The Wonder Stuff

| Home Home | Official Website Visit The Wonder Stuff Official Website | Order 'Suspended By Stars' Order Suspended by Stars Today |
The eight-legged beast that first crept around Britain's seedy venues almost twenty years ago and finally surfaced as The Wonder Stuff is back - only this time with an extra pair of legs and a scorching new album. A gestation of eleven years since the band's last studio album gave us 2004's Escape From Rubbish Island, but with a new recruit and a reignited fire in the belly, The Wonder Stuff have pulled off a genuine return to form to produce February 2006's striking new album, Suspended by Stars.
In an era of celebrity obsession and surreality TV excess, The Wonder Stuff have stripped back the groove machine to basics and come up with a record that bears all the hallmarks of the musical genius that made them one of the biggest bands of the Nineties. Leading the battle charge are founder members Miles Hunt (vocal/guitar) and Malcolm Treece (guitar/vocals), ably assisted in the trenches by former RDF bass man, Mark McCarthy, New York rockers' Love In Reverse drummer Andres Karu and new recruit Erica Nockalls on fiddle ("her audition lasted two minutes").
Notching up almost a hundred gigs with this line-up before one foot was set in a studio, the new record is a sharp re-focus: "We wanted to write and record something brutally simple rather than something clever," explains frontman Miles.

Suspended By Stars has every element that The Wonder Stuff are famous for - biting lyrics, killer tunes, lacerating energy - but it is so much more than the sum of its parts. If ever a band has re-evaluated, stepped back and returned with a vengeance, this is it.
Recorded partly in New York at the close of a 35 date American tour, but mainly in the Midlands, The Wonder Stuff headed into the studio as a thunderous live band first and foremost; the album's visceral power was perfectly captured by producer Matt Terry and the legendary mixer Paul Tipler (80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster, Frank Black, Elastica). "We all stayed at Matt Terry's house, sleeping on couches and sharing the same beds. Twenty years ago we were travelling around in the back of a van, revelling in our gang mentality, juvenile humour and in-jokes - all the best bands are gangs and that's how we felt when we slunk into that studio with Pat Collier in 1988 ... and that's exactly how this new record and line-up feels too."
Not satisfied with issuing this blistering new collection, The Wonder Stuff have composed and performed all the music for a blockbuster new animated children's series set to be aired on BBC in June 2006, Underground Ernie. Widely expected to take over the mantel of Thomas The Tank Engine, Underground Ernie is set on the London Underground featuring talking tube trains and the main character, Ernie, voiced by Gary Lineker. One episode features a Brummie busker who bears an uncanny resemblance to Miles Hunt ...
The opening single was January 2006's 'Blah Blah Lah Di Dah', which could be interpreted as a song about the 'lottery thug'. As well as the band's 20th Anniversary, the album release also coincided with the publication of the updated version of Martin Roach's book The Eight Legged Atomic Dustbin Will Eat Itself, which includes a lengthy new interview with, and foreword by Miles Hunt. March 2006 also saw the DVD re-release of The Wonder Stuff's 'rockumentary' Welcome To The Cheap Seats, which will be followed by a double CD release of Wonder Stuff classics and previously unreleased rarities on Universal's Classic and Collectables label.
Suspended By Stars was released on the 20th Anniversary of The Wonder Stuff forming. In March 2006 The Wonder Stuff undertook a UK tour with some very special guests.