Musicians - Eat Static

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	Musicians - Eat Static

Eat Static are Merv Pepler and Joie Hinton, a dance music project from England formed in 1990.

History

Merv Pepler and Joie Hinton met as drummer and keyboard player (respectively) for the Ozric Tentacles, a long-standing psychedelic "space-rock" band from Somerset. Although the Ozric Tentacles incorporated elements of electronic music, Pepler and Hinton were drawn towards the rave-oriented dance music. Merv explained: "There we were in Ozrics doing all this technically impressive, weird music with mad timings, and getting really involved with it, and this experiment that became Eat Static was a good excuse to ignore all that, get the synths out, and be as stupid as we could!" The duo launched Eat Static in 1990 and toured in parallel with the Ozric Tentacles for several years. In 1994, they left the band to pursue Eat Static full-time. Merv and Joie are often joined in the studio by eat statics invisible third member Steve Everitt.

Their first release, Abduction, immediately established the extra-terrestrial/U.F.O. obsession which is a running motif in their samples, track and album titles, and release artwork.

Musicology

Although most often associated with the psychedelic trance genre, the band actually span almost all forms of dance music, including trance, techno, gabber, drum and bass, and breakbeat. As such they are well-compared to other hard-to-categorise children of the British rave scene, like The Prodigy, Underworld, Orbital and Leftfield.

The electronic elements are frequently mixed with elements of Latin and world music, jazz, absurdist masturbatory soloing, and so on, which helps to give the band's work its distinctively tongue-in-cheek humour, along with the often kitsch vocal samples from B-Movies and TV.

Despite the quote above, Eat Static are also notable within dance music for their frequent use of time signatures other than 4/4.

As of 2005, Eat Static continue to tour their live act.

Discography

CD

Abduction (Planet Dog Records 1993)
Lost In Time (Planet Dog Records 1993)
Implant (Planet Dog Records 1994)
Epsylon (Planet Dog Records 1995)
Bony Incus (Planet Dog Records 1996)
Hybrid (Planet Dog Records 1997)
Hybrid Remixes (Planet Dog Records 1997)
Interceptor (Planet Dog Records 1997)
Interceptor Remixes (Planet Dog Records 1997)
Science of the Gods (Planet Dog Records 1997)
Contact (Planet Dog Records 1998)
Contact Remixes (Planet Dog Records 1998)
B-World (Planet Dog Records 1998)
Alien EPs (Mesmobeat Records 1999)
DecaDance (Mesmobeat Records 1999)
Crash and Burn! (Mesmobeat Records 2000)
Mondo A Go-Go! (Memobeat Records 2000)
Prepare Your Spirit (Mesmobeat Records 2000)
In The Nude! (Mesmobeat Records 2001)
Alien Artifacts (Mesmobeat Records 2004)

Many of the Planet Dog releases are still available at www.planetdogrecords.com

Other projects

Eat Static also produced the soundtrack for the RTS game , published by Eidos Interactive. The game media also contains the music in Red Book audio format, allowing it to be played back in any standalone CD player.

Merv Pepler, one half of Eat Static, released a breakbeat/drum and bass solo project album under the name 'Dendron'. The album was called 'Supernatural Jazz' and was released on their own Mesmobeat label. Pepler also teamed up with Steve Jolliffe of Tangerine Dream to form 'Hi Fi Companions' and released the 2004 album 'Swingers In Paradise' on Twisted Records. This project is often classed under lounge music and has a 1950's feel mixed with modern electronica. Steve Jolliffe had previously teamed up with Eat Static appearing on their 'Crash and Burn!' and 'Science of the Gods' albums. In 2005 Merv Pepler's collabration with Will White of the Propellerheads, called 'Flexitones', released their debut album 'Joyrider' again through Twisted Records. This album had a kind of 1970's car chase theme to it!! Will White had previously teamed up with Eat Static on the tracks 'Dervish Funk', appearing on the 'Crash and Burn!' album, as well as on the 'Mondo A Go-Go!' single track 'Wall Banger'. Merv and Will had previously released tracks under the name Champaigne Charlie. Merv has also teamed up with Shane Thomson and Jamie Nott to from Cosmic Journey Project, and In 2006 Merv's project with Simon Posford (Hallucinogen, Shpongle) called 'Metal Sharon' will release an album once again through Twisted Records.

Joie Hinton, the other half of Eat Static, has released an album under the name Nodens Ictus. Joie teamed up with Ed Wynne from the Ozric Tentacles for this ambient project. The album was called 'Spacelines' and was a collection of tracks recorded earlier in their careers. Merv appears in a smaller role on the album and plays live with Joie and Ed.

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