, as he likes to record in live conditions (direct sound, all instruments in one take, no remix, no overdubs). The album shot directly into synthpop, industrial-gothic web radio charts, and into best sellers list throughout the web, US, Japan, … ‘Clockworks, Juliet' soon ranked in Amazon.com early adapters, and industrial-gothic charts (A Different Drum best sellers list at #4, Chicago Readers newspaper Best of 2004 at #5, Lexicon Magazine readers best sellers of 2004 at #2 before the new Duran Duran ‘Astronaut', Depeche Mode ‘Remixes 81-04' and The Cure ‘Join The Dots'…). Alan Replica was soon compared to Ultravox, Gary Numan, Blancmange, Garbage, Ministry, and others, but stays unique; ‘Clockworks, Juliet' for instance, is an intriguing blend of a special voice, catchy tunes, heavy electronics and a symphonic palette, it has a unique feel to it, like all 14 tracks were different movements of the same synthpop opera.

Alan Replica recently played first gig in many years at The Goudvishal venue in Arnhem (NL), proving he hasn't lost his lust for performing...