the puff
Tage and Stefan met when we were 13 & 15 years old. He was the
mullet-sporting, heavy metal listening kid brother of a class mate's friend
and he was totally obnoxious. Tage was the black-clad, serious-as-hell Skinny
Puppy fan. Luckily, they were both salvaged by acid house back in the days.
Coming from a small town in the north of Sweden, few others saw the beauty in repetitive
beats, 303s and smilies, so the few of them stuck together for many late
nights of excessive partying, kaleidoscope gazing and other pastimes of the
era.
They started making music together a few years later, in 1992.
After relocating to Stockholm, they started playing live at local clubs
and parties. The music they played then was a rather intense mix of breakbeats
and acid. Full throttle at 150 bpm for hours, backed up by their infamous
super 8 show.
The live playing was so much fun that the never really bothered to record any
tracks. They had this naive idea that by playing live a lot, and since the
crowd obvioulsy liked what they did, that one day a fat guy in a cowboy hat
(don't know why they always pictured him like that) would step up and say
"Guys, that was intense. Here's a wheelcart full of money and a gold rimmed
record deal".
Of course that never happened, so after a few years more, they ventured into the even
more naïve move to start our own label. Originally they wanted to call the label
"Sucker records" but that name was already taken, which was a shame since they believe it
would have been such a fitting name.
They started the company, put out their first 12" (The Puff - Soul Probe) and
bought a studio space in 1999, using money from selling Tage's part in a
dotcom startup. The record sold ok for a debut.
They had now grown old enough to play something more house, than angry breakbeats,
and that was apparently the way to go in 1999, but that didn't help them from
getting screwed by distributors, landlords, partners, and so called friends.
The Puff never released any more records and Evil Skank Records went bankrupt.
Today, The Puff is part reason to meet and drink beer, part reason to be in
the studio. Tage is mostly busy working at Propellerhead Software (makers of
Reason - you haven't forgotten to upgrade to Reason 3.0, have you? Read more
at www.propellerheads.se) and Stefan is working on his rock & roll career
with The Midnight Monkeys (www.midnightmonkeys.com).
The Puff do the odd live gig now and then and recently worked on remixes for LA based TechnoSquirrels
and Californian fellows Zenith|Nadir.
Recently they have started collaborating with Crisp (www.crispundsteel.tk), a
fellow producer from their "ghastly" home town up north.
the puff