Today I want to feature a band that I’ve always been curious about. They are quite mysterious to me as they don’t promote themselves much, they had great looking records, and they sound great.

They were active during the latter part of the last decade and hailed from Japan. Not sure why they called themselves Petersfield either.

Back in 2017 I was in touch with one of the band members, Hiroyuki Tomita, from whom I bought three records, their “Anorak Girl” 7″ that was released in 2015, a split 7″ and the album “A Girl Like You” from 2017. I notice today that they released two more records afterwards. I missed them!

There is very little info about them online, so hopefully my Japanese friends can help me with more info. Would love to know any other details about them. Starting with band members names!

The first release was the “Anorak Girl” 7″ that had the title song on the A side and “London Weekend” on the B side. This 2015 release was out out by Radio Underground Records (RS002).

This same label released in 2017 the album “A Girl Like You” (RUG025). This album had 10 terrific songs, “Summer Time”, “A Picture of Dorian Gray”, “Creation”, “Afterhours”, “Anorak Girl”, “A Girl Like You”, “Cool Guitar Boy”, “Distant Shore”, “Londonweekend” and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”.

Then the band released a split 7″ on Neo City Records (NCR001) in 2017. This record had them on the B side with the song “Nostalgie”. On the A side was the Japanese band Flashlights which is also pretty good. Here we find some names, not the complete names, but some names nonetheless. “Nostalgie” was written by Hiroyuki Tomita with lyrics by Fumi. We know then that Tomita, Go and Fumi were on Petersfield.

Neo City Records would release in 2019 an EP titled “Starry Eyes” (NCR002). This EP adds a few members to the band. I notice too that we get the instruments here. So we know Fumi was on vocals and bass, Miki on chorus, Rieko on drums and Miki and Tomita on guitar. The songs on this record are “Starry Eyes”, “There She Goes”, “Fantasy World” and “As Tears Go By”.

Lastly in 2020 the band released yet another split 7″. This time shared with the superb The Clovers. It was released by Big Cat Records (BCR0002) and the song Petersfield contributed was “Afterhours”. This track was recorded at Studio Ichinosuke in Tokyo in June of 2020.

Lastly the band contributed two songs to a 2022 LP compilation titled “Nu Psychic Teen Sounds!” released by the fine KiliKiliVilla label (KKV-128VL). On this record the band had thee songs “I’m Not Sayin'” and “Lazy Sunday”. The back of the sleeve of this record shows the band as trio, one guy, two girls.

And it is that same lineup that I see on a video of a live performance of the band playing the song “Window Shadow“.

And that’s all there is to say about them. I know it wasn’t much, but I hope that I least I am making you discover a very cool band!

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Listen
Petersfield – Afterhours