The Shipwreckers 2000-2006.

Luke Hughett (drums) joined the band in January 2001, after graduating from university at the tender age of twelve . Rob Grover (bass) returned to the fold in March of 2001, reclaiming his rightful place in the line-up after a three-year hiatus spent rewriting James Joyce's Ulysses as a made-for-tv movie. The brainchild of astronaut/F-16 pilot Peter Messina (guitar/vocals), The Shipwreckers made their debut (under the moniker Ipcress F) on June 24, 2000, at Pete's Candy Store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The Shipwreckers' Library for the Blind EP was recorded in Brooklyn on a portable 16-track digital studio during the winter of 2001/2002. It was assembled with bits of string and spit, cigarette paper and torn shoe leather, pages ripped from old paperback pot-boilers, gravel and broken glass from under the BQE, bicycle chains, busted Zippos and stolen jewels, unemployment checks, salt water from the Atlantic, toothaches, and optimism. It is the first in a series of limited edition eps and singles from the Existential Space Pop* band who have begun work on recording their next EP--tentatively entitled Cassiopeia/Spectral Heart--along with a 7-inch single to be released in 2004.

The band called it quits in 2004, but reformed briefly in 2005 and 2006. Luke is art directing and playing with Heloise & the Savoir Faire <link>. Rob is working on various book projects with fabulous writers and tearing up the roads on his racing bike. Peter is going to Hunter for an MFA in Creative Writing, and working on a new music project.

There is a long lost Shipwreckers album floating around somewhere...

*Existential Space Pop: The red-headed stepchild of indie rock, punk, Camus, Bataille, Dylan, Carver, Murakami, Dante, Schopenhauer, Messiaen, Bartok, The Velvet Underground, Echo & the Bunnymen, Felt, Mission of Burma, The Go-Betweens, sixties spy ephemera ("The Prisoner" tv series, Michael Caine in The Ipcress File), Samuel Beckett, Charles Ives, David Tudor and John Cage, "The Simpsons," Wes Anderson, and a bunch of other pretentious crap. That and lots of booze: depending on whom you ask, a Jack-and-Coke with a lime, a pint, or a single-malt scotch with a big grain of salt.