Urdu (band)

This article is about the experimental music group. For the Indo-Aryan language, see Urdu.

Urdu was an experimental pop music group that formed in California, USA in 1983. It was a trio consisting of ambient musician and multi-instrumentalist Robert Rich, guitarist Rick Davies and bassist Andrew McGowan. This group marked the culmination of a five-year period of experimental collaborations between Rich and Davies. Davies once described Urdu's style as "loud, angular glurp music", glurp being a term used by Rich to describe his vocabulary of seemingly organic sounds.

They performed several concerts in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of their last performances as Urdu was a live radio broadcast in 1984. Some of their accumulated recordings were released as a self-titled cassette album the following year.

In the years that followed, Rich received increased attention for his solo ambient work. In 1992 Robert Rich and Andrew McGowan formed a quartet called Amoeba. In 1994 Robert Rich and Rick Davies formed a second version of Amoeba.

Discography