Balancing his affinity for new-school deep house beats with an early fixation for jazzy textures, indie-rock and Warp's bleep techno, Daniel Ibbotson is a producer-by-accident, a home-production aficionado who put together a demo tape during 1995 while studying at the Glasgow School of Arts for his photography degree. After sending it to the electro label Clear Records (whose buzzed-about résumé included incarnations of µ-Ziq, Black Dog and Global Communication), the label released some of the material as the Souped-Up EP in August 1996. More than enough material was left for an entire album, released in 1998 for the Clear spin-off Reel Discs. Ibbotson also remixed Friend & Doktor Kosmos, and appeared on the Compost collection Future Sound of Jazz, Vol. 3; he returned in 1999 with Frequency and Phase.