Martin Deller and Cameron Hawkins

"I honestly never thought we'd get back together," Cameron Hawkins.

"I guess we have Method Man to thank!" Martin Deller.

Cameron Hawkins and Martin Deller are teaming up to re-start the legendary Canadian progressive rock band FM.

"It's a whole new ball game", said Hawkins. "So much has changed about the music industry that Marty and I both feel that we should give it one more chance. We believe there's a revolution underway. A new era of music being written, performed, distributed and enjoyed that completely bypasses the traditional channels."

"When FM started, there was only one way to connect with an audience and that was through the traditional, commercial music business," added Deller. "Many of our favourite bands, from Procol Harum in the '60's to the fusion bands of the '70's were able to achieve some level of success, making interesting music. We were lucky enough to be able to release some very experimental music, like FM Direct-to-Disc, but as time went by the industry tightened up, and those types of projects weren't feasable."

Then there were the financial disasters.

"We'd no sooner get a record released than the record company would go bankrupt." said Hawkins. "I lost count after five. Being a non-mainstream artist in those days was a very risky career choice. But both Marty and I believe that it now it's possible for us to find an audience - and for an audience to find us - on the Internet."

That would fit nicely with FM's orginal premise - experimenting with new technologies to make innovative, yet accessible music.

"There's another element to the re-emergence of FM," said Deller. "The progressive rock audience is a passionate and loyal one. We believe that we still have something to offer that audience."

Cameron and Martin touched bases in the spring of 2004 for the first time in years.

Deller explained, "Rap Artist Method Man sampled an FM song and used it on his CD - Tical 2000: The Prequel. Being the honourable man he is, he contacted Ben Mink, Cam and myself and offered us writer's credits and a share of the revenues. That brought us back together - if only to laugh at the ironies of the music biz."

Cameron continued, "I found out Marty was doing very well as a film and television composer and when he invited me in December 2004 to the open house for a new studio he'd built, I was really impressed. A few months later, we met for lunch. I asked him what music projects he was working on. He said he had a few on the go. I wondered out loud if there was any musical project that would have as much potential as an FM record..."

"We just looked at each other and grinned."