Bizarre Inc.

Bizarre Inc. was a dance-pop/house/club/dance band from Stafford, England that formed in 1989 as a duo of English DJs Dean Meredith and Mark (Aaron) Archer.

Everything began in 1989, when Dean Meredith and Mark Archer formed a duo to start an acid-house/techno project under Blue Chip Records. The first releases were (and still are) only available on 12'' vinyl: It's Time To Get Funky (BLUE C14R), later renamed to a mere Time To Get Funky (BLUE C14RR); and the 6-track debut album Technological, altogether written and produced by Meredith and Archer alone. Already in 1990, Mark Archer left Meredith on his own again to work as producer and writer with an immense amount of different house and techno projects, a great part of which were for Network Records. He was also known as DJ Nex for a long time; later on then, he released material under handles like Mr. Nex, O.P.D., Xen Mantra and others including nexus 21 and altern 8 with co producer Chris Peat. Still in the same year, two other experienced DJs joined the party of Bizarre Inc. to fill Archer's place, thus forming a new trio: Andrew Meecham and Carl Turner. Their first 12'' they released together was Bizarre Theme / X-Static on the now-defunct label Vinyl Solution. This first track got a rather moderate acceptance, but the next, Playing With Knives was to be their greatest success to date, whose vinyl (7'' and 12'') releases were issued on a couple of different European labels and also their key to make the name "Bizarre Inc." famous all over Europe. One year later, the album Energique followed. Also in 1992, the group Blue Pearl scored another hit by using "Playing With Knives" as a basis for their track, "Can You Feel The Passion". In 1993 they went to number one on the United States Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart twice. "I'm Gonna Get You" spent two weeks at number one in January (also hitting number 47 on the Billboard Hot 100) and was followed by "Took My Love," which was number one for two weeks in late April. Both tracks featured lead vocals by female session singer Angie Brown. A third song (featuring Yvonne Yanney, "Love In Motion," peaked at #4 on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in late 1993.

All three of Bizarre Inc.'s big hit singles appeared on their second album, Energique, in 1992. They also released a third album, Surprise, in 1996. This album credits the singer Angie Brown as part of the band lineup rather than a featured artist and also co-writer on several tracks. It featured three singles, "Keep The Music Strong", "Surprise" and "Get Up Sunshine Street."

Meecham and Meredith have continued putting out new music under the name Chicken Lips. In the UK, their biggest singles remain "Playing with Knives" (#4) and "I'm Gonna Get You" (#3), the latter of which was a genuine cross over dance-pop hit and was within the Top 40 biggest sellers of the year.