Ultrasound are an English indie rock band. With roots in the British underground psychedelic and experimental rock scenes of the 1980s and early 1990s, the band emerged in 1997 and soon gained attention for their "operatic prog-glam ambitions" and "violent reworking of the idiosyncratic compositions of Captain Beefheart and the staged ambisexual pop idioms of the likes of Marc Bolan and David Bowie".
Signing a high-profile deal with Nude Records at the tail-end of the Britpop era, the band released several well-received singles and were tagged as "another big, bright hope for British music" but split up acrimoniously in 1999 following the release of their debut album Everything Picture. Reuniting in early 2010, Ultrasound have gone on to tour and to release two further albums.
History
Roots and origins (Possession, Step-TLV, Sleepy People and Pop-A-Cat-A-Petal - 1980-1995)
Future Ultrasound singer/rhythm guitarist Andrew "Tiny" Wood was born in Birkenhead and began his musical career in 1980 (under the pseudonym of "Anna Virgina War") in the experimental/industrial trio Possession with Victor Watkins and Stephen Thrower. Possession released one album on the A-Mission label in 1984 (The Thin White Arms, Obtusely Angled At the Elbow, Methodically Dipping and Emerging) before breaking up, with Thrower moving on to Coil the following year. Wood subsequently played with guitarist and songwriter Paul Hope in a band called Step TLV.
By 1989, aged twenty-five, Wood was attending the Popular and Commercial Music course at Wakefield College, Yorkshire, England as a mature student. Here, he met two of the future Ultrasound members - Richard Green (a 16-year-old classical cellist) and drummer Andy Peace. Moving on to a music degree course in Newcastle, they encountered future Ultrasound bass player Vanessa Best.
Following a succession of brief-lived bands, Wood, Green and Peace teamed up with Wood's old ally Paul Hope. Joined by Hope's flute-playing wife Rachel Theresa, the five put together a psychedelic rock band called Sleepy People. For the next two years the band toured around the UK playing in various small venues around the UK and gaining underground attention. Wood, Green and Peace all appear on Sleepy People's 1994 cassette album Blunt Nails In A Sharp Wall (originally a cassette release, but reissued on CD in 1999 on ORG Records).
A proto-Ultrasound: Pop-A-Cat-A-Petal (1995-1996)
Tiny Wood and Richard Green left Sleepy People in 1995, taking keyboard player Pete Haslam with them. Moving to London, they formed a new progressive/art rock band, Pop-A-Cat-A-Petal, which began earning underground attention (in particular after supporting cult band Cardiacs). At this point, Green played bass (as he had in Sleepy People) and Wood doubled on guitar and harmonium as well as lead vocals. Andy Peace (who had left Sleepy People some time earlier than Wood, Green and Haslam) would also join Pop-A-Cat-A-Petal, replacing sometime drummer Steve Gilchrist.
Pop-A-Cat-A-Petal released a self-titled cassette EP on Org Records in 1995, but did not prosper. Wood was later to comment that the band "had a bit too much prog-rock about it." Vanessa Best (who had moved to London and was singing as a backing vocalist in a George Michael tribute band) was added to the Pop-A-Cat-A-Petal line-up as bass player, with Green moving to lead guitar. With the subsequent departure of Haslam, the band began to reduce their more obvious progressive rock influences in favour of a stronger element of 1970s glam rock and a more pronounced indie rock outlook. Circa 1996, Pop-A-Cat-A-Petal changed their name to Ultrasound.
Ultrasound rising (1996-1997)
Despite the more commercially acceptable developments of their sound, the renamed band was initially no more successful. Following a year of struggling to keep going (during which time Matt Jones was brought into the band on keyboards to expand the sound), Ultrasound released their first single "Same Band" on Fierce Panda in July 1997. It brought them some favourable press in NME, who described it as "(sounding) like The Who's Tommy - in its entirety - squeezed into four-and-a-half minutes... utterly heroic and bizarrely, by some distance, their most understated moment." This led to the band performing in the NME sponsored Unsigned Showcase event.
In turn, the Unsigned Showcase appearance led Ultrasound to a recording contract with Nude Records, following a bidding war between various record labels excited by the band's powerful live presence.
Nude Records period & Everything Picture (1998-1999)