I reached my hand out to pull the mic towards me, closed my hand around it and got this massive shock. I couldn't let go of the fucking thing. I've still got burn marks on my back and fingers now and I had to see a chiropractor because the force of the jolt dislocated my shoulder." - Ollie Cole

A near death experience can affect people in different ways. For some, it prompts them to live their lives to the full in case next time they're not so lucky. For others, it can induce a confidence -sapping awareness of their own mortality. For Ollie Cole, the huge electric shock he received from a rehearsal room microphone in 1997 and his subsequent depression led to him breaking up with his girlfriend of five years and moving out of the house he shared with his best friend. He also wrote the first batch of soaring, emotional songs for one of the UK?s most ambitious, honest and downright sexy new bands, Turn.

Ollie grew up in Kells, Co. Meath, a remote town to the West of Dublin, where he had no British TV and no decent radio stations to listen to. So his first musical inspirations came from his older brother. He was into heavy metal. "I have a video of me at home in a Guns 'N Roses T-shirt with a little leather waistcoat and things hanging off me like Steven Tyler from Aerosmith. I was fucking crazy," laughs Ollie.

Ollie sang in his brother's band, the amusingly-named Black Hawx, at the age of 16, then started writing acoustic songs before his best friend's older brother returned from some time living in Boston, introduced Ollie to the music of the Pixies, asked if he wanted to form a band and changed his life.  "I saw "Monkey's Gone To Heaven" on the chart show the next day," says Ollie. "And I was just like "That's amazing!". I'd never heard anything like that before."

Ollie's new band was called Swampshack and featured drummer Ian Melady who would later be part of Turn. They were a three piece and at the time Ollie had long blonde hair. "Everybody was saying, "Oh they want to be Nirvana", says Ollie. "And I suppose we kind of did." They played with Teenage Fanclub, Soul Asylum and, bizarrely enough, toured Ireland with Ice T's cod-metal crew Body Count. The record deal offers were rolling in when "musical differences" raised their ugly heads and split the band up. "I was heartbroken," says Ollie. "I had only ever wanted to be in a band and this wasn't part of my plan."

Ollie spent two years living on the dole learning to play chess and smoking dope, while drummer Ian went on to join a local band called Revelino. Eventually Ollie and Ian started writing songs together again, then Ollie met bass player Gavin Fox in a Dublin rehearsal studio. "It was one of those moments when you meet someone and just know they're going to be a big part of your life before you even speak to them," explains Ollie. "The first time we rehearsed we wrote this song called "I Still Believe" which we still play now and were just standing in the room looking at each other going "Fucking hell, that's great!". It was easily the best thing any of us had ever done." Turn was born.

Then Ollie got electrocuted and wrote such noisy, bruised, heartfelt songs as "Facedown" and "Beretta". These songs became staples of the band's set. Keyboard player Fiona Melady (Ian's sister) was brought in to add depth to some demo recordings, and after that the band would call on her services for bigger gigs in order to flesh out the sound. Things were moving along and the band's confidence grew daily.

In early 1998, Turn decided it was time to broaden their horizons and so, despite not having a manager or road crew, they started playing showcase gigs in London, decked out in their now-customary suits and ties - chosen as an antidote to the scruffy post-grunge look. "We had a meeting," says Ollie. "And we were all sitting around, and we said, "Right, in six months time we're going to be signed". And we were. We were just determined. We'd do a few gigs in Dublin to get the money together, then get on the ferry with all our equipment and come over. But then we'd be crap because we'd be knackered and we'd have to set up our own equipment. We didn't even have a roadie and we'd be getting lost on the tubes and by the time we got round to playing we were a bundle of nerves."

Despite the chaotic, DIY nature of their visits to London, there was a scramble to sign the band, and they inked a deal with Infectious in mid-1998 after they came to see them play in Dublin, declaring the band to be "fucking brilliant".

After more showcase gigs, Turn de-camped to Rockfield Studios in Wales to record their first proper batch of songs with Hugh Jones (Echo And The Bunnymen/The Teardrop Explodes). It wasn't easy, with sessions running from12:00 noon until 5 or 6am the following morning and Ollie struggling to relax in the atmosphere of the studio. "I felt really self-conscious", he says. "Like I was getting too much attention. So I started drinking lots of beer and smoking.  It helped. I just started going into the studio and singing along to the big speakers with no headphones. It was kind of trial and error."

"Beretta", "Facedown" and "Beeswax" were all released as limited edition 7" singles in the first quarter of the New Year.  They subsequently all featured on the debut mini-album "Check My Ears" (cd only) in May 2000, building up the band's profile in the British music press. Around that time, Turn embarked on their first major tour, opening for Seafood and Wilt around the UK in March/April, which proved to be a big success and saw the band firmly appear as "ones to watch".

More songs were recorded above the Thomas Reed pub in Dublin - shimmering, sensitive, classic songs played mostly acoustically. Turn were beginning to spread their wings and test their own boundaries. Their debut album is a mix of the Rockfield songs and these. "The acoustic songs are really independent," says Ollie. "I'm still hurting from the break-up of that relationship but I'm beginning to look to the future. They're not really love songs, they're just about me."

Cut to the present day. Turn are sitting on a sweeping, strident gem of a debut album which mixes the cathartic bombast of Nirvana and Ollie's beloved Pixies with the classic song writing of the likes of Elliott Smith and Neil Young. They're writing more lucidly than ever and they're preparing for their biggest gigs to date, supporting Scottish noise-popsters Idlewild around the UK. Ollie is as excited as a cat that's just been given the freedom of the dairy. "The Idlewild tour should be really good. We're going to get new suits made and some new equipment. And right now we're playing so well," he enthuses. "I think we'll be around for a long time." And it's obvious from the look in his eyes, he means it.