News. Bits and bobs. Releases. Songs. Stuff. May offerings.
- The Cloudberry blog was on a little vacation, but now I’m back! While you are enjoying Indietracks I will be grounded for being bad. But good bad, not evil. I’m terribly jealous of you all enjoying the festival. I thought this year I was going to make it there, but it didn’t happen. London Popfest will be my next stop then. Well, a small visit to Germany is due this October, I’m really looking forward to that! I think I’ll be DJing in both Hamburg and Berlin. I’ll update about these events later. Hopefully meet you there? Would be nice to have some beers!
- Let’s get on the news though! A new 7″ in the horizon? Yup! That’s right. The mighty Parallelograms last offering will be out just a month from now. The release date is August 25th. What do you need to know about it? It’s the first 7″ Cloudberry release that includes 3 songs! The A side is reserved for the terribly catchy “Dream on Daisy” while the B side includes two future indiepop hymns “Papageno” and “Making Faces”. I’m very happy to get to work again with them, for the third time, especially as I’m such a sucker for their previous band, Velodrome 2000. If you haven’t listened them yet, check them here. Oh! and there will be badges for the first 100 orders!
- Also, there’s tons of news at my other beloved label, Plastilina. Jalito and me have been working quite silently during the last months after The Bridal Shop release. So what is coming up in our little Peruvian imprint? First Stop: check the video for The Bridal Shop’s “Ideal State” here.
- Second Stop: August 1st. And that’s just around the corner. This day marks one of the happiest and proudest moment for our label. It’s the release date of a new album by the legendary Pearly Gatecrashers! Oh dear, I’m such a fan of Lenore and Tim’s band. I’m pretty sure that “Age of Innocence” is the 7″ I’ve played the most of my whole collection. So, getting the opportunity to work with them is truly one of the biggest personal highlights this year! The album is called “But Wait, There’s More” and it includes 13 wonderful tracks that live up to the expectations of any Pearly Gatecrashers fan! A must for 2009!
- Third Stop: The Dubious Brothers’ “Antiques”. We will release in September this wonderful retrospective album the songs by this fantastic 80s band whose releases fetch for hundreds of pounds on ebay. So keep an eye on this one as I’m pretty sure it will get sold out as fast as the Bluetrain album.
- Fourth Stop: Also during the first days of September we’ll be releasing a compilation album including many of our bands hit songs and rare tracks. This will be a great introduction for anyone new to the label’s roster! For more info please visit our site here.
- Another release you shouldn’t miss at all is the Summer Cats debut album “Songs for Tuesdays”! I still need to get it on vinyl, but I’ve had listened the CD version and it is indeed one of the best this year. Slumberland has done a great job the past months releasing some of the best indiepop bands around like The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Liechtenstein, and now after more than a decade, one Earthmen gets a release again on the bay area label. I really recommend this album, and it includes two Cloudberry favourites: “Lonely Planet” and “Wild Rice”. Check the new video for the song “Super” here!
- Cherry Red continue to release some fine indiepop retrospectives! This time they bring us for the first time on CD the debut album by The Farmer Boys: “Get Out & Walk”. This is a must have for everyone! The label says:
First time on CD for the debut album from The Farmers Boys. Now fully expanded with ten bonus tracks alongside the original album – a full 1 hour 20 minutes of music. Includes the singles ‘More Than A Dream’, ‘For You’ and ‘Muck It Out’ (the latter did not feature on the original vinyl release!). 20 page booklet with an introduction from Stan, plus an archive interview with the whole band, along with promo photos, clippings and pictures from the bands personal collections. Produced by the band, Pete Hammond and Peter Collins, along with additional production from Pete Waterman and Julian Mendelsohn.
- Another fantastic release on Cherry Red is the retrospective album by Blow-Up. I already ordered but haven’t had the chance to listen to this one. I hope it arrives home soon… but it looks promising! The album is called “The Kerbstones Turns to Moss”. More info here.
- On more Cherry Red news… it seems they will re-release Another Sunny Days’ “London Weekend”! Hopefully there will be more news about this CD soon on the Cherry Red website.
- Back to the Farmers Boys, I only found out about the 2003 release “Once Upon A Time In The East”. It’s a retrospective of their earlier recordings, all in 8-track, way before the first album. You can grab a copy writing to Stan, the guitar player, here. I think there are not many copies left but give it a chance! And hey, if you can, convince them to do an interview for this blog!
- Although I’ve become less of a fan of Elefant during the last years, especially after dropping so many Spanish bands, they’ve kind of come back this year with very fine releases. Their latest is “The Rise & Fall of BMX Bandits” and this one I will order next week for sure. It’s not really a greatest hits but more of a Dugly’s favourite songs compilation. There’s even some unreleased tracks and very hard to find versions of album tracks. As a big BMX Bandits fan, this is superb news! You can read more about this release here.
- Probably I’m missing some more fantastic releases, so do recommend me some on the comments section… and yes, I remind you again that the Harrison double-CD is out and it’s one of the BEST releases this year. It’s two CDs worth of songs, no fillers! Order it here.
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