The Making of Mooz

Finding our own voice
carving our own way
pushing boundaries
exploring new ways to play 
making connections
and our own decisions
creating waves
questioning who we are
what we could be
if we were all able to be free
to express 
and be who we want to be

Where to begin?

It was 1997, in a brick building with a sea view, Weston-Super-Mare. Around thirty young music geeks were in a room and we had one thing in common – we’d all just signed up to do a two-year BTEC music technology course.

This might have been our first or second session and we were set a team-building task to form groups and write a song. None of us really knew each other and they were throwing us in the fire. Just get on with it, and that was fine.

At the start of the session, our tutor went around the room getting us to introduce ourselves and state our instrument. We heard the voice of a woman named Amy who said she played drums as well as many other instruments. Paula and Rasha looked at each other and we instantly reached over, bagsying her to work with us. Of course, we know the result … and at the time, much to our relief, she said yes!

The first song we wrote was ‘Stretching’. It sounded so different to anything we’d ever heard, and it was as if we just didn’t know how it came about, but ultimately it was the collaboration and our eclectic backgrounds that made it happen. Collectively we were musically interesting, and our process was democratic, which meant we all had the space to express ourselves. Our music was sultry, provocative, feminine, and it captured our curiosity and ultimately our first writing session sparked our future together. We were now committed to finding out where our musical conversation would take us.

It took us what felt like six months or so to come up with a name. We had one gig under the name of Hatstand, (not sure why) and we ended up with Mooz, why? Because it came from inspiration, as in ‘muse‘, and we stuck with it. We weren’t familiar with the famous band Muse at the time.