OZRIC TENTACLES + Special Guests
£15adv | All Ages*
Thursday April 26 , 7:30pm
The Fleece, 12 St Thomas Street, Bristol. United kingdom.
The Ozric Tentacles (commonly known as the Ozrics) are an instrumental band from Somerset, England, whose music can loosely be described as psychedelic. Formed in 1984, the band have released well over 20 albums as of 2005, and become a cottage industry selling around a million albums worldwide despite never having major label backing.
The original line up met on June 21st, 1984, at the Stonehenge Free Festival and their name arose from discussions of hypothetical cereal brands (Malcolm Segments, Desmond Whisps, and Gordon Lumps are among the names that were considered). In the 1980s the band built a fan base on the festival circuit, becoming particularly associated with the Glastonbury Festival, and made a series of cassette releases, sold at gigs and via a fan club.
Their first label release was Pungent Effulgent in 1989, which was also re-released in the early 2000s, packaged with Strangeitude. This was followed by Erpland (1990), an album dedicated to Erp, a character which appears on many of the band’s album artworks. 1991 saw the Strangeitude LP. The track Sploosh! was used by BMW in an advertising campaign and became the band’s only single. By 1993 the band had grossed over three million dollars, and their Jurassic Shift album reached the Top 10 of the UK Album Charts.
The band have gone through myriad line-up changes, with only Ed Wynne (guitar, keyboards) and Champignon (flute) keeping a constant presence since the early 1990s.
