The Egg 'Forwards' album

A lot of people are going to be very, very excited to hear that The Egg are back. The last regular broadcasts from their strange, funky and very lovely corner of the universe were towards the end of the last century, concluding with a tip top performance at Glastonbury 2000. And then nish, nada, full stop. If ever there was a cult band, it’s The Egg, and those of us who followed their antics, their limb-wrigglingly blissful concerts, and their ridiculously contagious ‘Albumen’ and ‘Travelator’ albums were gutted and bemused by the silence...

But now they’re back. The band who have done everything from being Gary Oldman’s mum’s backing band (in the film ‘Nil By Mouth’) to playing the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, return with a new album. ‘Forwards’ startles with the variety on offer, from the indie guitar rockin’ ‘Forwards’ to the beautiful vocals of Zero 7-collaborator Sophie Barker on the Air-like ‘Walking Away’, from the string’n’piano lusciousness of ‘Wall’ to classic melodic Egg jams such as ‘Funky Dube’. It will come as no surprise to Egg-lovers that when the Big Chill organization took a poll on their web-site to find out which band their festival goers would most like to see at this year’s events, The Egg led the field by a distance. But before plowing into the future let’s start at the beginning.

“I suppose Glastonbury is our spiritual home,” admits Ned Scott, one of the twins at the heart of the Egg’s creative apparatus, “We grew up there, in a way. We first went when we were four and our mum and her boyfriend used to go – dad went as well because they were all friends. Mum’s boyfriend would be naked backstage and then he’d go and play on the acoustic stage with his band Mr. Spratt’s 21st Century Popular Motets.” It was impromptu, er, Motets-based gatherings at the Scott household that taught Ned and his brother Maff the joys of jamming. Such jamming became the heart of the group they formed in their native Oxford in the early 1990s. By the time they’d nailed what would become the Egg line-up for many years, with Ned on keyboards, Maff on drums, Dave Gaydon on bass and Mark Revell, lead guitar, their concerts were already attracting the attention of Supergrass and Radiohead. The Egg’s sound wasn’t angst rock, Brit-pop or dance music, but their jovial live persona garnered them fans from all kinds of musical denominations wherever they performed.

who is who
Ned Scott – Keyboards
Maff Scott – Drums
Matt White – Guitar
Ben Cullum – Bass

history
Formed in Oxford, England in the early 1990s, the Egg's first release was the Shopping EP (1995) on independent label Cup of Tea Records. Having been signed by China Records they released the Albumen LP in 1996. In 1998 the follow-up album Travelator was released, produced by Tim Holmes of Death in Vegas.

Following Travelator, the record label (now owned by Warner Music Group)dropped The Egg.
It was in 2004 that they made a return with new album Forwards, produced by Benji Vaughan and released on Squarepeg Records records (www.squarepeg-uk.com)

- BenjiVaughan is a British psychedelic trance musician. He has released music under many names, of which most well known would be his solo project, Prometheus, and his collaboration with Twisted Records label colleague, Simon Posford, under the moniker, Younger Brother.

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The Egg - Forwards