Electrelane

Electrelane
Last performance before going on indefinite hiatus
Background information
Origin	Brighton, East Sussex, England
Genres	Post-rock, alternative rock, electronic, experimental
Years active	1998–2007, 2011
Labels	Too Pure, Beggars Banquet
Associated acts	Follows
Website	www.electrelane.com
Members	Mia Clarke Emma Gaze Ros Murray Verity Susman
Past members	Tracy Houdek Debbie Ball Rupert Noble Rachel Dalley
Notable instruments
Farfisa, clarinet, saxophone

Electrelane were an English indie rock band, formed in Brighton in 1998 by Verity Susman and Emma Gaze. The band comprised Susman, Gaze, Mia Clarke, and Ros Murray. Their music drew from wide range of influences including Neu!, Stereolab, Sonic Youth, and The Velvet Underground. Although the band had strong feminist and political views in their personal lives, they generally preferred to not communicate that directly to their fans or through their music; one exception is their inclusion of the protest song "The Partisan," which they began playing while on tour in the United States during the months preceding the 2004 Presidential election. The band, when playing live, had a reputation for a focused show that minimised audience interaction and rarely included more than one encore.

The band recorded their first single, "Film Music," and released it in January 2000 on the Skint Records offshoot label Indenial. They released another single ("Le Song") with Fierce Panda before creating their own label, Let's Rock!, with distribution by 3MV. The first two singles they released were "Gabriel" and "Blue Straggler" and in fall of 2000 they began work on their debut album. During this period, they had a number of personnel changes. The original bassist was Tracy Houdek, who left the band due to a pregnancy. She was briefly replaced by Rupert Noble until Rachel Dalley signed on. Original guitarist Debbie Ball was replaced by Mia Clarke.

Their debut album, Rock It to the Moon, was released in April 2001 through Mr. Lady Records. Although Electrelane started off as a traditional band with vocals, this album was mostly instrumental. Verity Susman explained, "Way way back, when we first started, we always had a lot of singing. But it never worked that well. When we did instrumental it was always more interesting. More completely we felt like we were doing something good, while the songs with the singing ended up quite bog-standard, boring, not very interesting."NME rated the album an 8 out of 10, saying Rock It to the Moon was "just the way a debut album should be... utterly focused [and] stripped of all extraneous flab."