John Dugan

Currently, John is a full-time editor/writer covering clubs/nightlife/DJs as well as music, technology and fashion for Time Out Chicago and is freelancer for various national publications. He was previously the nightlife/music editor at Chicago.Citysearch.com.

Following the break-up of Chisel in 1997, John recorded drums with Holland and Mark Borthwick, recorded and played live with The White and The Walker System (with members of Velocity Girl), recorded with his brother Michael in the psychedelic pop band The Sounds Of Kaleidoscope and recorded and released a solo CD-EP on the Swedish label Her Magic Field in 2000 (available at Insound). He jammed with Mark Robinson on what would become Flin-Flon's first album and also released a 7" single "Expedition" with a project called Colour featuring the backbone of the band Dead Meadow.

Since relocating to Chicago in 2000, John worked with various fruitless projects including Liam Hayes' Plush before settling in with Perfect Panther, who have been playing live and recording since 2002. He also plays with garage rock band The Tax from time to time. His newest project includes ex-members of the Boas and tech-house DJ Common Factor and could loosely be described as 'space disco'.

After losing much of his vintage recording gear and Edsel-era drum kit in a fire/flood, John's buying new stuff for the first time in years. He's hoping to follow up his solo EP sometime in 2007 if he can convince his wife Kelly to sing back-ups.

Sohrab Habibion

Sohrab lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife and young son, making his living designing websites, CD packages and book covers, among other things. He plays in a band called Obits with Rick Froberg (Drive Like Jehu, Hot Snakes) and Scott Gursky (Shortstack) and also collaborates with Michael Hampton (SOA, The Faith, Embrace, One Last Wish) on soundtracks for films.

In 1996, as Edsel was coming to a close, he drove his 4-track cassette recorder to his parents' cabin in the Viriginia mountains with a handful of small instruments and a desire to find the middle ground between Leonard Cohen and Brian Eno. Under the name of Margo he released a 2 CD set with a 64-page art book that was ambitious, if not wholly successful. Late that autumn Sohrab went on a brief tour of the midwest, opening for Smart Went Crazy, before returning to DC to work with Edsel's Steve Raskin on a track for the 1st compilation on Thievery Corporation's 18th Street Lounge label. Soon after he packed his bags for New York City.

Following a string of appropriately demoralizing freelance graphic design jobs he landed a full-time spot with a SoHo media company called Funny Garbage. Hired to score and provide sound design for web cartoons, he got a chance to work with creative director Ric Heitzman (Pee Wee's Playhouse), artist Gary Panter and Latin producer Andres Levin. Through this he met No Wave icon Arto Lindsay (DNA, The Lounge Lizards, Ambitious Lovers) and subsequently worked on his next 2 albums and several other projects, including a piece involving Debbie Harry for Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Company.

Since then he has toured Europe as a fill-in bass player for Girls Against Boys, written music for dance performances with John Pamer (Tsunami), started many an unfinished ProTools session and managed to learn to speak like a graphic design professional. He keeps his fingers crossed that Obits will do something outside of the practice space before 2010.

Geoff Sanoff

Over the course of the last 10 years Geoff Sanoff has been recording and mixing everything that has come his way, in all manner of studios. He started out as an intern at Sony Music Studios and has made his his up the ladder to being chief engineer of Stratosphere Sound in New York.

Says Sanoff about his entrance into the field of recording, "The recording of our record "Techniques of Speed Hypnosis" in Liverpool was a pivotal moment for me in that I realized that I really loved working in recording studios. Our records up to that point had always been fun, but working in Liverpool's Parr Street Studios with Andy Wilkinson and Anjali Dutt opened up a new world for me. So, I vowed that if Edsel ever looked to be winding down, I'd give studio work a shot. Little did I know 3 important hings: 1) working in studios is a hell of a lot of hard work 2) its about as risky as making it in a rock band, and 3) that Edsel would be winding down a little sooner than I was expecting in the summer of 1995."

Geoff helped Stratosphere Sound open up in 1999 and makes it move to its current location in Chelsea neighborhood of New York in 2001. Since that time he has worked on all manner of projects at Stratosphere. The list of bands is a long one but includes, Fountains of Wayne, Ivy, the Secret Machines, Michael Stipe, Girls Against Boys, Luna, Nada Serf and Yerba Buena to name several. Geoff has gotten to work within many genres of music as well, from avante garde jazz to salsa to folk, rock and everything in between.

He's recorded prank phone calls for the "Crank Yankers" tv show, Hugh Grant singing for the movie "Music and Lyrics", and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog busting people's chops for his record. He continues to work both at Stratosphere and on his own on whatever comes his way. He recently finished mixing two excellent and opposite projects, acoustic guitarist/singer Stephen Fretwell's newest for Polydor in the UK, and the new wave rockers' Office's latest for Scratchie here in the US.

In the last few years, he's also been playing music with Scott McLoud and Alexis Fleisig of Girls Against Boys. The project is a solo project for Scott and is called Paramount Styles. Geoff has plays bass and keyboards in the band and has been producing the band's record as time permits.

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