Dream City Film Club

England's 1990s landscape included Dream City Film Club among its most overlooked acts. Explosive low-end force from bassist Andrew Park and drummer Laurence Ash, paired with guitarist Alex Vald's piercing textural attack, enabled guitarist/vocalist Michael John Sheehy to project an ominous mood through material centered on murder, sex, drugs, and violence.

Drawing on prior experience along the Northern England singer-songwriter circuit, Sheehy assembled Dream City Film Club alongside Vald and Ash, who earned supplementary income by staging performances at the Bull & Gate in Kentish Town. After Ash's prior band dissolved a few months later, the three musicians began casual rehearsals. Bassist Andrew Park's arrival soon completed the quartet.

The band's inaugural performance occurred at the Bull & Gate in July 1995, followed by continued appearances across northern London. Although Epic underwrote a multi-track recording session in late 1995, the label declined to issue the results. The group instead appeared on a split single with Dublin-born and London-based vocalist Suzanne Rhatigan through a label connected to Sean Worrell's fanzine The Organ, later issuing an EP on Organ as well.

A subsequent agreement with the modestly expanded Beggars Banquet roster yielded the single "Perfect Piece Of Trash". Recording for the debut album began in October 1996, yet Vald's illness during the sessions postponed the project.

Issued in 1997, the self-titled debut album broadened Dream City Film Club's reach. Following a December 1996 session for BBC disc jockey/producer John Peel, the band undertook two years of concerts across France, Belgium, and nearly every region of England, with further Peel sessions taped in April 1998 and February 1999.

Vald's exit during pre-production for the second album, In The Cold Light Of Morning, left Dream City Film Club to complete the record as a trio. An additional EP, Stranger Blues, surfaced in early 2000 before the group disbanded.

Sheehy delivered the solo album As If And Also shortly afterward.