Pool Of Sound - Ooberman

Ooberman

'Ooberman' founders Dan Popplewell and Andy Flett met in piano classes at their school in Bradford in 1988. The first band they set up was 'The Forestry Commission', with Andy's younger brother Steve on bass guitar. The band's life soon ended when Dan moved to Liverpool, but the three friends kept in touch.
Steve moved to Liverpool in 1992 to meet up again with Dan, and Andy later joined him later in 1997. 'Ooberman' was thus formed with an original line-up of Dan Popplewell on vocals, piano and violin, Andy Flett on guitar, Steve Flett on bass guitar and was completed when Sophia Churney on keyboards and vocals and Alan Kelly on drums joined them.
The first 'Ooberman' gig was in June 1997, and their eccentric live shows and quirky demos won them the 1997 BT Merseyside Arts Award for Best Newcomers.

Their first 7" single release was 'Sugar Burn' on Graham Coxon's Transcopic label. They then released the critically acclaimed 'Shorley Wall' EP on Tugboat Records which was named single of the year by The Times and by Radio One's Mark Radcliffe. The band then released their first proper single, the Top 40 hit 'Blossoms Falling' before signing a £150k contract with the Independiente label enabling them to release their debut album, 'The Magic Treehouse', produced by Stephen Street  who had associations with 'Blur', 'The Smiths', 'Lloyd Cole' and others. The album came out finally in October of 1999.

During this period they also supported 'Blur', 'Happy Mondays', 'Travis' and 'Gomez', played at the Glastonbury and Reading festivals as well as the radio shows of John Peel and Steve Lamacq. The 'Magic Treehouse' got generally positive reviews, including an 8/10 in NME, but sadly the reviews did not translate into sales and when the following two singles did not reach the Top 40, Independiente ran out of patience with them, just 6 months after the release of their debut album.
In mid-2000, they started work on a second album but during this time tension within band members caused the original drummer Alan Kelly to leave the band, to be replaced by Paul Walsham.
A mini-album, 'Running Girl' was released in October 2001 and then after more than a year working on new material, at the start of 2002 the band announced that they would release their second album, 'Hey Petrunko'. As well as getting another new drummer, Jaymie Ireland, to replace Paul Walsham, Dan Popplewell also set up his own record label, Rotodisc.

Although the album’s release was pushed back, the 5-track EP, 'Bluebell Morning' and the single, 'Beany Bean' made the wait a little more bearable. After nearly three years working on the album, it was finally released on the 3rd of March 2003, to widespread critical acclaim. The title of the new album 'Hey Petrunko'  refers to a Bulgarian love song. Dan Popplewell arranged, engineered, produced and mixed the album, as well as creating the sleeve design. A tour and another single followed, but all was not well with the band. The break-up of Danny and Sophia's relationship strained the band too far and in May Danny announced that they were both leaving the band. Rotodisc was shut down, and planned releases and tour dates (including festivals and foreign gigs) were scrapped.

However, in April 2006, the 'Ooberman'.net site stated that "the band have now reformed and recorded a new album... there are no current plans to play live."
A new album, 'Carried Away' was released in August 2006 by Rotodisc and distributed in the UK by Cargo Records. The release was preceded on the 19th of June by an extremely limited 7" single, 'The Beauty of Your Soul' and on the 24th of July a download-only single, also entitled 'Carried Away' received radio airplay on stations XFM and 6music and prominently on Mark Radcliff's BBC Radio 2 show. Most of the songs on the album were written by Dan Popplewell, either alone or in collaboration with Sophia Churney. As on 'Hey Petrunko', Andy Flett has three sole writing credits. Bassist Steve Flett gets his first writing credit on an 'Ooberman' album for 'Go To Sleep', for which he also provides lead vocals. The track is very similar in style to his work under the 'Phantom 309' name.

see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2020/03/pool-of-sound-rooney.html