That year, they released their superb and underrated debut album 'How To Operate With A Blown Mind', a genre-fusing masterpiece that has become a cult classic. With a sound that fused hip hop, soul, alt-rock, techno, funk and house music, their sample-heavy electronic constructions were dubbed "skunk rock" by the members of the band, originally formed in Leeds before relocating to London and then moving to big beat capital Brighton.
'Battleflag' began life as a remix of a song by American outfit Pigeonhed, which turned out so well that it developed into one of the key tracks on '...Blown Mind'. A chunky slab of hip hop funk with fierce, foul-mouthed rap lines, superb use of analog synths and hard crushing beats, the track is another fine example of the Lo Fidelity Allstars knack for invigorating, raw edged grooves. The Albino Priest (aka Matt Ward) explained "The Pigeonhed remix was the first remix we ever did and we wanted to make it a good one. When we started we tried to keep some of the original music but none of it apart from the vocals fitted with the ideas we had... We only found out recently that there was a Prince lyric included in the Pigeonhed vocals and we got fucked over and delayed by legal red tape. We ended up deciding to re-record the whole track without the offending lyric.”
'Battleflag' didn't do as well in the charts as it deserved to here i the UK, but it was a major hit on American alternative rock radio, reaching number 6 on the Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart. In 1999 they were the best-selling British band in America, shifting over 400,000 albums.