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http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/news/02-12/18.shtml - 2002

Brad Laner's New Medicine, Electric Company LPs
Get ready for a lot of "white noise"
Phil Locke reports:
Former Medicine man Brad Laner has returned from his voyage through the world of cool, freaked-out laptop electronica to the world of cool, freaked-out alternative pop. With his intriguing co-conspirator Shannon Lee (daughter of Bruce "yes, that Bruce" Lee), the re-configured Medicine plan to release a new full-length on Wall of Sound, titled The Mechanical Forces of Love, early next year, with a single for "I Smile to My Eyes" due sometime in March.
According to Brad, a couple tracks from their Wet on Wet EP will reappear on the forthcoming full-length. The EP was Medicine's first release on Wall of Sound, a limited-edition 2x10" vinyl. Laner's website includes a downloadable MP3 file with excerpts from the EP tracks, revealing a combination of Medicine's classic cotton-candy-barbed-wire guitar noise combined with more contemporary electronics and loops. Laner describes it as "mutant pop music". Fans of Electric Company needn't fear that the prolific Laner has permanently traded in his Powerbook for a guitar, though: a new Electric Company album, It's Hard to Be a Baby, is due on Tigerbeat6 in January. Tracklist for Wet on Wet:

01 Astral Gravy
02 A Flying Fuck
03 Wet on Wet
04 Machine Inna Garden

Medicine released three beautiful albums of sugarcoated pop noise in the early 90s and even collaborated with the Cocteau Twins on the soundtrack to The Crow. The band dissolved in 1995 after their record company demanded and released a watered-down mix of the Her Highness album that label execs hoped would be more radio-friendly. Laner eventually made his own preferred mix of the album available to fans on his email list.

Following the demise of Medicine, Laner reappeared as Electric Company on the anagramatically titled A Pert Cyclic Omen. Seven more albums have followed on labels as diverse as Vinyl Communications, Planet µ, Supreme/Island, and Tigerbeat6, including a full-length disc of interpretations of songs by Laner's other post-medicine project, Amnesia. After all that Elco, Laner surprised fans by contributing a Medicine track to this year's killer double-disc Tigerbeat6 Inc. compilation, whose liner notes included a cryptic reference of "things to come."

"That's all well and good," we can hear you saying, "but how did Shannon Lee end up replacing Beth Thompson as the distaff half of Medicine's vocal team?" Well, she and Laner crossed paths after Brad decided to revive the band, and Brad asked the classically trained singer to join him on the new recordings. Lee was preganant during the sessions and Laner was dealing with his father's recent death; the emotional reverberations of those events informed the atmosphere. And as always, we at Pitchfork inform the people. Cue Snow's "Informer". That's us!