Never mind. By tomorrow I'll be able to return to my dark cave-like study, pull down the curtains and just chill... like until November. I'm only venturing out into the quagmire because my curiosity is aroused. Fluke have just produced a new album. I've just heard it and my radar has been tweaked enough to want to know more, much more. Fluke have been at the forefront of the UK house scene since they raced up the charts with the honkified funk monster 'Electric Guitar'. Their reputation as remixers is just about second to none and their fitting contemporaries are Underworld, Leftfield, The Aloof and the rest of the British progressives.

Scratch that. Fluke have been around longer than the lot of them, since 'The Techno Rose Of Blighty' and that Joni Mitchell sample in 1991. So when 'Bubble' hit the Top 40 last April, it surprised no one. The fix was definitely in, Fluke had arrived and it was easy to see they were planning on moving upwards and onwards. This lunar trajectory is going to peak further with 'Oto', their new album. The new single 'Bullet' is a feral shamanistic stab in the nuts with beautifully diverse remixes by Atlas, Empirion and the (original) Dust Brothers and the new album 'Oto'... well, it's a belter of course, but more about that later.

THE three members of Fluke, Mike Bryant, Michael Tournier and Jon Fugler (all early 30s) come sauntering into the pub along with manager Jillian Nugent (credited as fourth member of the band on the first album) and their press officer. First impressions tell me these are very serious guys: short hair, dark clothes, furrowed brows, etc. But after introductions this impression is quickly dispelled. We get in a round, sit down with our pints of Guinness and get down to some chat.

At the same time as Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson et al were cutting their teeth on all things Euro and growing up dodging bullets in the playground, Fluke were finding their musical feet in the idyllic surroundings of High Wycombe, banging away on cut price guitars and marveling at the inroads being made by English electro pioneers ZTT, home of Frankie Goes To Hollywood and the state-of-the-art production values of Trevor Horn.

"That was the transition for us, from just doing guitar based stuff with a drum machine into slightly more sophisticated arrangements and things after hearing Propaganda and 'Into Battle With The Art Of Noise'," says Michael. "It wasn't just squeaky electronics anymore, they were writing songs using a huge pallet of sounds. You felt as if you were hearing something new." Wilfully, Fluke decided to put out their own white label.

"We were just eager to do something so we recorded it and put it out. It was a sort of summery thing with a bit of acoustic guitar and a sort of 'Strangers On The Shore' clarinet. It didn't really do anything, it just bobbed along."

They pressed up 500 copies and on a day when the Post Office was on strike. Mike, who was a postman at the time, donned his uniform and delivered copies up to some of the mainstream radio stations, Capital, Radio One and others in London, special delivery. The tune divebombed into oblivion but the boys had found their niche. They were determined to be a band. That was in 1987 and a few months later when the whole fucking country was being jacked to trax and acid Fluke found themselves in the middle of a budding new scene that changed the picture for good. Jon almost swoons when he reminisces.

"We were living in High Wycombe and there was a really good little scene going on down there, just among people in those small towns around the whole orbital area. Everyone just kicked off and was having it. There was an incredible feeling at the time and that's where we met most of our mates. We'd go out at the weekend, do a pill and change our life and that's when we started getting things together seriously. We knew that's where we belonged and we definitely wanted to be a part of it." It's about this time that Fluke really began to cook. 'Techno Rose Of Blighty', the band's first album, was recorded in 1991 for Alan McGhee's Creation Records - home, these days, of Oasis and Primal Scream. It created a mild ripple of interest, enough for the band to be called up for remixing duties for such stalwarts as Talk Talk ('It's My Life') and Tears For Fears. An uneven album, it nevertheless serves as a good appetiser. 'Philly' had the choppy synth basslines and stone-skims-water drums that have since become a Fluke trademark and the weird use of Joni Mitchell's refrain from 'Big Yellow Taxi' is about as original a use for a sample as you're ever likely to hear. Dead unusual. Though the title of the album was also a bit of a misnomer. "It was a piss-take," says Jon, "cos the album was any-thing but a techno album. At the time the word techno was being used to describe things like Einsturzende Neubauten and Front 242 and here was our thing with all these nice strings and jaunty melodies, very sort of English and pastoral. It was recorded very quickly and we just had to learn as we went along - kind of like being kicked in the head having been amnesiac and regaining your memory. The kicking isn't very nice but you're thankful for it afterwards."

