Electrelane

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Electrelane <tr style="text-align: center;"><td colspan="3"> Electrelane. Back row: Mia Clarke & Ros Murray. Front row: Emma Gaze & Verity Susman </td></tr>
Background information <tr><td>Origin</td><td colspan="2">Brighton, England</td></tr><tr><td>Years active</td><td colspan="2">1998-present</td></tr><tr><td>Website</td><td colspan="2">Official Site</td></tr><tr><th style="background: #b0c4de;" colspan="3">Members</th></tr><tr><td style="text-align: center;" colspan="3">Verity Susman Emma Gaze Mia Clarke Ros Murray</td></tr>

Electrelane are a band from Brighton, England. They were formed in 1998 by Verity Susman and Emma Gaze, and are currently comprised of Susman, Gaze, Mia Clarke, and Ros Murray. Their music draws from wide range of influences including Neu!, Sonic Youth, Stereolab, and The Velvet Underground. Although the band is an all-female group and has strong feminist and political views in their personal lives, they generally prefer to not communicate that directly to their fans or through their music [1]; one exception is their inclusion of the protest song The Partisan which they began playing while on tour in the United States during the months preceding the 2004 Presidential election.

1 Early years (1998–August 2000)
2 Rock It to the Moon (September 2000–March 2003)
3 The Power Out (April 2003–November 2004)
4 Axes (December 2004–2006)
5 No Shouts, No Calls (2007)
6 Current lineup
7 Past members
8 Discography
9 External links

[edit] Early years (1998–August 2000)

The band recorded their first single "Film Music" and released it on January 2000 on the Skint Records off-shoot label In Denial. They released another single ("Le Song") with Fierce Panda before creating their own label, Let's Rock, with distribution by 3MV. The first two singles they released were "Gabriel" and "Blue Straggler" and in fall of 2000 they began work on their debut album. During this period, they had a number of personnel changes. The original bassist was Tracy Houdek, who left the band due to a pregnancy. She was briefly replaced by Rupert Noble until Rachel Dalley signed on.

[edit] Rock It to the Moon (September 2000–March 2003)

Their debut album, Rock It To The Moon was released in April 2001. Although Electrelane started off as a traditional band with vocals, this album was mostly instrumental. Verity Susman explained, "Way way back, when we first started, we always had a lot of singing. But it never worked that well. When we did instrumental it was always more interesting. More completely we felt like we were doing something good, while the songs with the singing ended up quite bog-standard, boring, not very interesting." [2]

[edit] The Power Out (April 2003–November 2004)

Electrelane brought in Steve Albini to record their second album, The Power Out, while production was still handled by the band. [3] The result was an album that added more vocals and structure to the songs. It was released on Too Pure in February 2004. The album was widely recognized and praised as critics appreciated the added complexity and vocals on their new work. Electrelane had not only added vocals to the work, but had transcended conventional expectations by employing a number of techniques. Of the nine songs with vocals, three of them were done in different languages. The album opener "Gone Under Sea" is sung completely in French. The third song, "The Valleys," featuring the vocals of the ensemble Chicago a cappella, had in part sections from Siegfried Sassoon's "A Letter Home." On "Oh Sombra!" the Spanish lyrics are a sonnet by 15th century Catalan poet Juan Boscán Almogáver. On "This Deed" the lyrics are a single line, in German, from Friedrich Nietzsche's Die fröhliche Wissenschaft followed by the inclamation "Hände hoch!" (or "Hands up!"). These touches, as one review put it, "managed to be unique without being a radical departure."[4] Midway through 2004, Rachel Dalley left the group and was replaced by Ros Murray, an old friend of the group [5].

[edit] Axes (December 2004–2006)

For their follow up, Electrelane once again returned to Steve Albini's studio in Chicago. This third album was released on 9 May 2005. Although it did not receive the attention and acclaim that its predecessor had, it again employed an interesting execution, this time in how it was recorded. Emma Gaze explained the album was recorded "the way we rehearse and practise: we all stand in a circle and it is very relaxed. Our previous recording experiences have been with the bass in one room, the drums in a different room, the two guitarists in a different room and then the vocals are done afterwards. Obviously it works like that because that is how most bands do it. But we just wanted it to sound more live; there is a different kind of energy that comes from playing in the same room." [6] The album is perhaps the closest one can get to experiencing their live show.

As with The Power Out, Electrelane supported Axes with a global tour. To date they have toured in the UK, the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Japan and Australia. They have both headlined their own tours and supported tours for The Ex and Le Tigre among others; they have also appeared at festivals such as South by Southwest and the ATP Festival.

[edit] No Shouts, No Calls (2007)

In November of 2006, the band announced on their official website that they have finished recording their 4th album, to be called 'No Shouts, No Calls', which will be released in early April 2007 in Japan, early May 2007 in the USA and late April 2007 elsewhere. It will have eleven tracks, the first of which is titled 'The Greater Times' and the last of which is titled 'The Lighthouse'. They are currently organizing a tour in support of the new album.