Amri Shroff. That’s who was behind that wonderful single with “All Your Words” on the A side. The band, or maybe this solo project, went under the name Amri. That record has been a favourite of mine for a long time. But only a few weeks ago I found a video of Amri playing this song on a Dutch TV programme.
I believe the TV show was called Formel Eins and the date it was aired was on September 6 of 1987. You can watch it here.
This single was actually his second release. It came out in 1987 on a big label, Epic (EPC 650358). It was released as a 7″ and 12″. The 7″ had “All Your Words” on the A side and “Invisible Dance” on the B side while the 12″ included a long version of “All Your Words’ on the A side and the single version as the 2nd track on the B side.
The producers of the record were the Germans Peter Ries and Reinhard Besser. Ries has quite the resume, working with big names like Kool and the Gang or even Nsync. The photography is credited to Jochen Thieme.
Amri’s first release was also a single, on both 7″ and 12” formats, that came out in 1985 on Epic (EPCA 6999). The sound of these songs are less indiepop, more new wave, more 80s classic sounding. The A side was “Return to Gold” and the B side is “Look at Me Now”.
Interestingly we see that on this record we see Reinhard Besser credited for the songs as well as Amri and two other names, Marc Cassandra and Ralph Bachmann. Turns out Marc Cassandra is Peter Ries, the producer. And yes, both Reinhard and Peter produced this record.
“Return to the Gold” had a video made.
There are no compilation appearances by Amri. But it does look like Amri played on a German maxi-single by Mayte. He sang and did backing vocals on the “Too Dramatic” 12″ released by Control in 1993. He’d also play different instruments (as well as doing the cover artwork) for the German electronic rock band Whispering Colours in their 1995 album “The Mystery of Pain”.
Seems he was more connected to the German scene than the Dutch one, right?
It also seems I lose track of him in the early 90s. I wonder what happened to Amri. Did he just stop making music? How come he got signed to a big label and got to release two records? Was he in other bands? For me it is a big mystery. Also why the change of the sound between his two records? I like “Return to the Gold”, but “All Your Words” is just pure pop bliss. I wonder many things, and I also wonder if we’ll ever find out more details about this Dutch project!
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Listen
Amri – All Your Words
