Biography

First you cross the racial divide in South Africa, then you cross the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland, later you cross any musical divide that stands in your way. Northern Ireland's newest rock sensations, Relish, sure know a thing or three about standing their ground, overcoming prejudice and getting on with the job at hand.

The band are brothers Ken (vocals, guitar) and Carl (drums) Papenfus, whose mother was a famous black singer back in South Africa. Brought up in the rock 'n' roll capital of Downpatrick, Co Down, Ken and Carl were raised on a diet of rock, jazz, blues, and pop and have been playing live since their early teens.

Being the only black faces in a predominantly white town has never been a problem when they had a musical hero to look up to. "Being Irish, black and in a rock band was made much easier after Phil Lynott" says Ken.

Relish were fully formed by the mid 1990s when the brothers ran into bass player Darren Campbell who cut a promising art school education (he designs all the band's artwork) to join the band.

"We're all misfits in away" says Ken, "there's black and white and catholic in the band. but more importantly there's the influences of acts like Curtis Mayfield and the Beach Boys".

As word filtered out from Downpatrick to Dublin and London about this extravagantly talented and musically ambitious three piece, various record companies were ushered into Ken and Carl's living room, where sitting on a sofa bed, they were treated to in house Relish auditions.

The band signed to EMI in 1998 and immediately caught attention of famed producer John Leckie (The Stone Roses, Radiohead) who got them into the studio to begin work on their dedut album. Last year "Shaped On People" EP - which was produced by another fan, Al Clay (Stereophonics, Reef) - was an early warning that Relish were producing the sort of melody-driven, harmony-soaked rock music that frankly, was indecently brilliant for an Irish band.

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