Released on 6 June 1996 "Tigermilk" was the debut studio album from Scottish pop group Belle and Sebastian. Originally given a limited release of 1,000 copies by Electric Honey, the album was subsequently re-released in 1999 by Jeepster Records.
The album was named after an instrumental that did not end up on
the album — it was later performed on Belle and Sebastian's early tours.
All of the songs on the album were written by Stuart Murdoch between 1993 and 1996, and originally performed solo on the Glasgow open mic circuit. Though he performs on the album, trumpet player Mick Cooke was not then an official member of the band.
Going back to 1994, Stuart Murdoch and Stuart David met on a programme for unemployed musicians called Beatbox, funded by Stow College in Glasgow, Scotland.
David offered to play bass on Murdoch's demos despite having little
experience with the instrument. The recordings caught the attention of
Richard Colburn, who shared a flat with David at the time and was
attending a music business course at Stow, run by Alan Rankine of the Associates.
The end goal of the course was to take two songs from the class and
record and release them through the college's in-house record label Electric Honey. Colburn provided a demo tape Murdoch and David had recorded titled Rhode Island (later released as the Dog on Wheels EP). The college was extremely impressed and chose to support Murdoch's goal in creating a full album as opposed to a single.
In early 1996, Murdoch and David reportedly enlisted the first
four musicians they came across at the city's Grosvenor Café to play on
the record, settling on a line-up of Murdoch, David, guitarist Stevie
Jackson, drummer Richard Colburn, keyboardist Chris Geddes, and cellist
Isobel Campbell. Their initial performances took places at venues such
as church crypts, libraries, and house parties. Murdoch recalls that the
group was still quite loose knit at the time Tigermilk was
recorded and that the full ensemble had not played together before
getting into the studio. Many of the supporting instrument parts were
shaped as the group recorded. After recording, though, "we were a group,
no question."The band subsequently spent three days recording, finishing with an album's worth of songs.
The album has been considered a sort of a gentle masterpiece, the opening track "The State I Am In", bhad a slickly loose instrumentation,
harmonies which haunt the fringe of fear, and a wealth of emotionally
crippled reflection. Nine of the ten songs featured on the album were recorded live over a
three-day period, followed by two days of mixing. The only track not
recorded during these sessions, "Electronic Renaissance", originated as a
demo Murdoch made at Beatbox using Cubase,
and was mastered directly from a cassette recording Murdoch had made of
the song being played on a local radio station, hence its lo-fidelity sound. Due to its stylistic difference from the other songs, its inclusion on the album initially proved controversial.
Electric Honey issued Tigermilk in mid-1996, initially limited to 1,000 copies, which sold out in months. The band received praise from BBC radio DJs John Peel and Mark Radcliffe,
subsequently earning them a radio session for the latter DJ in July
1996. Colburn said "then record companies and fans started calling, and
we thought 'My God, what have we done?'" They soon signed to the London-based label Jeepster Records. And finally Tigermilk was reissued in 1999; by this point, copies of the original were being sold for $600.
The album's cover photograph was taken by Murdoch and features his then-girlfriend Joanne Kenney. She also appeared on the cover of the Dog on Wheels EP. Tigermilk was well-received upon its initial release, and earned a glowing review from Scottish culture magazine The List
Tigermilk Track List:
1. The State I Am In
2. Expectations
3. She's Losing It
4. You're Just A Baby
5. Electronic Renaissance
6. I Could Be Dreaming
7. We Rule The School
8. My Wandering Days Are Over
9. I Don't Love Anyone
10. Mary Jo.
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