PLASTIC MASTERY sidelines

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Neutral Milk Hotel meets Deadwood Divine. on the aforementioned Happy Happy Birthday To Me label.

way more than namedropping. this will make you cry, while swing-swaying through your apartment.


listen.


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DENNIS DRISCOLL katiusha

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The Way Things Change #5 - a reference among split 7" - projects. on Jen Turrell's Red Square label.

i ordered that one before starting the ebay-thing - straight from Jen, sending cash. and it worked! she added hundreds of free records to it, i was so dumfoundedly happy, and all i can do was listening to the records the whole night while writing Jen an ardent letter.
i still hope it wasn't too embarassing.


listen.


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CONRAD SCHNITZLER congenerator

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on the 7" that came with the third issue of the defunct Hayfever fanzine - no other music mag has had such an impact on me.

they still have copies for sale. buy them. all. no matter if you speak german or not (#1 is in english, btw). every issue comes with a 7", exclusive tracks, awesome artwork. you won't regret it.


listen.


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JOHN VANDERSLICE my old flame

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a split 7" with Sunset Valley.

first time heard as an opener for Spoon, back in the fall of 2002, at the Casa del Popolo in montréal, with I. quite impressed, though not amazed.

since then - fulltime part of my life.

from his recent album, a totally rearranged song:


listen.


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SIMON JOYNER one for the catholic girls

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John Darnielle meets VU.

a quite exceptional song within his oeuvre.


listen.


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VERSUS forest fire

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don't start a forest fire.

i'm addicted to this band.

its members nowadays rarely perform together, but rather play under the +/- , The Pacific Ocean, The Fontaine Toups and Wysall Lane monikers - the latter two being quite disappointing.

listen.


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HOOD you shins break my heart

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on this split 7" with Themselves (on Rocket Racer), the affinity between Hood and Laughing Stock's Talk Talk becomes obvious. new grass is overtly sampled, but in a way that integrates it completely into the song.
a de-quotating decelerated thorough-bass, so to say.

this is a supa-dupa-limited edition, beside the commercialized picture 7". the cover here is made out of a 1920ies braille children's book, with a unique lacquer-print on it.
the most gorgeous artwork i've ever seen, even by Hood's standards.


listen.


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PINBACK loro

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a classic.

no matter how hard you try, in the end, you'll always stay where you are.



listen to the song searching for it on the net (the post was taken down following the request of some silly copyright-sharks).


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STYROFOAM this is all wrong

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a split-picture 7inch with DNTEL - on Rocket Racer, one of the most ardent micro-labels you'll find. a reference in terms of packaging (more related posts to come).

Styrofoam can be melancholic in a corny way - but he can hit you straight, when you don't expect it.

listen.


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SMALL FACTORY scared of love

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this post is dedicated to R.

got the 7" in a bunch of semi-original early 90ies indie-singles from spain, thanks to ebay.
didn't know the band, but with Slumberland Rec., you can't go wrong.

a pleasant surprise, this straightforward Sarah-tweepop-7" was.


listen.

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BIRDSKIN creamer and roads

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i was 16 when i discovered, by pure coincidence, the Normal record store, in the northern old town of bonn. riding by bike through the city, trying to catch every street.
from that day, i spent nearly every afternoon after high school there.

the store's showcase was no larger than 2 meter, maybe less - the whole store had a tubular form.
it was relatively dark and moisty inside, during winter there was an antique gas heater near the entrance to warm up the regulars who spent most of the day drinking beer and talking rubbish.

suspiciously eyeballing every single person that went into the store to eventually buy a record, they quickly became a second family to me.

i must have been a precocious weirdo for them.

this is were i got to know my three elective older brothers - F.,O. and S.


listen.


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PERET borriquito

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played at Trickster, as part of a hysteric dj set following the Diskettes / Japanther show. back in the summer of 2005. best gig ever.


listen.





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INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT una stanza vuota

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bought in maybe the best indie-7inch store on earth - in brighton, back in 1999. i was there for my first english-language-course, in a somewhat wannabe aristocratic upper-class school - mister cope, a complacent francophobe thatcher-admirer, was the host.
apart from trying to improve my poor language skills and getting to know A., i spent a lot of time at Edge World Records.

pure euphoria.

in japan, people go to oxygen-bars. in airplanes, the emergency-masks are primarily supposed to satisfy a similar need.
give me such a recordstore. or the simple prospect of it - that's all i need.

this 7inch followed that one in the attempt to get the whole All-City-bunch, a oneofakind semi-obscure micro-label.
International Airport is maybe the most important discovery to me. two years later, i got their lp in london (during another language course-trip, this time in southampton, were i couldn't find any interesting record-store...)

Ali Roberts, the Appendix Out-mastermind, is on the spot. hypnotic Broadcast-like music, but with less Alice in Wonderland-acid and more charm.


listen.


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MASTERS OF THE HEMISPHERE raindrops

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discovered thanks to I. in the fall of 2002.
first hold that 7inch in my hands at Dave's place, two years later. amazed.
helped by the guten geister from Leeds - they even sent me a candy.

on Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records.
can you imagine a better microlabel-name?


listen.


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LOW canada

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you can't take that stuff to canada.
you can't take it anywhere.


listen.


