Hailing from the English region Forest of Dean, vocalist James Atkin, drummer Mark Decloedt, bassist Zac Foley, and keyboardist Derry Brownson met in school and played in different bands around the local music scene. They came up with the monicker EMF which stood for Epsom Mad Funkers, a term that was coined by a writer of New Musical Express for fans of the group New Order.
Members of EMF meet Ian Dench at Battle of the Bands
The 4 members met keyboardist and guitarist Ian Dench at a local Battle of the Bands contest. Dench proved to be the missing piece for the band. He had already been playing in the music scene for nearly a decade, mostly in the group Apple Mosaic.
After Apple Mosaic fell apart, Dench was dumped by his girlfriend. He recalled to The Guardian, “I hitched a lift home and the lorry dropped me on the M50. I remembered this cool kid called James that I’d met at Glos Music Co, who had kept saying, ‘You should come to the Forest of Dean. We’ve got this great band. We wear Afghan coats and play death metal.’ I phoned him from a call box. 10 minutes later he arrived with Zac, we went out and got drunk and I didn’t go home for 3 days.”
Dench was older than the rest of the members and served as a type of father figure for the band and gave them musical direction. He lived in the town of Gloucester, but his bandmates hailed from the small village of Cinderford.
“…That’s the most notable thing about the people in the band, is that they have that sort of oblivious energy, do their own thing.” – Ian Dench
Dench suggested to the LA Times that some of EMF’s perspectives and personalities were tied to the isolation of their village life revealing, “People in Gloucester always say, ‘Oh, don’t go to Cinderford. Funny people there, funny people.’ But they’re really kind of warm, friendly, energetic, drunken, mad people, inbred sort of. Some small community that’s kind of gone wild in the middle of these woods. That’s the most notable thing about the people in the band, is that they have that sort of oblivious energy, do their own thing. I think that’s one of the driving forces.”
After adding Dench to the lineup, the band would hold rehearsals at a clothing store that was owned by Brownsen. The band already had a name with EMF, but they hadn’t yet written any songs.
One of the first sources of inspiration and the biggest song the group wrote was their huge hit “Unbelievable”. That girlfriend who broke up with Dench served as the inspiration behind the track.
“More than the music, EMF is about an attitude and that attitude comes more from punk than anywhere else.” – Ian Dench
The band was initially unhappy with the original sound on their debut record, Schubert Dip and brought in a new producer. Dench told the New York Times, “More than the music, EMF is about an attitude and that attitude comes more from punk than anywhere else.”
As the 80s came to a close, young people in the UK soon turned to drug culture and the rave scenes. It was this culture that seeped into EMF’s music. The band would blend together guitar rock with dance music.
A lot of the media coverage of the band would lump them in together with other British bands. The Washington Post wrote in 1991, “Traditional rock music hasn’t been making it on the charts lately. Dance music rules, and in England that goes double, with London’s influential warehouse/rave scene dominated by DJs and house and hip-hop. EMF joins a wavelet of young British bands — Jesus Jones, Happy Mondays, Charlatans UK, Pop Will Eat Itself — who figure if you can’t beat ’em, pick up their beat.”
EMF started staging concerts in local barns and pubs, in addition to having their own mini-raves. Dench told the New York Times, “There’d be about 100 people messing about in the woods, getting drunk, skinny-dipping and having fun.”
“People were literally climbing through the pub windows trying to get into our gigs.” – James Atkin
It didn’t take long for the record labels to invite the band to London to play showcases for them, but instead, the band turned the tables, inviting the labels to their neck of the woods, allowing them to witness the local scene that EMF helped foster. Atkin told The Guardian, ”People were literally climbing through the pub windows trying to get into our gigs. Before we knew it, Virgin, Island and EMI were offering us big bucks. We looked to American hip-hop for fashion, and we used our first advance to buy really big dodgy puffer jackets like East 17.”
EMF was signed by the label EMI after only 4 gigs. Spin Magazine claimed that the band only signed after their label rep agreed to swim naked across a lake at three in the morning.
Less than half a year after signing with EMI, EMF’s single “Unbelievable” became a worldwide hit. Apart from being one of the most popular songs of the early 90s, it was also notable for its use of sampling.
The success of “Unbelievable” pushed the group’s debut album to go Platinum. As the band hit worldwide fame, the British press fawned over them with Melody Maker labelling EMF as “The Sex Pistols of indie dance crossover”, while Spin Magazine claimed that Axl Rose was a fan of the band and offered them a chance to open for his group.
The band also had their detractors. Some claimed they were a manufactured act that with NME referring to them as “New Kids on The Block but with attitude”.
“The English press builds you up and knocks you down as quickly as you can.” – Mark Decloedt
The sudden rush of fame took the band by surprise with the group’s drummer telling The Washington Post, “We did it in this real budget studio, and you know, we were all excited about just recording anyway. Suddenly, everyone’s saying, you’re No. 1. Your album’s selling a million or whatever. And you don’t know how to feel because it’s just happening so quick… The English press builds you up and knocks you down as quickly as you can. And you get lazy journalism where people keep comparing us with other bands.”
On top of dealing with fame and the British press, the band soon hit controversy and legal problems with their follow-up single “Lies”, which opens with John Lennon’s assassin Mark David Chapman reciting the lyrics to the Lennon song “Watching the Wheels”.
Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono was infuriated with the track and threatened legal action against the band and their label to have the song removed. The band’s drummer told The Washington Post, “We’re having to re-press the album… We’ve attended to the court business, and we’ve paid our fine. None of us had got anything against John Lennon. He was a legend and everybody knew him and respected him, and we didn’t want to glorify the murder at all. It just fitted the mood. But some people did get hurt, obviously, so… we still use it live, though.”
Within a year, the band was selling out venues in America including the 4,500-capacity Hollywood Palladium. The band put out an EP titled Unexplained in 1992 that offered a glimpse of where they would be headed in the future.
“The EP was a testing ground to see how people took the change in direction and to see how comfortable we were with it.” – Ian Dench
Dench told Billboard Magazine in 1992, “The EP was a testing ground to see how people took the change in direction and to see how comfortable we were with it.” That change in direction would see the band take the dancing beats that propelled songs like “Unbelievable” and put them on the backburner, embracing a more rock sound.
The band didn’t care about being commercially successful, telling Billboard that there were no big singles on their follow-up effort and EMI seemed fine with it, admitting to Billboard that their sophomore record would appeal to hardcore fans of the band.
The band’s second LP and their follow up 1995’s Cha Cha Cha both proved to be commercial disappointments.
“We were all growing up as people and doing our own thing.” – James Atkin
The band broke up in 1997 with James Atkin telling XSNoise why the band split up following their third record, “It did make it hard because you have to be selling records to have a record deal and you have to have a record deal to pay your wages. When you’re that age, you’re really confused, you don’t know why things aren’t happening the way you want them to.
Simply, we didn’t make a great record. Stigma didn’t sell that well either compared to the first album. We were all growing up as people and doing our own thing, the gang mentality had gone out of us a little bit. We were maturing and having girlfriends and going off doing other projects, we weren’t all living in the same town.
In hindsight looking back, I can see that’s how we lost our way after all that success you kind of loses yourself a bit.”
The band reunited a total of 5 times starting in 2001. Sadly, in 2002, bassist Zac Foley died of a drug overdose at the age of 31. The group put out their first album of original material with this year’s Go-Go Sapiens.
Outside of the band, the members have pursued their musical projects. Guitarist Ian Dench is a senior executive at Epic Records in New York and he co-writes music regularly for some of the biggest pop stars in the industry, including Beyonce and Shakira.
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i just hate drugs so very very very much