For the benefit of those people who listen to our records because they sort of like us and not because they're our friends and feel duty bound to, here's a potted history of the band so you can feel a little more clued-up.

Cody was created in Oxford in August 1996, but not as we know it. We were originally a six-piece, with a violinist and extra keyboard twiddler, until the violinist left to concentrate on avant-garde hardcore and the keyboardist went downstairs to watch the telly and never returned (we're not making this up). Only then did the four-man Cody you know and tolerate come into being, a crotchety aggregation that brings together

Joe Boulter - vocals, keyboards and programming
Chris Fish - keyboards
Steve Jefferis - guitars and visuals
John Johnson - guitars and vocals

And yes, old-school Sarah fans, that's the Steve Jefferis who strummed and dranged in the early line-up of Orlando/Shelley. The rest of us are mercifully free of such twitching skeletons (Joe recorded about 14 albums in his bedroom that only 5 people heard, if that counts. Sort of like Watford's Baby Bird, only not rubbish).

Anyroad, after many months of fumbling around we played our first gig in April 1997, with backing tracks on a cassette that kept getting quieter as it went on. High tech. Those nice people at Shifty Disco took a shine to our monotone monologue epic Simple, and a single was born.

Following a spate of ropey gigs at Wonderful Radio One's Sound City, when we strained under the weight of a very flattering but ultimately daunting hype and frankly impressed no-one, a period of transition / hand-wringing / well-earned rest took place. After that (we're about at the beginning of 1998 now if you're keeping track), Cody re-emerged as the technologically-chummy combo you see before you now. Gone was the CD with drum machines fed through tetchy effects pedals on it (it kept skipping anyway), and into the line-up came the MC-303 groovebox (everyone's got one now, you know) and a step into, er, the nineties. Still didn't stop those "80s revivalist" jibes, though.

Jettisonning the "Stereolab meets Flying Saucer Attack" / "nicer Arab Strap" (hello NME) vibes of our earlier material in favour of a neat shoegazing drum'n'bass technopop miracle whip, the first demos of New Cody netted us two further singles: Dark Blue/Wrongfooted on Northampton's home of the avant-garde, Kooky Records, and the Anticyclone EP, our debut for Shinkansen.

1999's Rounder EP, with its radio-baiting eight-minute title song, dawdled into more confident, lusher territory and, inexplicably, tickled the collective fancy of manufactured girl band Hepburn. With our debut album Stillpoint Primer revving on the starting blocks like a good-natured monster truck, can multimedia stardom and babycham-soaked nights in the Met Bar be that far away? Frankly, we'd rather settle down with a good book.

As for the future - well, we're making up our masterplan as we go along (particularly now we find ourselves spread between Oxford, Newcastle and Northern Italy, a geographical situation that would worry even Pavement). Wish us luck.