Our early history is probably not very well documented. And with good reason - it's not something we're especially proud of. You could view the 1990s as a learning curve for us, starting with next to no equipment or experience, and ending with just a little of each.
Despite that, we did manage to write a couple of good songs (looking back, we had maybe a 4 or 5% hit rate, which isn't too bad), and we did still enjoy ourselves immensely. But rest assured, although most of the early recordings do still exist in one form or another, there is absolutely no chance that you are ever going to hear them.
So, roughly in chronological order, these are my personal highlights of 1992-1999:
- Writing our first proper song in around 1992, which was called Dangerous and was largely based around The Green Cross Code.
- Pointing two tape recorders at one another and turning songs by the likes of Simply Red and Prince into songs of our own, by shouting over them until you couldn't hear the original any more. Unsurprisingly, in the case of Simply Red, it actually made the song better than the original.
- The original recording of our 1993 EP Amnesia, which was then called Brain Cell, and included the sound of us drinking tea. If we ever turn out to be influential, this will be cited as an early example of sampling.
- Connecting our first computer to our first tape recorder to create sequenced (i.e. in time) music. We used an insanely complex programming language called APL, and wrote all the music in code. There was a nanosecond gap in the music between each verse.
- Recording an album of hymns. For some reason, we never got around to releasing it.
- Writing our own fanzine, Pure Hype, despite not having any readers, or, most of the time, any news.
- Unscrewing a cassette tape, and sellotaping the two ends of a tape together to create a loop. When played back, this created a very odd sounding "sample", which we even used once for the drums (borrowed from Blue Monday) on a remix of our 1995 track What Makes It Go. Obviously, it didn't keep particularly good time, but neither did it sound much worse than when we didn't use it.
- The Yamaha PSS-380. Oh yes. Bought in Nottingham, in 1997, this was our first foray into the world of digital synthesis. It was a revolution. Not long afterwards, I repaired our first keyboard, the PSS-150, which still works to this day, with all of five different sounds and a drum section which we can confirm does indeed provide all the excitement of being a real drummer.
- Buying our first proper synthesiser, the wonderful Casio CZ-1000, in a second-hand shop in Wagga Wagga in August 1998. We made lots of digital sounds, including some great snare sounds. And some dreadful kick drum sounds.
- Buying our first 4-track tape recorder at Christmas 1998. Now we had a means of properly recording, and even (occasionally) of staying in time. The foundations had truly been laid for the next decade.
