Harry James Angus was born on 11 June, 1982 in Melbourne. He attended McKinnon College, graduating in 2000 with a high ENTER score (95+) despite doing mainly humanity subjects. He went to the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) on his abilities as a jazz trumpeter, where met up with other jazz musicians and played with Jazz Cat and started the band The Cat Empire.
He played many gigs with these bands and started another band called The Conglomerate while at VCA, attaining moderate success with The Cat Empire. The Cat Empire released 2 albums in these early years. The first a live album 'Live @ Adelphia' (2001), and the second entitled 'The Sun' (2002) which contained several of the band's future hits.
There are also reports of 2 demos recorded in 2000, consisting of original instrumentals recorded in Ollie McGill's sister's bedroom
As The Cat Empire became more and more successful, Harry dropped out of the VCA in 2002 and in 2003 started a course at Melbourne University in Media Studies. The Cat Empire gained commercial success with their self titled album, which was their first album with a major label. Songs such as 'Hello', 'The Chariot' and 'Days Like These'.
The Cat Empire has released 3 more albums, "Two Shoes" in 2005, "Cities: The Cat Empire Project" in 2006 (a project for the 2006 Commonwealth Games) and "So Many Nights" in 2007.
The Conglomerate, consisting of Harry Angus on trumpet, synth and vocals, Ollie McGill on Piano, Jules Pascoe on bass and Harry Shaw-Reynolds on percussion, have released 2 albums. The first, "go to the Beach" released in 2005 was mainly an improvisational jam album interspersed with some covers. The second album "Hold Your Breath" was released in 2008 (over a year after it was recorded, due to Harry Shaw-Reynolds having some personal problems). This album, although not commercially successful, is one of the best albums of the year, in this writer's opinion.
Jackson Jackson started when Harry Angus and Jan Skubiszewski (Two Hands, The Rage in Placid Lake, Last Man Standing) found themselves going to a lot of the same gigs and found they shared concerns about how boring and unoriginal the music scene was, and thought they could make something better. Harry came to Jan with the words for 'Intelligent, Evolved and Insane' and asked him to produce some backing music for it. They enjoyed working together so much they started making more and more songs together that turned into their first album 'The Fire Is On The Bird'.
Harry has started doing some solo shows, playing nylon string acoustic guitar and singing his original songs. His first solo show was in 2007 supporting Tinpan Orange at the Corner Hotel. He mentioned during this show that it was the first time he'd played any of the songs to more than one or two people at a time. It was over a year before he played another solo show, this time supporting Symbiosis at Evelyn Hotel in Fitzroy. Harry's third show was at Bennetts Lane Jazz Club, once again supporting Tinpan Orange. Harry has a 4th solo show announced for Tuesday the 5th of August 2008 in Brooklyn, NY, supporting Will Hoge. Unfortunatly I will not be able to attend this show.
The lyrics and tabs that you read on this site are painstakingly notated from these live shows. So far Harry has not released any solo recordings.