The Techno Rose of Blighty

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!" (sample^ⓘ) 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

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" (sample^ⓘ) 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:

Fluke's Six Wheels on My Wagon represents the current high-water mark of modern ambient-groove music, showing that although this mode has effectively become the future sound of Europe, it's rarely done as well on the continent as in Britain. Though born out of the groove, the pieces on Six Wheels On My Wagon have a melodic flow which manages to combine elements of surprise and innovation with a hedonistic serenity.^[11]

In 1994, Fluke released The Peel Sessions, recorded for the BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel. This CD was a selection of tracks from two live sessions recorded on 18 November 1990 and 10 December 1991.^[12] The CD included one new song, "Time Keeper", and several tracks which had previously been released on vinyl only. Fluke were invited to perform two further, unreleased, Peel Sessions after this CD. One was broadcast on 10 November 1996 and the other was performed live on 8 December 2002.^[13]

Oto, Risotto and departure of Mike Tournier

The following year, Fluke released their third album, Oto, which is the Greek word 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, and the band completely removed the uplifting house style that characterised their previous work. Owing to the decreased accessibility of the album as a result of this, only two singles were deemed suitable for release from Oto; "Bullet" and "Tosh". In spite of this, "Bullet" was chosen by Dominic Pride of Billboard magazine as one of his top ten picks of 1995.^[14]

In 1996, Fluke released "Atom Bomb", a single that reached #20 in the UK charts.^[15] Originally created as a track for the video game Wipeout 2097 (Along with "V6"), it became the centrepiece of their next album, Risotto.^[16] The track was also released as a single from the soundtrack album Wipeout 2097: The Soundtrack, which had tracks from The Chemical Brothers, Future Sound of London, Photek, Underworld, Daft Punk, Leftfield and The Prodigy.^[17] Of all their productions, it is Fluke's fourth studio album which is most widely known, primarily because it represented the pinnacle of Fluke's mainstream chart success with the singles "Atom Bomb" and "Absurd" (sample^ⓘ). The album was named Risotto after the risotto food dish because, like its culinary counterpart, it contained a mix of "ingredients". These included the singles "Atom Bomb" and "Absurd", new tracks "Goodnight Lover" and "Kitten Moon", the post-album single "Squirt" and reworked older tracks such as "Mosh", a remix of "Tosh" from Oto. Risotto was perhaps the most favourably reviewed of all Fluke's albums with David Bennun of The Guardian writing:

Risotto pushes forward Fluke's slick, sophisticated techno at a relentless pace. Sometimes, on Absurd, Atom Bomb and especially the top-notch Squirt, it takes a terrier-like grip on your concentration, with the muted vocals hissing in your head like Martian broadcasts arriving through your fillings.^[18]

At this time, the band saw fit to re-use the Lucky Monkeys name for the release of "Bjango", a single which included a remix by Fluke themselves.^[7]

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, Tournier decided to leave the group to pursue a different project named Syntax, with the band's long standing friend, Jan Burton.^[19] They produced just a single album, Meccano Mind in March 2004, which in turn produced two moderately successful singles and a live tour supporting Scissor Sisters.^[20]

Progressive History X and Progressive History XXX

After Tournier's departure, it was decided to release two "Best Of" albums, Progressive History X, a compilation spanning their entire ten year producing history, and, in 2001, Progressive History XXX, a three CD box-set including many rare and hard to find mixes. Both releases were packaged with artwork from "Just Your Average Second On This Planet" 1997–1998, Discotheque by David Bethell The box-set contained black, red, white and blue versions of the same original cover art, and had a poster of the silhouette image on one side and all other album covers on the back.

In 2002, The Fluke DJs were formed, a live-show pairing of Fugler and Hugh Bryder. Bryder was a DJ who had assisted Fluke in their live performances since 1993 as well as working with other DJs such as Seb Fontaine while holding a DJ residency at MTV's special event parties.^[21] This seemed to indicate further rifts within the band as this DJ combination included neither Bryant nor Tournier.^[9] However, Fugler denied these rumours shortly after they surfaced claiming that the band merely needed some time away from each other after their intense work on Risotto.^[22]

Puppy

Even with the release of the "best of" albums, there were still signs of life in Fluke's production studio when, in 2000, they produced a promotional CD named The Xmas Demos, which included early versions of many of the tracks intended for the album Puppy. Speculation about a new album was furthered when, in 2003, the remaining members of Fluke released two singles forming the basis of this next album.^[23] Though the aptly titled "Slap It: The Return" signaled a break from the past, with the writing credits listed simply as "Bryant/Fugler" under the Appalooso label, "Pulse" exemplified a much darker style and was released on the One Little Indian label. In 2003, Fluke finally released their fifth studio album and first without Tournier, 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.^[24] 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 a very dark techno orientated bonus track, "Pulse".

The album was not received well critically with most of the critics labelling the album as dated. Andy Gill of The Independent wrote:

Surely the longest-serving of UK dance outfits, Fluke have been a fixture on the national house scene for more than a decade now ... With their endlessly cycling layers of fizzing synths and those big filter-sweeps that were de rigueur a few years back - when the music recedes to nothing, then surges back again - tracks such as "My Spine" and "Hang Tough" could have been made at any time in the past six or seven years. Maybe they were; whatever, they sound a tad cumbersome compared with the leaner garage beats favoured now. In "Snapshot", the juddering synth riff is the techno equivalent of the 12-bar blues, a standard form that has become all too easy for lazy musicians to slip into. Fluke may sing, "It's easy to change/ Go out and get a new name/ Forget yesterday" in "Switch/Twitch", but it is clearly not proving that easy for them to develop beyond their old house style, notwithstanding odd moments such as the freeway glide of "Baby Pain" and the soulful choir on the closing, chill-out number, "Blue Sky". It's Nineties music for a Noughties world.^[25]

The only single to be released from Puppy after the album's release was "Switch", which was released in CD and vinyl formats. The track was used on the soundtrack for the Electronic Arts video game Need For Speed Underground 2 but achieved nowhere near the critical or popular acclaim of the singles from Risotto, not even appearing in the UK top 40.

2005 onwards

In late 2005, Bryant and Fugler teamed up with Jan Burton, Wild Oscar, Robin Goodridge, Dilshani Weerasinghe, Marli Buck and producer Andy Gray to form 2 Bit Pie with a limited release of "Nobody Never". This track retained the rough vocals and electronic feel that was by now characteristic of Fluke, but had a stronger emphasis on live playback and real instruments.^[26] In May 2006, there were club previews of two new 2 Bit Pie songs, "Little Things" and "Here I Come" (sample^ⓘ).^[27] On 4 September 2006, 2 Bit Pie released their first album, 2Pie Island, in the UK to minimal critical attention. No further albums were released.^[28]

In 2009, Fluke briefly reunited for a live performance, including all three original members, with a show at The Tabernacle in London on 10 October 2009.^[29]

Band

• Mike Bryant - engineering, clarinet, bass, production (1988-1999) composer, programming (2000-2010)
• Jon Fugler - vocals, lyrics, production (1988-2009)
• Mike Tournier - composer, keyboards, guitar, programming, production (1988-1999)