This project takes its name from the Celestion UL8 speaker. My older brother bought a pair of these when i was starting comprehensive school, and between his 10cc and Supertramp records i first encountered very loud electronically synthesized sound. I soon noticed a pattern emerging in my musical tastes which excluded guitars or drums. Instead I favoured almost exclusively the electronic textures and rhythms of The Human League, Fad Gadget and other synthesiser based music of that period. I was quite curious about this prejudice and would try to work out why Kraftwerk sounded so much better than a rock band of the time.

Since then my interest was in the texture of synthetic sound - there was something much more beautiful (and perhaps more emotionally charged) about a sustained square wave than any guitar solo. Soon I began search out and replay sections of music which dropped to a single sound - these for some reason were the best. This interest increased when, a few months later, my parent's next door neighbour (a technician in the electronics department at Sheffield University) let me borrow his analogue synthesiser on semi-permanent loan. And a few months after that i managed to convince my dad to buy me a cheap second hand dr55 drum machine.

Many years later Mat Steel and i used the UL8 speakers, now relegated to an attic in a rented house, to work on some early unreleased 12" projects. Finally (around 2005) my brother gave in to demand and let me have the speakers which now sit in my front room. Although these are of little use in a studio context, they still provide an adequate and often rewarding listening experience.