E.S.P. BIOG Click the links throughout to visit the relevant websites for more info "They're stronger, more interesting and certainly more vital than ever..." - ArtRocker.com It's late 1999. Tom Friend, A&R for DB Records, is checking out the XFM Unsigned show in the UK when he hears an entrancing sound coming from his stereo. Crusty 4-track drums, shabby harmonies and a ton of fuzzbox guitar. The band is two brothers (Alex and Thomas White) from Brighton, England. On the strength of this one song, Tom makes the necessary phone calls and is in the rehearsal room with ESP within a week. By the end of 2000, the boys had signed a deal with DB, and the recording of a debut album had commenced at River Studios, Wandsworth. Co-produced with Chris Hughes and Mark Frith, and recorded in no less than five different studios (including Tom's bedroom), 'Holes In The Wall' was a slice of pure pop futurism. Entering the UK Top 20 on release in 2002, it was a resounding critical and commercial success spawning two Top 40 singles and a Mercury Music Prize nomination. In Autumn 2002, armed with a pile of new ideas, the band repaired to Metway Studios, a complex owned and run by Brighton's very own Levellers. A very different record to it's predecessor, 'The American Adventure' (BMG, 2003) nonetheless managed to fuse a pared down recording approach with an even more sprawling and adventurous musical scope than before. The results found the pair compared to everyone from The Band to Stereolab, and took in lo-fi folk, thumping blues and free-form psych-rock, whilst always retaining a pop shimmer. By now ESP had toured and played shows with the likes of Elbow, Grandaddy, Ian Brown, Starsailor, The Who, David Bowie and Oasis. "The label came up with a rubbish marketing campaign: we're playing with The Who [at Royal Albert Hall] therefore let's all get on Vespas and ride about town! We'd probably get a slap if we'd turned up on them." - Tom White It was around this time the band started working with Eamon Hamilton (of British Sea Power) and Marc Beatty as (what would become) Brakes The four had been aware of each other for some time, and after a chance meeting at a Lonesome Organist gig in Brighton, a deal was struck that if Eamon wrote the songs, the rest of the boys would happily provide some beef to them. They continued to play live over the following year (during which Tom and Alex freed themselves from some particularly nasty major label business). "Many things are true in Spinal Tap. The more people from the music industry we meet, the more we understand where those characters come from! I used to think that the characters were pure fiction, almost cartoons. But they do exist in real life. You just need to go to any office of any record company to see them." - Alex White After the release of Brakes "Give Blood" (Rough Trade), ESP once again returned to the studio to record "The Human Body" EP for Truck Records UK. Seen as another turning point for the band, this EP is a continuation of the self-enforced recording ethics of 'The American Adventure' coupled with a full re-appraisal of what made the band great in the first place. "A Beating Heart" rocks like the Birmingham Philarmonic playing in Elbow's outside lavvy, "Cold World" is an ace Ben Foldsian plink-fest and the ghost of a big pop Spiritualized casts a spectral pall across the rest. Monu-mental." - NME Since the release of the EP in the UK, the Brothers White have scarcely had a moment to themselves. In between Brakes tours supporting the likes of Belle and Sebastian and Editors in the UK and Europe, ESP have secured their first ever U.S. record deal with Better Looking Records, and played their first ever U.S. shows at the 2006 SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas. Tom and Alex have begun work on the third Electric Soft Parade album. Having originally written most of the album whilst still with BMG, the band have been itching to get into the studio ever since, and have now replaced much of the original track listing with newer material. Recording began in March at Truck Studios set deep in the Oxfordshire countryside. "It still confuses the fuck out of me, trying to define the kind of music we play! I guess at the moment, it's trying to emulate Robert Wyatt, Pet Shop Boys, Neu and the Mission of Burma all at once..." - Tom White The Human Body EP was released in the U.S. by Better Looking Records on May 9th, 2006. Their third album - No Need To Be Downhearted - is out on 23rd April 2007. A single - If That's The Case, Then I Don't Know - will be released in March. Entry on Electric Soft Parade in The Great Rock Discography 7th Edition, by Martin C Strong (thanks to Tom) Formed: Brighton, England 1998 by brothers TOM and ALEX WHITE, who then enlisted MATT TWAITES and STEVE LARGE. Originally called FIXED ASCENT and then THE FELTRO MEDIA (the latter issued a few demos including NEON OF THE CITY in August '99), the band subsequently settled on being called THE SOFT PARADE. A promising debut single SILENT TO THE DARK hit the shops in Spring 2001 and a follow up EMPTY AT THE END, broke the UK Top 75 later in the year. The lads then added ELECTRIC to the moniker after discovering there already existed a DOORS cover band of the same name. THERE'S A SILENCE nearly cracked the Top 40 and paved the way for media interest for their debut album HOLES IN THE WALL (2002) The Top 40 record was a more than competent homage to their musical influences whilst also managing to sound contemporary. Clearly influenced by 1960's psychedelia, the band offered something different to the increasingly faceless Brit-Pop movement. ELECTRIC SOFT PARADE and their Arista-backed label, DB re-mixed and re-promoted both their first two SOFT PARADE 45's and they duly went Top 40. The group returned in 2003 with their highly ambitious second set entitled THE AMERICAN ADVENTURE. Its lush orchestration was reminiscent of PHILIP GLASS on ice, a pastoral and cinematic affair that harked back to the days of THE WALKER BROTHERS and BRIAN WILSON (circa 1966) Infusing instruments as diverse as harp, strings, creepy percussion, xylophones and pump-organ, THE ELECTRIC SOFT PARADE wove melodies in and out of each other to startling effect. Whilst perhaps not matching the emotional intensity of their debut LP, THE AMERICAN ADVENTURE was all of the things that were great about lush records, invoking a meditative harmony in the listener's head whilst leaving them stunned and deeply moved simultaneously.