mother's daughter and other songs

• CD/LP: Static Caravan [VAN88]
• release date: 10th January 2005

• Tunng (you read that right first time) are comprised of producer / guitarist Mike Lindsay and singer / guitarist Sam Genders, and you have in your possession their very special debut release. They've trodden an unlikely route to get here, and This Is…Tunng only serves to add a few more meanders to that road.

  Having owned and played a guitar since he was a youth of eleven, it was only a matter of time before Mike's virginal musical experience came in the form of that staple of the young artist: the obligatory rock period. "I played on the thrash metal circuit around Southampton and Portsmouth when I was about 14. Everyone else in the band was nearly twice my age with leather trousers and big hair. I eventually realised that the whole thing was a bit shit really, and that encouraged me to go as far away from guitars and instruments as possible".

  Sam's youth was mostly spent in more wholesome endeavours, imbibing such classic sounds as Revolver, Motown, Bob Marley, Ry Cooder, The Stones and Jackson Browne, graduating to a 'proper Midlands pub band' and playing the bingo circuit, before falling in love with folk and emigrating to London.

  Mike's musical CV continued to pick up moss, and it wasn't long before he got into the unlikely business of soundtracking TV soft porn for the Fantasy Channel, something he still continues on the side. Then he met Sam, a respected singer-songwriter on the circuit, who introduced Mike to The Wicker Man, and so impressed was he that the two decided to melt it down into aural form (the infamous maypole song from the film actually crops up in their live set). Thus we have Tunng: edgy yet irresistible, songs that slide under your skin or clamber softly into your ear whilst you sleep. Even the very name is designed to confound. 'It must go into peoples heads, scramble and come out wrong... it brings out the dyslexic in all of us.'

  So, This Is…Tunng. What then can you expect? People Folk lounges gently over a tribal beat, like the Beta Band lost in the Congo; Fair Doreen melds scratchy electronica with a pastoral, quintessentially English dynamic and Out The Window With The Window is a spooky semi-instrumental, perfect spot music for The Wicker man itself.

  Mike chips in, 'I think the most interesting part of our music, is where we make it...' When you consider that these songs were put together literally underneath a lingerie shop you might not be entirely surprised. Because that's Tunng all over, and try to keep the following mental image at bay as you load the album. 'To get in to the studio you have to go through the changing room! There's only one way in and out and thats through the small box on the stairs where the ladies get changed... you can be trapped for hours...'