The Angry Rabbit Story
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In early March 1994 Andrew Loughnan and Stuart McDonald found themselves sitting together in a first year English tutorial. In early 1995 they formed a band called MonkeyShuttle with Michael Upton, forging largely unintelligible collages of burbling synths and Blake's 7 samples.
In 1996 MonkeyShuttle fell apart. Michael went off to become Jet Jaguar (and has so far released three solo albums, two collaboration albums and numerous remixes). Stuart and Andrew went to Spain to fight with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.
Upon their return in 2002, Andrew released the track 'Burma Road' as Group Five on Capitalrecordings' Earwork 4 compilation. In 2003 Stuart and Andrew began performing as Aquaboogie and Group Five as part of the While You Were Sleeping electronica series. In early 2004 they performed their collaboration, Road Works, a drifting blend of birdsounds, Hawaiian guitar, and Peking Man.
In 2005, sensing a common bond forged through years of consuming junk food together, Andy and Stuart decided to each release a CD-R through a joint label. It was named Angry Rabbit in tribute to General Woundwort from Watership Down (and may we say in sympathy, "Dogs aren't dangerous!").
It was then 2006 and everything was ready. The future was history! Or something.
In 2007 Angry Rabbit moved into net-release, first with a historical radio session of that band MonkeyShuttle from 1995, Artificial Intelligentsia; and then with Pierre Omaar's lost DX-7 classic, Contretemps and another Group Five EP.
The year ended with the recruitment of Michael as an official partner in the Rabbit, joining us to nibble at the lettuce of fun. The grand plan for 2008 was the release of our first compilation, Apropos of Nothing. We thought we could whittle this off at the start of the year and release it around March or April. Oh how wrong we were. Our one net-release for the year, Panoramica's The Sounds of Dunedin, was taken from his set at one of our promotional gigs, and even though he insisted on re-recording it, he still knocked it out like greased lightening compared to Apropos.
Photo: Sally Law. L-R: Stuart, Michael, Andrew.
