Itch-E & Scratch-E

Before joining forces as Itch-E & Scratch-E, Paul Mac and Andy Rantzen had performed together in the Sydney ambient outfit Pelican Daughters. Their decision to launch the techno project reportedly began as a gag, an impression reinforced by the name’s dual nod to a Simpsons character and a slang term for ecstasy. Despite that playful start, the pair quickly earned broad attention and came to stand in for the wider Australian dance community once several tracks—many of them reworkings of Pelican Daughters material—found an audience. The 1994 single “Sweetness and Light,” taken from the album Itch-E Kitch-E Koo, reached the lower reaches of the charts and then captured the ARIA Award for best dance single, a prize introduced that year. During the ceremony the duo’s thanks to Sydney’s ecstasy dealers were bleeped from the broadcast. They soon issued the follow-up Itch-E and Scratch-E...and Friends. Recording as Boo Boo & Mace, they delivered the 1998 album Sublimely Pointless, then resumed their original moniker for the 2001 release It Is What It Isn't. Paul Mac subsequently built a career as a solo performer and as one half of the Dissociatives.