Canteen were formed by jay Fisher and Paul Castle officially in 1996 and di… Read Full Bio ↴Canteen were formed by jay Fisher and Paul Castle officially in 1996 and disbanded (Maybe?) in 2002.

Their first collaboration was in 1994/5 on ‘Shark Dance’ originally an instrumental track taken from Paul’s ‘Journey Of The Carcharodon’ album, which Paul needed a vocal for to release as a single. The vocal Jay wrote for the track wasn’t Paul’s first choice as he had several vocalists up for the job. Paul was looking for something in the ‘you take me higher’ dance music vain and Jay gave him a tape with a vocal that was in a ‘I don’t want to go out it hurts my eyes’ style.

Paul thought Jay might be worth a go at least, so the vocals were recorded at Eastcote studio in January 1995, a day before Jay left for Canada to record his second album for Mauve Records.

It wasn’t until the end of 1995 that Paul and Jay met up again and began working during the studio downtime at Crosstrax studio (Kings Cross) on some ideas. It was during this period that Paul brought in Dug Wolfsohn (who became a permanent member of Canteen in 1999 but was curiously left out of the Breathless deal in 2002?) to mix the work, Out of these 1995/96/97 sessions came the bulk of the tracks that would later make up the ‘Satsuma’ album.

Canteen only appeared live three times. With the back-up of a Rhythm section made up of Toby Baron (Drums) and Jon Bankes (Bass) they played WKD, The Barfly and Rubber Ron’s at Bagley’s in 1998 before scurrying back into the studio and not emerging to play live again.

1999 in September they went into the studio at Woodwarf Greenwich, and recorded, or at least finished recording ‘Horseferry Place’. The bare bones of the track had been around for about six months. Paul had written some drum patterns laced with Keyboard stabs with Toby Baron to which Jay had written a verse and a chorus, some bass parts and some string and Keyboard arrangements. The problem with the track was that it was a incoherent mess of nice bits with nothing to hold them together. Over the next week in September 1999 they worked intensely to piece the track together. Dugs role should not be understated; he took on the role of guitar player as well as Engineer and between himself and Paul they pulled the disassembled blocks of music, bass and vocals into a tune. Phil Peskett added the icing on the last day with a Harmonica solo and it was done. It was the most enjoyable and productive week for Canteen, which saw them come together as a band for the first time. This didn’t last. Hence the track title ‘Mean Greenwich Time’

Over the next two years Jay, Paul and Dug met up in Greenwich sporadically to finish the album and even though they had moments of enthusiasm, they never came together with the same intensity as during the recording of ‘Horseferry Place’

After this in 2002 came the Maurice and Noble version of Everyone Else which when they heard it for the first time only Paul had any enthusiasm for. Jay dismissed the remix as missing the point, which is a bit sad seeing as how this is the only version of the only Canteen track that anyone is in the least bit interested in.
Written by C.Spaeke