Early days

In 1994, 16 year old John, influenced by the then-new sounds of jungle and trip hop, began experimenting with dance music. After playing around with rave music for a couple of years, John wrote his first proper track as Psychadelik Pedestrian at the end of 1994 called "Jungle Warfare" which used amen breakbeats and layered them with acid style synth sounds and a soaring operatic vocal sample. The track proved popular with his friends and John began compiling compilation cassettes of his music using the name Frantik Records.

By 1996 John's tapes were gaining a reasonable following and he encouraged his friends to write some tracks. Andrew Amery's first tune was 'Mindwarp'; he used the artist name Redmann which he has kept ever since. Kristian Davies produced his first track in autumn 1996 as Excelsior - a strange mixture of guitar samples and techno beats called "The Great Experiment".

Frantik Records

In October 1997, Frantik went online for the first time (see right panel) and by the beginning of 1998 two Frantik compilations, the Blue and Pink albums, had been shipped to America and Australia thanks to the internet. During the year, the first Frantik logo, nicknamed the "ball logo" (pictured) was first used.

Another name still with us today joined Frantik in 1997 - Dave Kent initially came on board to help with production, but didn't get too involved at this stage due to his dislike of hardcore and techno, the main style produced by Frantik in those days. Sensing a downturn in the popularity of hardcore, John decided at the end of 1998 to focus on house and trance music.

During 1999, John was introduced to the world of MP3 music and discovered MP3.com in December 1999. Seizing an opportunity to bring Frantik artists to a wider audience, John signed up on 27th December 1999. The first track online was the 1999 remix of Psychadelik Pedestrian's 'Another Boring Lunchtime' - the first seeds of our net label were sown!

Frantik Music

After only a few weeks on MP3.com, it was clear that putting whole tracks online as MP3 files was the way forward and at the beginning of 2000, Frantik had an image change and launched a new web site. The new image included a new logo (pictured) to replace the ball logo, Frantik became Frantik Music and a domain name was purchased, frantikmusic.co.uk. By May 2000 all Frantik Music artists were on the MP3.com and Vitaminic music sites, and Hyperterminal's "Seeking You" had been signed by American label Complex Records and crept up the Vitaminic chart into the top 10. On MP3.com John's old hardcore tracks as Prism had a new lease of life and 'Your Smile' became a featured track.

2001 was an exciting year for Frantik Music. The first Hyperterminal and Silverknight tracks were signed to Rough Diamond Records and pressed on vinyl, and "Seeking You" achieved number 1 status on Vitaminic UK by gaining the most downloads out of any track on the site. Redmann introduced his trademark sound combining funky house and trance with the vocoder anthem 'So Sublime', which was voted listeners' favourite track of the year. Space Invaderz also burst on the scene in spring 2001 with "Science Fiction", later to become one of Frantik Music's most successful tunes.

2002 saw Frantik Music artists diversify into producing more varied styles of music. Psychadelik Pedestrian's 'Night Beach' became the first successful chillout track, inspiring other artists to try and emulate this success. During the summer, Psychadelik Pedestrian, Redmann and Excelsior all produced more chillout tracks and Frantik artists held the top four places on the Vitaminic downtempo chart on 20th September 2002.

Changes

Frantik Music artists began to close down their MP3.com sites in favour of promoting music on Vitaminic and Soundclick during 2002. Unfortunately, due to the general decline in popularity of MP3 sites, download figures again took a tumble despite artists still regularly featuring in the Vitaminic charts. In Autumn 2003, the name change to Toucan Music was revealed, a name chosen by Andrew "Redmann" Amery. The name change had been in discussion for a while as the old Frantik name, first used when the music was mainly hardcore and rave, no longer reflected the diverse styles produced by Frantik Music artists.

2003 ended with the closure of MP3.com in December. By this time most of Frantik Music's output was being promoted on Soundclick and Vitaminic rather than on MP3.com and the last Frantik Music tracks on MP3.com had been removed earlier that year. 26 April 2004 saw the opening of Music.Download.com run by CNet, owners of Download.com. This new site proved an instant hit with music fans giving Toucan artists, whose music was available on the site from the launch day, instant promotion.

Netlabel

Frantik Music became Toucan Music on 1st January 2004, but Toucan's rebirth as a fully fledged 'net label' didn't occur until March 2005 with the launch of a new look web site featuring direct downloads for the first time. Tracks before 1st March 2005, which were already online on other sites, were gradually added to the back catalogue which was completed in November, hosted by the Internet Archive. Despite the music now being directly available on the Toucan site, external sites continued to host Toucan tracks. Sadly Vitaminic, one of the most effective music promotion sites used by Toucan for over five years, shut its doors in December 2005 while Toucan stayed on Soundclick until 2007 and Music.Download.com until its closure in 2009.

DJ Rise joined Frantik Music in 2003 and by 2005 he had become the most successful Toucan artist overtaking Space Invaderz. In 2003, John stopped writing under his old artist names of Hyperterminal and Silverknight and began writing under the new name JMD, and in 2005 also started using the name Beat Doctor for electro house production. Marc Burt joined Frantik in 2002, the same year Excelsior produced his last track. Since 2005, a variety of guest artists have also produced and remixed for Toucan including Fioko, sea.envy, Yakoozai and Dave Seagrim.

Recent developments

Toucan jumped on the podcasting bandwagon in 2006, with a podcast feed going live to promote the latest tracks. Following the success of this venture, the first feature length podcast mix was released later that year. At the end of the year, the online shop closed and Toucan stopped selling CDs, leaving the Internet as the only place to get Toucan Music - a truly online label! The Toucan website was relaunched in 2007 with a completely new look and introduced several exciting new features: creative commons licences, allowing you to freely use our music, and track and artist searching. Toucan's Last.FM site was also launched in 2007. A small revamp followed in August 2008, adding the Albums section and introducing release ratings.

The current website was launched on 27th December 2009, ten years to the day that the first full length Psychadelik Pedestrian MP3 track Another Boring Lunchtime' was added to MP3.com.