ON Saturday. March 31 Terris finished their UK tour in TJ's. Nine months later Warner Music dropped them. Matthew Blythe found out how Terris learnt to let go and start all over again.

NEWPORT'S darlings one minute, NME cover stars the next - until Spring this year, Terris was climbing an escalator forged from a thousand silver spoons.

But failing to comprise, mouthing off and lack of record sales knocked them from their pearly ride, two weeks' ago.

"We have parted company with our record label," announced Gavin Goodwin, Terris's quiet, cutting frontman and motormouth. "It basically came about because our working relationship with Warners had broken down.

"They didn't promote us originally and refused to finance us. We had a tour organised of Ireland, Britain and Japan but all that fell through. Plus, an EP (recorded in Loco Studios) fell through as well."

Warner Brothers, expecting huge commercial success with Terris single and album, Cannibal Kids and Learning to Let Go, after the band appeared on the front page of the NME, took control of operations from its subsidiary label, Rough Trade, who had signed the band.

The band point to this as the beginning of the end and believe their original arrangement with the one-time indie label, Rough Trade, with financial backing from the mother major, Warners, was better for such a single minded, devastating and unpredictable band as Terris.

"We originally signed a five album deal, with no singles but within five months of being signed and releasing our first limited edition EP, we were on the front cover of the NME and that whole onslaught began, recalled Gavin, unenthusiastically.

Terris did not know they were going to be on the front page of the NME, Saturday, January 15 2000, one year after they had graced the front of Mono thanks to some of the band's original fans and then writers for the south Wales Argus, Kai Jones and Andre Pain, the latter of whom is now the news editor of the NME.

Two days before the Terris NME was published they had a telephone call informing them there was a chance they would be on the front page.

"We used to do loads of interviews, and see the same people all the time," said Owen Matthews, drummer. "You'd end up thinking they were your mates but later on you realised they were just going to screw you."

"I generally feel quite ill when I read my own interviews," said Gavin. "I don't think it's a good idea, generally, to do them, but it is part of the process of learning." Since that front cover, the national music paper has touted a