#1 The Noisebox Singles 1995-96
The Mudshark EP
We released our very first, orange coloured, 7 inches of vinyl on Norwich label Noisebox, now deceased. The lead track, Pop Your Mouth ,recorded at the Swamp over a very hazy weekend, utilised every instrument we could lay our hands on. The swinging pop chorus gradually moves into an 'orchestral' climax and ends with a beautiful piano and faint guitar riff recorded on a dictaphone. The last few beats are played out to infinity by way of a circular groove at the very end of the record.
Side B and Tom, Lou, and Me begins with the starting up of the Swamps ex-Abbey Road tape machine. Chris from the Swamp was keen to add sampling techniques and effects to go some way to meeting our ideas, and even remixed Pop Your Mouth, a copy of which is laying around here somewhere. It was our first taste of what could be achieved in a studio, but the 4-track, even to this day, has never been overlooked.
An example of this is the last track here, Elsie's Skinny Arms ,a lo-fi, sweet little tune, that is blown apart by an enormous guitar riff, all over the beat of a ball full of water. The record was scribbled on with felt tip pens (they didn't send us the labels) and was limited to 500 copies.
