Early Years
Caroline Ross had been an early ‘90s London indie scenester, occasionally playing guitar or bass in various bands. At some point in the late ‘90s she teamed up with artist and occasional musician Jim Version. The duo’s first band was called Ripley, soon to be renamed Vaughan. By 1998, after line-up changes, this had metamorphosed into Delicate AWOL. Centred around Ross (vocals, guitar, flute) and Version (guitar), Delicate AWOL would undergo a few more personnel changes before arriving at their definitive line-up.
Ensconcing themselves in Toby Robinson’s Moat Studios in Stockwell, the band began to work on refining their sound. In 1999, Ross and Version set up the Day Release record label to release their own future recordings and those of others. (Releases on the label eventually included material by Robinson’s Krautrock project The Nazgul, singer songwriter David Hurn, Godspeed You! Black Emperor spinoff Trois Pistoles, The Monsoon Bassoon, and many others).
In mid-1999, Delicate AWOL released their debut EP Random Blinking Lights. At this stage, the band was still very much in their indie rock stage, with an abrasive edge, relatively simple rhythms, Version playing heavy distorted guitar and Ross singing in an incantatory tone reminiscent of Patti Smith. The band had also developed an all-instrumental alter ego called Forty Shades Of Black, under which name they released a simultaneous single called "Belisha" (displaying a taste for experiments with pace, rhythm and texture). Despite Ross and Version’s initial plans for an instrumental Forty Shades Of Black album, the Forty Shades Of Black project was soon reabsorbed into Delicate AWOL to expand the band’s working methods.
A tour of England and Scotland to promote the new releases ended in near-disaster when the band’s rhythm section mutinied mid-tour. Delicate AWOL completed their tour obligations at King Tut's, Glasgow, as a two-piece of Ross and Version, but met with such a positive audience reception that the split ultimately strengthened their working relationship. Returning to London, Delicate AWOL began recording their debut album (to be titled Our Genome) as a duo.
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