bio - who are these guys?

Tage sez: We first met when we were 13 & 15 years old. Stefan was the mullet-sporting, metal-head kid brother of a class mate's friend and he was totally obnoxious. I was the black-clad, gloomy, serious-as-hell SPK fan. Luckily, we were both saved by acid house back in the days. Coming from a small town up north, few others saw the beauty in booming 909's, 303s and smilies, so the few of us who did get it stuck together for many late nights of excessive partying, kaleidoscope gazing and other pastimes of the era.

We started making music together a few years later, in 1992. And a few years further down the road, after relocating to Stockholm, we started playing live at local clubs and parties. There was a vibrant scene of live techno and electronica around the club Rangus Tangus, and that venue became our home for a number of years. The stuff we played then was a rather intense mix of breakbeats and acid. Full throttle at 150 bpm for hours, backed up by our infamous super 8 show.

The live playing was so much fun that we rarely bothered to record any tracks. We had this naive idea that since we were playing live a lot, and since the crowd obviously liked what we did, one day a fat guy in a cowboy hat (don't know why I always pictured him like that) would step up and say "Guys, that was intense. Here's a wheel cart full of money and a gold rimmed record deal".

Of course that never happened. We just didn't have a clue how the DJ business worked. We kept on gigging, doing the odd remix now and then. A few years later, we made the even more naïve move to start our own label. We originally wanted to call it "Sucker records" but that name was already taken, which was a shame since it would have been such a fitting name, considering what was to come.

We started the company, put out our first 12" (The Puff - Soul Probe) and bought the studio space we had been renting in 1999, using money from selling my part in a dotcom startup. Of course we got screwed. The record sold ok for a debut. We had now grown old enough to play something more like house than angry breakbeats. That was apparently the way to go in 1999, but that didn't help us from getting screwed by distributors, landlords, partners, and so called friends. We never released any more records on our own and Evil Skank Records went bankrupt a few years later.

We are slow workers. I'm mostly busy working at Propellerhead Software (makers of Reason - you haven't forgotten to upgrade to Reason 3.0, have you? Read more at www.propellerheads.se) and Stefan is pursuing his rock & roll career with The Midnight Monkeys (www.midnightmonkeys.com).

Despite our slow speed, we actually managed to lure our old time friend Crisp to join forces with us. The Puff is now a trio!

Recent work includes the odd live gig now and then and remixes for LA based Techno Squirrels and Californian fellows Zenith|Nadir.