Day 439
Beach Vacation: let’s start this week in Brest, France. That’s where the label Too Good to Be True is based. They are releasing a limited CD album by Beach Vacation on June 4th. This 11 song album is titled “I Fell Apart” and sounds pretty good! We can preview three tracks from the album now and as I said, really enjoyable.
April June: now we cross the southwest border and we are in Spain. Not sure exactly where in Spain. But there’s a band there called April June that makes beautiful pop songs! Wow. What a nice surprise. Their latest song “Have a Hell of a Nice Life” sounds like a slice of Swedish indiepop circa 2006. This is very good!
Gus: “It’s Gus!” is a demo tape from the early days from Chapter Music from Australia. It was formed in the 90s by Guy and Richard from that well known label and the Salty & Delicious fanzine in Perth. As a band they existed for a few days in Brisbane in 1994 and recorded these 5 songs. As an indiepop archaeologist I love this. Would love to know more about this project. An interview could be cool?
Valentina Way: is this the new project by Charlie Darling? It looks like it! Just one song is on their Soundcloud, “Say it Say it Say it” which is superb! Fun and catchy, with a “back story” that could well be true! We should keep an eye for any new songs they put out!
The Laundromat Chicks: and because last week we featured the Austrian band’s Bandcamp and new songs, well, it makes sense to now check out their new video for the song “Catch It”! This is a superb song, very The Bats! So don’t miss this one!
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We head to Finland today. It has been a while since I featured a band from that country. A country I really enjoyed visiting and I hope to be back again in the near future, when all of this nightmare of the pandemic is over. Have a nice salmon soup and a karelian pie. Why not.
The Autobiographical Dancers hail from Finland. I don’t know much more right now. Not sure where from Finland they were from. But I hope while I write this post I’ll find out. I got to them a long time ago, thanks to the blog From a Northern Place. The person behind that blog, who I have never met or exchanged emails which surprises me!, shared a song called “Night Falls” from the band’s album “Fey”. And I immediately loved the soft and elegant sounds of it. It sounded timeless. And I wondered how come this band is so obscure!
According to Discogs the band hailed from Helsinki. Okay, that’s a good piece of information. Easy detective work. Lovely city too. I remember now getting a moose kebab at the old market. Interesting things one does when traveling. Yeah, I miss it. I will guess then that the recording studios where they made the album, Viidakkorumpu Studios, was in this same city, the capital. The songs were recorded and mixed there in July 1988.
That same year the album was released. It came out on Gaga Goodies (GOOD-6), a label founded in 1987 by Kimmo Miettinen. The idea behind this label was to release Finnish bands who sang in English and didn’t use keyboards. In their catalog I see Poverty Stinks which I know, but in general most of their releases are unknown to me. I should try to discover any treasures there.
The album is kind of short, 7 songs. The A side has “Heaven”, “Ghost of You”, “Night Falls” and “April” while the B side has “The Glass Bead Game”, “The Twerp” and “Before Leaving”. All songs are credited to the band but “The Twerp” which is credited to the band and to Sakari Kukkonen (I found info about a Veli-Sakari Kukkonen, is he the same? If so he was in bands like Zero Nine, Ramblers, Nights of Iguana and U-Bayou). He also is credited for additional percussion.
The band was a four piece. It was formed by Pola on vocals and guitar, Zu on drums, Tape Riihmäki on bass, and Jay on guitar.
Other credits on the record are for Annika Ursin on backing vocals and Petri Eskola (From Monday and Standing Ovation) on piano. The cover photography is credited to Tape and the band’s photo by Ursula.
Aside from the record the band contributed the song “Heaven” to two compilations.
The first is from 2005 and I’ve mentioned it before on the blog, “Sivulliset – Valikoima Suomalaista Vaihtoehtorockia Vuosilta 1985-2000”, a 4CD boxset that sort of compiles the most important indie bands of Finland. This record was released by Poko Rekords (VALOSA1). Then in 2011 we see them again on another 4CD boxset, “Miettinen – Pieni Rockhistorikki 1979-2000”. This one was released by their own label, Gaga Goodies (MBOX-1).
I also find some other bands they were involved with. Tape was in a band called Variance in the early nineties. And Jay, whose real name is Jukka Hannukainen, was in many bands like Emmenthal Socapex, Palms on Hips and Variance. He also works as a composer, sound designer, producer and DJ. He has a soundcloud here.
And that’s it. No more info about the band. I am curious about the rest of the songs. I haven’t heard them. Are they as good as “Night Falls”? I hope so. And what happened about the other members? On Discogs I saw comments saying that the drummer Zu is quite a mystery. How come? What are they now? Did they continue making music? Had they made music before The Autobiographical Dancers? Did they gig much? Did they have a big following? Hopefully we’ll find out some day…
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