Marine Research

Late in 1997 Marine Research came together as the direct successor to Heavenly, the band that had dissolved the year before amid the devastating suicide of drummer Mathew Fletcher. The four surviving members from Heavenly—Amelia Fletcher on vocals, Cathy Rogers on vocals and keyboards, Rob Pursey on bass, and Peter Momtchiloff on guitar—joined forces with drummer John Stanley, also known as DJ Downfall, to sustain the same bright twee-pop approach shot through with punk-rock edges that had originated in their earlier Talulah Gosh period. Their first release of 1998 was the single “Queen B,” issued alongside a split EP with Built to Spill; those recordings prompted K Records to sign the Oxford quintet, which in turn produced the CD EP Parallel Horizons and the full-length Sounds of the Gulf Stream before the year closed.