Martha and the Muffins emerged from the early punk/new wave/art pop scene in 1977 which was centered around various clubs along Toronto's Queen Street West and the Ontario College of Art, where several members of the band were students.
The band was signed by Virgin Records UK and recorded their first album, Metro Music at The Manor near Oxford, England in 1979. After Echo Beach became a top ten single around the world in 1980 MatM toured extensively in Britain, Europe and North America. Since then, the band has released seven studio albums internationally, three of which were co-produced with Daniel Lanois (U2, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel). In 1983, lead vocalist Martha Johnson and guitarist Mark Gane pared the band down to a duo and briefly changed the name to M+M. Combining sonic textures and art funk in their dance single Black Stations/White Stations, the song reached 2 in Billboard's Dance Chart in 1984.
Martha and Mark spent much of the '90's scoring music for various television and film projects. The birth of their daughter in 1992, inspired Martha to write and record an album of original children's music, Songs From The Tree House which won the 1996 Juno Award for Best Children's Album. Over the last few years, EMI Canada has reissued several MatM albums on CD, including Metro Music, This Is The Ice Age and the CD compilation Then Again - A Retrospective. In keeping with Martha and Mark’s plan to make the remaining original albums available on CD, the 25th Anniversary CD reissue of Danseparc was released on Cherry Red Records in August 2008 in the UK and is available through CD Baby.
MatM have completed their long-awaited album, Delicate, the first new release in 18 years, coming 02 02 2010.
Please visit
www.marthaandthemuffins.com or email MatM at:
muffinmusic@sympatico.ca for more information.
