Lester Square (born Thomas Hardy, 17 April 1954, Canada) is an English musician, composer, artist and writer. He is the former lead guitarist for The Monochrome Set. He joined the first incarnation of Adam and the Ants as lead guitarist ,[1][2] (and its earlier incarnation known as The B-Sides) after meeting Adam while studying at Hornsey College of Art, writing Ants staples "Fall In" and "Fat Fun" during this period. He left in 1978 to form The Monochrome Set with singer-songwriter Bid, a band cited as[3] "a major influence on the Smiths, Franz Ferdinand, Orange Juice, Fire Engines and a whole host of UK indie and post punk bands." He has also briefly played guitar with The Invisible (1985–1987), ...And the Native Hipsters,[4] and Jesus Couldn't Drum.
Square has also composed music for dance performance, most notably Rhythm and Hues, a kinaesthetic exploration of 20th-century works of art in collaboration with the Tate Gallery and Helen McCookerybook. Also in collaboration with McCookerybook, he composed soundtrack music for the Channel 4 documentaries Pictures of Women and No-one Likes Us, We Don't Care, as well as Akiko Hada and Wolfgang Müller's 1991 parable on the fall of the Berlin Wall, The Fall of a Queen, or the Taste of the Fruit to Come.
He has released five solo albums since leaving The Monochrome Set: Carcass in 2017, Serotonin in 2018, Chautauqua in 2019, Nuevo Laredo in 2021 and Invisible Man in 2022.
As a visual artist, Square has regularly exhibited his work and between 1996 and 2004 he sat on the editorial board of The International Journal of Art and Design Education, acting as Literary Editor for 5 years. In 2006 he edited “Art Education in a Postmodern World” (Intellect Books).
During that period, he was also a regular contributor to the Times Educational Supplement and has acted as creative arts consultant to the QCDA and The Prince's Teaching Institute.
Since 2019, he has sat on the steering group of Music Declares Emergency, an environmental pressure group founded by musicians and members of the wider music industry, contributing to their monthly show on Soho Radio.
