Just finished Tracey Thorn’s “My Rock n’ Roll Friend” and I had to say it is my favourite of her books so far. Gave her 5 stars on Goodreads. Really enjoyed all the anecdotes with Lindy Morrison, and all these stories of the 80s in London. Stories about The Go-Betweens, mentions of bands like The Bodines or The Woodentops. I was transported and was as close as I could be as to those days I never lived. If you haven’t read this book I urge you to do so!
Art Museums: the fantastic and underrated Art Museums from San Francisco was formed by Josh Alper and Glenn Donaldson. Glenn who you might know from The Reds, Pinks & Purples. I wasn’t aware that there was a “lost album” by them. I just found out on Bandcamp. Though it says that there should be 15 tracks in total but I only see 11. In any case the songs are superb, I totally recommend them.
Drizzly: second time checking out Paska Records from Surabaya, Indonesia, after The Caroline’s. Their latest song is by a band called Drizzly. There is not much info about them, that the singer is called Amanda and mostly that’s all. The song is called “Bitter to See You” and it is pretty pretty. Fragile and upbeat.
Pop Threat: few copies are still available for “Give Me The Sonic Kill: 1999-2003” the great retrospective compilation by the noisy popsters from Leeds. There are two versions of this release, one that has 23 songs, another that has 16. I guess you know which one to get. Don’t miss out on this one.
Top Sound: there’s a new album by the Swedish band! It is called “Isn’t Happiness” and it is available on CD as of last February. With a beautiful artwork, the CD has 10 songs. The band formed by Johan Fredriksson, Katarina Andersson and Tobias Adolfsson seems to be in top shape here.
The Last Broadcast: this duo formed by Kyle McGurk and Paolo Lombardo has released their first song called “Daisy” as aa digital single on Bandcamp. Somehow there is another date on Bandcamp, for October 2. Maybe then they will release a proper record with this song in it? Doesn’t seem clear.
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Today I was looking at my friend’s Tommy instagram account “silentsighcity”. There he does small bios of Swedish bands and that always help me remember many of them, that for a reason or another I hadn’t listened in a long time!
Douglas Heart, named themselves after Douglas Hart, the JAMC bassist, is the band his instagram brought back to my memory.
There was a piece of information that I wasn’t aware. That the band originally was called Hal Blaine (the US studio drummer) and with that name they recorded some demos back in 2001. Are these demos available anywhere? I wonder… I am curious to listen to them.
Previously both of them had been in a shoegaze band called Standing Pales. I have never heard this band, so if anyone can point me in the right direction that’d be great.
The band was formed as a duo by Pontus Wallgren and Malin Dahlberg. Later on more people would join the band including Max Sjöholm, Ramo Spatalovic and Daniel Fridlund Brandt. Pontus would later be in two fine bands Franke and Afraid of Stairs (I’ve been meaning to write about them), Malin was in the super Wee Are Soldiers Wee Have Guns, Laurel Music and Shipyard. Max was in Afraid of Stars and Laurel Music. Daniel in Animal Daydream, The Greencoats and My Brother Wind. And Rramo was in Franke, Melody Fields, Shipyard and The Greencoats. As you can see they collaborated a lot later on.
The band’s first release was a 7″ with two songs on Labrador. Released in 2003, the vinyl that came on a generic Labrador sleeve had the songs “Smoke Screen” on the A side and “The Fast Way” on thee B side. Catalog number was LAB 036.
The band released their album “Douglas Heart” (LAB024) the next year, 2004. 10 songs were included in it, “Smoke Screen”, “A Question of Gender”, “Dream”, “The Telephone Trick”, “Bear Olsson”, “Jim:, “Eveningsong #3”, “When We Become Strangers”, “Lights Dim”, “Song for Douglas”.
The album came out on CD and the artwork is credited to Elin Conradsson with design by Hugo Sundkvist. It was mixed by Björn Olsson (was the song “Bear Olsson” dedicated to him?) from The Soundtrack of Our Lives, The Sonic Walthers and more and Mattias Glavå. Björn produced the record and Mattias mastered it. Gunnar Frick played pedal steel guitar.
“I Could See the Smallest Things” (LAB067) was a 5-song EP released in 2004. With art from Elin Conradsson and recorded by Pontus, Ramo and Jonas Odhner in Spain at View of Parking Lot & Sonores studios between June and July that year. The songs that were included in this record were “Always No”, “Komplex” (with synths by Dan Olsson), “Timewaste/Lovewaste”, “Colonna Sonora” and “Microphones”.
No other releases by the band but they did appear on a few compilations.
“Explained” and “Jim” were actually the two first songs they released. They appeared on “Labrador Kingsize Vol#1” (LAB020) in 2002.
In 2004 the band contributed “Always No” to “CD 9 – 2004” released by Groove (GROOVE0408). That same year the song “The Fast Way (of Making Art)” appeared on “Labrador Kingsize Vol#2” (LAB052) and an extended version of this same song was on “Club AC30 #2” a CDR comp released by Club AC30 (AC301025).
2005 sees the song “Alison” appear on “Never Lose that Feeling Volume One” released by Club AC30 (AC302052). And in 2007 “Expired” appears on “David Design from Sweden with Love” (LAB031) and on the 4CD boxset “A Complete History of Popular Music” (LAB100) they had “Expired”, “Smoke Screen”, “A Question of Gender” and “Always No”.
The band had started recording a second album but don’t know how far along they got. I remember seeing online some songs for it many years ago if my memory serves me right. But nothing was ever released. According to Pontus Wallgren the songs for the 2nd album were lost in a computer crash though mixdowns and semi-mixed versions of the songs do exist. Hopefully one day they can finish them and release them!
So many things I’d love to hear… curious if anyone has more details? And yeah, what are they doing these days? Any cool pop projects?
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