Fluke
Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England
1988–2003, 2024–present
DJ Fluke Production Creation, Strange Fruit, Circa, Astralwerks, Appalooso, One Little Indian
History[edit]
The Techno Rose of Blighty[edit]
Before forming Fluke, Fugler and Bryant had played in two punk bands together named The Leaky Radiators and The Layfigures. The third member of Fluke, Tournier, was introduced to the group when he undertook work on a collaboration with Fugler entitled "Skin".[3] 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.[4][5]
Fluke's first single, released in 1988, was a white label vinyl entitled "Island Life", pressed on a clear blue 12" vinyl record.[3] Although a commercial failure, as well as being very different in sound to the band's later works, the group persisted and released another two white label vinyls: "Thumper!" (ⓘ) in 1989 and "Joni/Taxi" in 1990, a song that sampled Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi".[6] The attention that these records received gained the band a record deal with Creation Records with whom they released their first CD single "Philly" in the same year.
In the following year, Fluke released their first album, The Techno Rose of Blighty, 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.[6] Along with these releases, Fluke also began their career-spanning tradition of releasing work of a different nature under various names. The first of these, the industrial music single "All Aboard", was released in 1990 under the name The Lucky Monkeys.[7]
At this early stage in their career, the band realized that they would experience the greatest artistic freedom if they had their own recording studio and took it upon themselves to obtain their own premises. This was an asset which, according to Fugler, proved invaluable in coordinating the "wider pool of people — musicians and friends — that we draw on to help".[8]
Although having never met the band, EMI invited Fluke to remix Talk Talk's 1986 song "Life's What You Make It" for the 1991 album History Revisited which largely consists of new remixes of Talk Talk songs. The album was removed from stores after the band denounced it, saying they had not given permission for the songs to be remixed.
Six Wheels on My Wagon[edit]
After a two-year break, Fluke returned with what became a breakthrough into mainstream popular music when, in 1993, they released the single "Slid". This 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.[9] This burst of success was followed by two further singles, "Electric Guitar" (ⓘ) and "Groovy Feeling", and, in the same year, the release of the group's second album, Six Wheels on My Wagon.
This new album was a distinctly house music production, with uplifting riffs and ambient effects, as opposed to the techno style of their previous release. The album was structured so that the more accessible "pop" tracks were to be found at the beginning of the album and the more ambitious ambient works towards the end. Though this could have produced a stagnating effect, it was received favourably by critics, with Billboard magazine labelling it "groundbreaking".[10] Other reviewers went further, with The Independent suggesting that Fluke was to become the next big thing in Europe: