Mint Royale

Mint Royale originally started out as Neil Claxton and Chris Baker. Having first encountered each other at Music College, Chris and Neil went their separate ways, successfully releasing records under various guises. They met up again in 1997 at a Christmas party thrown by Jockey Slut magazine. After spending the whole evening talking they realised they had a lot of things in common and shared a desire not to make house music.

They started working together as The Mint Gun Club (the name comes from Hunter S. Thompson's ‘Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas’) and produced a demo, which they sent to Skint Records. The label released the pairs ‘Get Set/Eel’ debut on their Under 5s imprint at the end of 1997. The remix offers came flooding in, and their mix of Kenickie's ‘I Would Fix You’ found its way to the top of Fatboy Slims DJ chart. Off the back of that came their remix of Terrorvision's 'Tequila' which was championed by Zoë Ball as her ‘Record Of The Week’ on the Radio 1 Breakfast Show and then made its way to Number 2 in the UK singles charts.

Legal necessity had meant a change of name to Mint Royale and now the band concentrated on producing their own music, releasing a host of limited edition singles. Their first release on faith & hope was the 12” only ‘Deadbeat’ (23/11/98). The track was championed by DJs such as Norman Cook and Boy George and received rave reviews