I own the “Ceylon” 7″ (MEL 12) released by Meller Welle Produkte in 1995. Pastel Coloured Days sound like a good shoegazy band. But there’s very little info about them. So I start my detective work.
This 7″ was the band’s debut. It had “Ceylon” and “Singing in My Sleep” on the A side and “Fading Fire” on the B side. But I was surprised to see two other releases by this German band on Discogs that I had no clue existed.
One is a demo released as a floppy disk. Remember those? I guess if you find a copy now it would be very difficult to listen to the song in it. I assume it would be just one song. These floppy disks didn’t have that many megabytes to be stored on them…
The other release is an album released in 1996 by the German label Supermodern. The album titled “Dreampool” (SM/B00-002) had 13 songs: “Picnic On Valentine’s Day”, “Red Rain”, “Caroline”, “New Day”, “Away”, “Smash!”, “All By Myself”, “Betranced”, “Clouds for Kai”, “Fading Fire”, “Kerstin”, “On and On” and “Ambient Cat”. The songs were produced by Rallo Barmeler and Wiegbert Pieper (bass player of the band Percy & the Gaolbirds) and mastered by Mario Thaler (owner of Uphon-Tonstudio in Weilheim). Someone mentions that this release came in a very special shaped digipak. What does he mean? What made it special?
I wonder then if the band was close to the area of Weilheim. I think that’s southwest of Munich. Bavaria.
So I keep looking and I hit a good find. A Bandcamp. The “Dreampool” album is there, you can listen to it. On top of it all it tells us the names of the band members. Good!
So it was Steve Bates on guitar and vocals, Mario Krohnen on guitar, Zuzie Marmetshcke on bass and Matthias Reimann on drums.
They also have uploaded a remix of their song “Fading Fire”, a remix titled “Dark Ambient Remix”.
I keep digging. I find a review for a self-titled album by a band called Mindslide. It seems this band hailed from Bielefeld in East Westphalia. This EP dates from 2013 and the band started in 2012. Most interestingly it had members of Pastel Coloured Days in the band. At least we know Steve Bates was in both bands.
Now Bielefeld is far from Weilheim.
I find Matthias Reimann listed as a musician in a German band ccalled S.C.R.I.P.T. This band had released a self-titled tape in 1989. Interestingly there’s a song in this tape that has the name “Pastel Coloured Days”.
Then I find another location. Detmold. A blog called Matthias Poltrock – ART mentions that the band hailed from there. That makes more sense. Detmold is close to Bielefeld. He also links to Mario Krohen’s website. Mario is now a kinetic artist. Very cool!
Zuzie Marmetschke I believe works now on a festival calls Owls’n’Bats that happens in Detmold. It is a festival for darker bands, not indiepop.
And that’s what I could find about them. Figured out where they were from and ended up listening to their album which I didnt know existed! Not bad!
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