''Risotto'' is the fourth album by British

electronica Electronica is both a broad group of electronic-based music styles intended for listening rather than strictly for dancing and a music scene that started in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the term is mostly used to r ...

group

Fluke Fluke may refer to: Biology * Fluke (fish), a species of marine flatfish * Fluke (tail), the lobes of the tail of a cetacean, such as dolphins or whales, ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs Mosasaurs (from Latin ''Mosa'' meaning the 'Meuse', and Greek ...

. The album was released on 26 May 1997 by Circa Records and 30 September 1997 by

Astralwerks Astralwerks is an American record label primarily focused on electronic music owned by Universal Music Group. Its material is distributed via Capitol Music Group in the United States. The label was founded in 1993 and, in its early years, featur ...

. It was the band's last album recorded with

Mike Tournier Michael James Tournier (Mike Tournier) (born 24 May 1963, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England) is an English electronic musician, and one of the co-founders of the electronic music group Fluke, along with Mike Bryant and Jon Fugler. He first m ...

Overview

The album is named after the dish

risotto Risotto (, , from meaning "rice") is a northern Italian rice dish cooked with broth until it reaches a creamy consistency. The broth can be derived from meat, fish, or vegetables. Many types of risotto contain butter, onion, white wine, and Par ...

(). The album artwork was designed by

The Designers Republic The Designers Republic (also tDR, and styled as The Designers Republic™) is a British graphic design studio based in Sheffield, England, founded in 1986 by Ian Anderson and Nick Phillips. They are best known for electronic music logos, a ...

and features a

chrome-plated Chrome plating (less commonly chromium plating) is a technique of electroplating a thin layer of chromium onto a metal object. A chrome-plated item is called ''chrome''. The chromed layer can be decorative, provide corrosion resistance, ease o ...

KitchenAid KitchenAid is an American home appliance brand owned by Whirlpool Corporation. The company was started in 1919 by The Hobart Manufacturing Company to produce stand mixers; the "H-5" was the first model introduced. The company faced competition a ...

mixer. Many of the tracks that brought Fluke to a larger audience are featured on this album, including "Atom Bomb", used on the ''

Wipeout 2097 ''Wipeout 2097'' (released as ''Wipeout XL'' in North America and Japan) is a futuristic racing game developed and published by Psygnosis. It is the second installment released in the '' Wipeout series'' and the direct sequel of the original gam ...

soundtrack A soundtrack is recorded music accompanying and synchronised to the images of a motion picture, drama, book, television program, radio program, or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack o ...

, and "Absurd," used in many films/trailers, including a 1998 Volkswagen Beetle commercial, ''

Sin City ''Sin City'' is a series of neo-noir comics by American comic book writer-artist Frank Miller. The first story originally appeared in ''Dark Horse Presents Fifth Anniversary Special'' (April 1991), and continued in ''Dark Horse Presents'' #51� ...

'' in 2005, and the episode "Chaos" from the show ''

Spaced ''Spaced'' is a British television sitcom created, written by and starring Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, and directed by Edgar Wright, about the (comedic and sometimes farcical and action-packed) misadventures of Daisy Steiner and Tim Bis ...

''. "Absurd" is also used as the main theme for ''Sky Sports ''Monday Night Football'' program first from August 1997 to May 1998 and since August 2010 to the current day. When Fluke was touring for ''Risotto'' they were joined on stage by Rachel Stewart who acted as a personification of the band's official mascot, a character from the ''Wipeout'' series named Arial Tetsuo. Stewart continued as lead female vocalist and as a dancer for all of Fluke's live performances between 1997 and 1999. After touring for a year with ''Risotto'' on the American "Electric Highway Tour", and having made two appearances at the

Glastonbury festival Glastonbury Festival (formally Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts and known colloquially as Glasto) is a five-day festival of contemporary performing arts that takes place in Pilton, Somerset, England. In addition to contemp ...

in 1995 and 1998, Tournier decided to leave the group to pursue a different project named

Syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

, with the band's long standing friend,

Jan Burton Jan Burton is a Welsh record producer and vocalist, best known for his work with ex-Fluke member Mike Tournier in their joint project, Syntax. In December 2017, Burton announced that he was engaged in his first solo project. He also provided voc ...

.
-
- In 2002, The Fluke DJs were formed, a live-show pairing of Jon Fugler and Hugh Bryder. Bryder was a DJ who had assisted Fluke in their live performances since 1993 as well as working with other DJs such as Seb Fontaine while holding a DJ residency at

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

's special event parties. This seemed to indicate further rifts within the band as this DJ combination included neither Mike Bryant nor Tournier. However, Fugler denied these rumours shortly after they surfaced claiming that the band merely needed some time away from each other after their intense work on ''Risotto''.

Critical reception

''Risotto'' was perhaps the most favourably reviewed of all Fluke's albums with

David Bennun David Bennun (born 1968) is an English writer, journalist and music critic. Career Bennun started his career in music journalism in the 1990s. Notable publications he has written for include ''Melody Maker'', ''The Guardian'' and ''The Quietu ...

of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' writing: Writing for ''

Melody Maker ''Melody Maker'' was a British weekly music magazine, one of the world's earliest music weeklies; according to its publisher, IPC Media, the earliest. It was founded in 1926, largely as a magazine for dance band musicians, by Leicester-born ...

'' in October 1997, Neil Kulkarni gave ''Risotto'' a very positive review, singling out the album's lyrics as a highlight; "

luke People *Luke (given name), a masculine given name (including a list of people and characters with the name) *Luke (surname) (including a list of people and characters with the name) *Luke the Evangelist, author of the Gospel of Luke. Also known as ...

have the dumbest greatest deepest lyrics in dance – ''"Baby's got an atom-bomb/a motherfuckin' atom bomb"'' is the greatest heavy metal lyric never written; ''"Anybody with a heart votes love"'' is a chorus Stevie Wonder would be proud of; ''"Think big that's only half as large/Bigger, better, twice as hard"'' is Ooompah-Loompah haiku made pop poetry."

Track listing

References

{{Authority control Fluke (band) albums 1997 albums Astralwerks albums Albums with cover art by The Designers Republic