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Prior to forming Fluke, Jon Fugler and Mike Bryant had previously played in two punk bands together named "The Leaky Radiators" and "The Lay Figures" respectively. The third member of Fluke, Mike Tournier, was introduced to the group when he undertook work on a collaboration with Jon Fugler entitled "Skin". It soon became clear that all three shared musical tastes, having a shared interest in the acid house scene and the more experimental electronic sounds of Cabaret Voltaire and Giorgio Moroder, Fluke was born.
After releasing 3 white label 12"'s they were picked up by Creation Records where they released their first CD single "Philly" in 1990. The following year saw the release of Fluke's first album, The Techno Rose of Blighty which was swiftly followed by the single "The Bells" and a live album entitled Out (In Essence). For the release of Out (In Essence) Fluke abandoned their deal with Creation Records and signed instead with Circa Records, an offshoot of Virgin. The band realised at this early stage in their career that they would experience the greatest artistic freedom if they possessed their own recording studio. They therefore took it upon themselves to obtain their own premises. This proved to be an invaluable asset.
After a two year break Fluke returned with what was to be a breakthrough into mainstream popular music when, in 1993, they released the single "Slid". This single became an instant club classic when it was picked up by DJ Sasha who liked it so much that he included three separate remixes of it on his Renaissance album. This burst of success was followed by a rush of two further singles, "Electric Guitar" ( sample (help·info)) and "Groovy Feeling", and, in the same year, the release of the group's second album, Six Wheels On My Wagon.
The following year Fluke released their third album, Oto, which is the Greek for "of the ear". In terms of style, Oto was somewhat darker than Six Wheels on my Wagon, focusing on the downbeat ambient effects which were present in the second half of Six Wheels. Fluke proved to be a driving force in the progressive house and trip-hop scenes.
In 1996 they released "Atom Bomb", originally created as a soundtrack to the video game Wipeout 2097, it became the centrepiece of their next album, Risotto.It was a runaway success in 1997 and 1998, powered by the cartoony big-beat of "Atom Bomb" and the gentle breakbeat track "Reeferendum".
After touring for a year with Risotto on the American, "Electric Highway Tour", and having made two appearances at the Glastonbury festival in 1995 and 1998, Mike Tournier elected to leave the group to pursue a different project named Syntax, with the band's long standing friend, Jan Burton.The pair produced just a single album, Meccano Mind in March 2004.
With the group split it was seen fit to release two "Best Of" albums entitled Progressive History X, a compilation spanning their entire ten year producing history, and then in 2001, Progressive History XXX, a three CD box-set including many rare and hard to find mixes.
It was in 2003 however that Fluke finally demonstrated their ability to survive without Tournier when they released their fifth studio album, Puppy, six years after Risotto. The name of the album was inspired by Jeff Koons' fifty foot sculpture of a puppy that stands outside the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. This album proved to be similar to the earlier Risotto tracks in tempo and mood, but with the introduction of some new ideas, such as the inclusion of a blues track, "Blue Sky" and the addition of a very dark techno orientated bonus track, Pulse. The album was not received well critically with most of the criticisms labelling the album as dated. After Puppy came out, Fugler and Bryant reinvented themselves as 2 Bit Pie.
Although Fluke have been producing music for the best part of two decades they remain relatively unknown to a large scale audience and the band members themselves are even less recognisable. Jon Fugler insisted in an interview with The Independent that the band's reclusivity was "less about selfish hedonism than the revival of 'a communal attitude that had long been forgotten'". The main sphere of influence where the band has had success is through their inclusion in advertisements, film and video game soundtracks.
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Fluke - Oto (95 122mb)
01 Bullet 8:59
02 Tosh 4:29
03 Cut 6:30
04 Squirt 4:24
05 Wobbler 8:47
06 Freak 7:49
07 O.K. 7:49
08 Setback 6:01
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Risotto is the sixth album by British electronica group Fluke, first released in September 1997. The album is named Risotto after the dish. Many of the tracks that brought Fluke to a larger audience feature on this album, including Atom Bomb, used on the wipE'out" 2097 soundtrack, and Absurd, used in many films/trailers, including Sin City in 2005. The cover was designed by The Designers Republic.
Fluke - Risotto (80 169mb)
01 Absurd 5:48
02 Atom Bomb 5:45
03 Kitten Moon 9:18
04 Mosh 6:21
05 Bermuda 7:57
06 Setback 8:54
07 Amp 8:09
08 Reeferendrum 7:22
09 Squirt 6:15
10 Goodnight Lover 7:34
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All mixes here are superb, even though more often than not one would stick to the vocal mixes (first track on both sides). Here it becomes hard to decide which side to prefer: the stomping, groovy, funky Glid mix or the longer, evolving, percussion-crazy PDF mix on the flip. The uplifting vocals ("Into the deep from on dizzy heights / what a sight as the world flies by / nowhere to sliiide"), great build-ups and intense instrumentation make both versions prime examples of great dance music production.
Fluke - Slid ( 76mb)
1 Slid (Glid Edit) 3:45
2 Slid (Pdfmone) 7:40
3 Slid (No Guitars) 7:41
4 Slid (Glidub) 7:00
5 Slid (Scat And Sax Edit) 7:07
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elsewhere on this blog (Rhotatiion 02)
Six Wheels On My Wagon (93 * 119mb)
The Techno Rose Of Blighty (93 ^ 99mb )
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