New Bio!(fromwww.sneakerpimps.com)

How I am in a band
by Joe aged 26 ¾

Sneaker Pimps formed in the early nineties. Their roots lie much earlier in the Northeast of England. Chris Corner lived in Middlesborough, where he met Liam Howe who came from nearby Hartlepool. They began to make dance music from their small bedroom studio and soon decided to attempt to release it on a commercial basis.

Recording under the names Frisk and Line Of Flight, they released two EPs on the young Clean Up label. At this stage they were both at college, Chris in London studying astrophysics, Liam in Reading at Art College. It was here that Liam met David and myself, who also avoided the hardship of life through art inaction. Ironically it was at this stage that Frisk played a low key gig with the current line-up. In some ways this was the first Sneaker Pimps line-up.

Liam and Chris, while influenced by dance music and, in particular, the rigour of dance production, were keen to express a more song-based music. To this aim they recorded a series of demos with Chris singing.

Those songs were written by Liam and Chris, and a childhood friend called Ian Pickering.

They would eventually become Becoming X. Kelli was recruited at this point to sing, because it was felt that at this stage, the nature of these songs would probably suit a female vocal. Chris also felt he hadn’t reached the level of confidence that he now has.

This first record became Sneaker Pimps and at this stage it was regarded as a short-term project, that would be one of many. This was reflected by the small initial run of albums.

We viewed it as a record you selfishly release for only a few thousand copies, rather than half a million international records.

Dave and I were then asked to join on a more permanent basis when it looked like touring and live performances were unavoidable. David had in fact supplied drums on Becoming X whereas I had helped design the sleeves for the first Frisk release and had been part of the DJ wing of the organisation, playing test pressings of records Liam and Chris had just finished.

The five of us then quickly found that a huge momentum had gathered behind the record, particularly in America. This forced us into 18 months of on/ off touring, which we were never really prepared for. We quickly fell into a lifestyle that was both rock star cliché and rock star casualty.

It was difficult for the band to keep a realistic perspective when we were sharing lift journeys with Donald Trump and the Wu Tang Clan. We came back into England fed up with everything and everyone. Instead of taking a break, we moved Line Of Flight studio from the Northeast to London.

One of our strengths was that the band was never tied to any particular location. Other bands bored the nation with their loyalty to being from Glasgow, Manchester, Bristol or London, but we had no geographical base. Liam was from Hartlepool, Chris from Middlesborough, David from Newton Abbot, and I from London.

This was important to us because we wanted to absorb any musical style or direction we wanted.

With a new studio we wanted to start the second album, but as soon as we started we also realised that we wanted Chris to sing on it. He was now ready so the band returned to it’s core of Joe, Dave, Chris and Liam. We knew that like the first record it had to rely on the four of us as producers, and on no one else.

We had no external influence. The world seemed to not understand what we were doing by replacing Kelli, but we four and Ian the co-lyricist felt we could make a more open and direct LP. This has a much more organic feel, and this is due to us making the sounds from scratch, from the smallest beep to the shortest beat. It was produced by Line Of Flight, who consist of me, Dave, Chris and Liam. This record took just one year to produce and is born from a period of terrible frustration with the world and the music industry.

It is a record where you can see the ends of our nerves, rather than the perfect skin above.

And that’s what I done on my summer holidays. It was great and then we went home.
 
 
 
 

Old Bio-(courtesy of Virginrecords.com)

Chris Corner - Guitarist

Kelli Dayton - Singer

Liam Howe - Vintage Analogue Synths
 
 

One part of the story begins like this...

Liam and Chris grew up together, knocking around the back streets of Hartlepool, with a shared love of Shirley Bassey and Kraftwerk, Nick Drake and Afrika Bambaata. And they remained the best of friends, even when Liam started going out with Chris' sister.

Late '92 saw Liam and Chris, now masquerading as F.R.I.S.K., hawking a self-produced, self- financed white label around London's specialist record shops. The record, a four track EP, found favour with Kevin Beadle - then head honcho of Soho's Mr Bongo, and sometime DJ - who'd recently hooked up with old friend Craig Mineard (also a DJ) to form Clean Up Records. A short spell in the studio with the assistance of renowned jazz keyboardist Jessica Lauren resulted in "Take The Sun Away", one of Clean Up's first releases. Brooding and melancholy, the lead track welds a sample from Shirley Bassey's definitive version of Jacques Brel's "If You Go Away" to smoky, melifluous beats. Released in April 1993, the single was instrumental in catalysing the progressive/abstract beats scene that was later to become the many-headed beast that - for better or worse - we have learned to call trip hop.

F.R.I.S.K. mutated into Line Of Flight, who released their Clean Up debut in September 1993. "World As A Cone", a five track EP of deeper, spacier grooves, found many admirers in the burgeoning scene that its creators had helped kickstart. Though they busied themselves with in house production and remix work for other Clean Up acts, both Liam and Chris were keen to progress onto more complex, song-based material.

And another part of the story begins like this...

Kelli Dayton grew up in Bartley Green, a quiet and unlovely suburb of Birmingham. Indulging her love of the Pixies, The Cramps, Sonic Youth and latterly PJ Harvey, she had been in bands since she was 16. In 1993 she formed the Lumieres, who gigged extensively round London and released one self-financed single, "Cinder Hearts". Spotted singing in an Islington pub, she seemed the perfect compliment to Line Of Flight's studio-based intensity.

Retaining the Line Of Flight moniker for production purposes, Sneaker Pimps were born: just your average smoking beats/punk/torch/drum'n'bass/folk/rock'n'roll band. A live, gigging, DAT- free entity - not a studio bound 'project'. A band who tickled the fancy of Howie B - who made them a top tip for '96 - and U2 / Depeche Mode / PJ Harvey producer Flood - who thought them the best thing he'd heard all year. A band who came together, according to Liam, 'because of the extraordinary discrepancy in height between us'. And, at last, a new band to confound preconceptions and raise expectations.