THINGS never really gelled at Creation and the band found themselves without a deal and with a lot of time on their hands. They started to work up a live set and Fluke went at it with their customary zeal culminating in the concert at the New Moon Rising party which was eventually released as the mini album, 'Out'.

"We decided to take a completely different approach for the live thing," says Michael. "It was quite scary at first but eventually we were really pleased with it, so much so that the gigs are a really important part of what we do now. The material is adapted from night to night so it's different every time we play. We've got some really scary sort of monsters of rock type stuff in there." Live sets brought them to the attention of current label Circa (part of Virgin) and before long they were once again ensconced in the studio and left to their own devices. No producers, in other words. "We've always had this sort of bedroom ethic," Jon explains. "Whenever we've met up with producers they haven't understood the music or why we want it to sound like it does. The only other person we've ever worked with in the studio is Barry Andrews [ex of new wave art rockers XTC and funksters Shriekback]."

The result of this six month project was the sublime album 'Six Wheels On My Wagon'; this and three subsequent singles 'Groovy Feeling', 'Slid' and 'Electric Guitar', were proof positive that Fluke was here and they were not going to go away.

An album with huge balls and ambition, 'Six Wheels...' throbs and pulses over its 13 tracks with the kind of life affirming attitude that makes you think it's been recorded with all the fervour of the Ayatollah's funeral. It crackles and fizzes with a white hot intensity that builds into an acidic progression any Chicagoan worth his salt would envy. There are sounds on this album that could quite easily have been conceived in hell as well as in heaven. At times angry and visceral, at others stoical and reserved, it's a record that speaks to the listener's best aspect. Hear it and wallow in pure fun fuelled reverie.

The success of 'Six Wheels...' and those singles brought Fluke to the attention of raconteurs and touts industry-wide - suddenly they were buried in offers of all persuasions. The three however stuck to their guns, mining the particular seam of soul that keeps them keeping on.

"As long as we like what we're doing and it suits us then that's good enough for us," says Mike. "We're in a good position to develop and grow." At this point in the conversation, the guys digress a little to take the rise out of what is happening elsewhere. We discuss handbag, hardbag, deluxebag and other generic monstrosities. I'm taken aback - all this lighthearted banter from the people whose remix of Bjork's 'Big Time Sexuality' was a dance-floor smash from Inverness to Truro and beyond. What was that, Flukebag?

"Actually when we were offered that," says Jon, "it was the last one we wanted to do. It was only when we started to mess about with it in the studio that we realised we could do something with it." Bjork, meanwhile, was so taken with the mix that she asked the band to appear with her at that year's Smash Hits award ceremony.

SO, when a band of the calibre of Fluke just keep churning out tune after tune you can't help but wonder if they're going to fluff it somewhere along the line. Could they top 'Six Wheels...'? This is where 'Oto' rears its wired and compelling head.

'Oto' is Fluke's finest moment to date, a record that moves in a completely different direction to 'Six Wheels...'. It is a testament to the amount of imagination and artful cleverness that Fluke have in spades. It moves along with the same impassioned sense of urgency as its predecessor but there is an austerity that tempers the anger - especially on the slower, spaced tracks. It's an album made by people who know just what and how you're feeling when you're listening to their music. They are in complete control and know it. From the opening bars of 'Bullet', this album sherpa-guides your unsuspecting sensibilities up the sheerest rock faces and down again. By the time you've gone through listening and cavorting around to it you immediately want to hear it again just to make sure. It's probably going to scare the kekks off some people. It's gonna also make a whole lot of new friends for Fluke and that is just what they want, innit? Fluke have absolutely no qualms about being successful, as long as it happens just the way they want it.

"We want everybody to be able to listen to our music, there's no real point in making records if you don't," says Jon. But the question must be asked, where did you get such a silly title?

"Ah yeah, it means 'of the ear'. It was originally going to be called 'Oto Tosh' - 'Ear Rubbish', but we dropped the 'tosh'. But there's a track on there called 'Tosh'. It's self-deprecatory, which I think is important, you can get large but not too large. You've got to be able to laugh at yourself."

Can I suggest you call the next album 'Flukebag' then?


Words : Jake Black; Pictures: Daniel Newman for Mixmag^TM and HTML encoded by Rich Morley.