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POP TARTS muso

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best Berlin-late90ies.
openers on the aforementioned RONDELLES-gig.

the singer looked really cute from a 10m distance, but quite normal face to face.

again, U. lead me to this band.

on the semi-defunct Bungalow-label.


listen.


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PALACE SONGS gulf shores

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non-moody Will Oldham at its best. as far as i'm concerned.
between the Days in the Wake and the Viva Last Blues - period.

no attitude, no posture.


listen.


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ROCKETSHIP she's gonna make me cry

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ridiculously underrated.
A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness is one of the major albums of 1996. of the decade.

the swansong of my youth.
of yours?


(this gold-print on red cardboard is uneasy to shoot with a cheap digicam.)

listen.


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SWEEP THE LEG JOHNNY walking home

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n°8 of the Postmarked Stamps series on Tree Rec.
i didn't buy that one - M.S. added it for free to one of my orders. he did good.

this long-distance-lovers-split7"-series might seem totally obsessive, in its focus on the tiniest details - the musicians' neighboorhood map on each label, the envelopes with the multiple, yet sorted inlays, the stamps on the cover that had, for the last three issues, to be artifically made, due to a logistic backlash, etc.

but to be honest, for a microlabel, it seems to me that it just has to be that way.

more to come in the close future, as, following this ingenious gift, i became a Tree Records-completist.


listen.


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DEAD SCIENCE on your shore [Enya cover]

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there's this british guy who compared Sam Micken's voice to the one of Antony Hegarty's. quite unflattering. i totally agree.
but: no narcissistic dysfunction, no non-ironic affectation here.

all you have to do is find a way to cope with it.

and then, you're in a new atmospheric environment.
think tom cruise in interview with a vampire.
Micken's voice is so much artificial and technically precise, controlled and distant, that it gets an instrumental character.

they started as a Xiu Xiu-double, but are now in their own spheres.

best live-band i've seen last year (and maybe best cover-band ever - do you know the original on your shore?)
tremendous. at every moment unexpected and yet coherent.





listen.


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ISAN betty's lament

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perfect support to radio broadcast. P. and i used Isan-tracks for a james joyce-related feature, back in 2001 (again).

Isan were among the first to inhabit the Wurlitzer Jukebox / Bad Jazz / Earworm universe - british microlabels that highly contributed to the overcoming of the genre-borderlines that were still dominant in the mid-90ies.


listen.


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THE RONDELLES tv zombie

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pure fun.

seen with U. in the summer of 2001 in a small venue near hackescher markt - after i had

1.
been thinking of booking them for a german tour (i wanted to raise funds by asking every interested student at the comp.lit-.department to donate 20DM as an advance for a ticket)

and

2.
met M. in the tube who told me they were playing that very night (she, sadly, couldn't do it).
the only reason she told me so was that i had played the like a prayer cover-version by The Rondelles at a recent college-party.
two years later, we became flat mates - having the best parties in town.

this summer, we're continuing this tradition. you might be there, too.


listen.

buy!

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MINISNAP whistler

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BATS-members - for the Kiwi-aficionados among you.

discovered thanks to one of the best schnuckipop-mailorders around.

Dave loves it. so do i.





listen.

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PAPA M orange world

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David Pajo. mate of Will Oldham in his better days, friend of the TORTOISE and STEREOLAB gangs.
a SLINT member.

first of all, beyond all the name dropping, a dedicated musician. from Louisville, Kentucky.

beloved woman - from Pajo's so far best album, Whatever, Mortal (there is also a hauting alternate version with strings on the first of his Tour cdeps, dedicated to the memory of the late Mary Hansen):



listen.


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PETER BRODERICK roscoe [Midlake cover]

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he played at Schokoladen a couple of weeks ago.
i had been excited to go and see him, having heard his Home album that sounds totally inappropriate for his age, that is, way too mature.
but then, the crowd made it all shallow.
am i getting older? do the younger people remain young? i dunno.

i've never heard the Midlake version, i don't even know that band. maybe you do.

listen.


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UNREST yes she is my skinhead girl

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Mark Robinson. again and again.
here under the Unrest flag.
released by the K records label - Calvin Johnson's, head of Beat Happening, another essential band of those days.

this is a major indie event.
when will there be a Mark & Calvin band?

i may have been fucked by sex
but i was blessed by love

listen.


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MOUNT EERIE let's get out of the romance (black)

.
Phil Elverum, who used to play under the MICROPHONES moniker.

a bodhisattva or a megalomaniac sarcastic hippie? it's up to you.

the song also appears on the No Flashlight lp (the moan it's called there) - a revelation, to me.
but in a different version, this one being rawer, less controlled.

be in the dark without light. be in a relation to someone without any certitudes.


here's the 'real' Let's Get Out-song:




the black ink on the cover is as dark as can be. coal-black.
oh, and the vinyl is white. all the first Mount Eerie records had to be on white vinyl.

does it matter?
it does.


listen.


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HALF-HANDED CLOUD sewing wind to fabric

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bought in berlin's best indieblackmetalwhatever-store.

the artwork. the label (Asthmatic Kitty - Sufjan Steven's very own).

in the end, the music. opulent in its means, both instrumentally and in harmonies and melodies, but so sparse in its developments.


listen.


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