Sugardrive

Sugardrive came together in Johannesburg, South Africa during 1993 and went on to rank among the nation’s more prominent pop acts by the close of the decade. The lineup consisted of Paul Flynn on vocals and guitar, Michael Westwood on guitar, Gavin Wienand on bass, and Garth McLeod on drums. Early recordings leaned on riff-heavy alternative rock, yet the group gradually steered its style toward pop while folding in dance-music textures and jazz phrasing. The first full-length release, Belly Full Under, appeared in 1993 and earned the quartet modest notice inside South Africa. Two years later the follow-up, Hey God, It's Me, strengthened their standing further. With the 1996 arrival of the Snapshots EP the band signaled a decisive shift, steering its sound into the trance-pop realm first mapped by Portishead; the subsequent long-player sand.man.sky carried that approach into broader territory. Sugardrive resurfaced in 1999 with When I Died I Was Elvis, the album that would become their most widely embraced work to date.