Max

Formed in the late 1980s by Kevin Mooney and Leslie Winer, Max arrived out of the post-punk and art-pop underground with a sound that mixed sleek production, moody atmospheres and a slightly off-center pop sensibility. Mooney had already built a reputation through his time with Adam and the Ants, while Winer brought a cool, spoken-word edge that gave the early material a distinctive character. 

The group signed to Chrysalis Records and released the single “Little Ghost”, a track that later attracted enough attention to be covered by Boy George. Around the same period, Max recorded an album titled 'One Thousand + 1 Nights' with production from Marco Pirroni, another figure closely linked to the post-punk world through his work with Adam and the Ants and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Despite the pedigree involved, the album never saw an official release, leaving it to drift into the long history of lost major-label projects from the era.

 
After Winer’s departure, Mooney rebuilt the group with drummer John Reynolds. The revamped line-up adopted the name Lomax and signed to ZTT Records, the label famous for its extravagant pop productions and association with Trevor Horn. Horn produced a new version of the '1001 Nights' album, scheduled for release as ZTT 5. Expectations were fairly high, but when the single “Waiting For Vain” failed to connect commercially, the label shelved the record before it could properly emerge.

 
Mooney refused to let the material disappear. After leaving ZTT, the project moved to Red Dot Records, another Warner-affiliated label, and went through yet another reshuffle. The Lomax name was dropped and Max returned, while the Trevor Horn gloss was stripped back in favour of a harder, rock-oriented sound. The album resurfaced under a new title, 'Silence Running'. By that stage the early momentum had faded, and neither the album nor its singles managed to gain traction. Warner eventually dropped the group, and Max split in 1994. 

There was a tragic postscript to the story. Guitarist Matthew Ashman, best known for his work with Bow Wow Wow, died in 1995 at the age of 35. Bassist John Keogh also died not long afterwards. Those losses added a darker edge to the history of a group that spent years hovering around success without ever quite getting the breakthrough their connections and recordings seemed to promise.