Apache  Dropout Bristol may be best known as the city that brought the world Massive Attack, Portishead and Reprazent, but the seam of talent runs far deeper. Is Bristol a big town or a small city? Whatever, it's a place where musicians tend to respect different styles. Massive Attack formed as The Wild Bunch in the Eighties and DJ-ed at the Dug Out Club a legendary night spot that also featured Reggae and Punk DJs. Bristol is too small to sustain cliques and too big to be a one-sound-town. No Bristol musician is more at home with that mix of influences than guitarist Mike Crawford, who was equally comfortable fronting his jazz blues band The Nitecaps as he was playing session guitar for drum-n-bass artist Krust of Roni Size - Reprazent. But the project dearest to his heart and that best expresses his musical vision is Apache Dropout. The self-titled debut album is a collaboration between Mike Crawford and singer/lyricist Rich Beale once of Head and Pregnant who is now involved with musical mavericks Don Mandarin and a project involving Patrick Duff (late of Strangelove)....

They met by accident, "I'd just come back from LA after failing to get my King Of Tears record released and was depressed with the music biz in general. We bumped into each other at a party and decided to write a track together. Before we knew it we had an albums worth of material and decided to record it". Just as they had eschewed the conventional 'form a band, gig, record' route so they approached recording from a different angle. " I'd just done six months hard labour in a studio in the US and was sick to death of the sterile sauna like atmosphere, so we decided to record the album in my house"....
Christened 'Velvet Villas' for the duration of the recording they followed in the footsteps of The Band with music from 'Big Pink' and The Stones with 'Exile on Main Street'. "We stuck the drums in the basement, punched a hole in the ceiling to feed the cables through, recorded guitars in the garden and the kitchen and put a baby grand in the coal cellar - for that really dark sound!"....
The relaxed atmosphere overseen by engineer Corin Dingly and supervised by Angelo Bruschini, guitar player for Massive Attack, allowed the songs a loose, orgainic feel which also encouraged the intensity of the vocal performances.