It’s less than a week now. That is for me to be in my favourite town in the world. London.  And then head to Indietracks for a weekend full of indiepop and friends. That’s pretty soon. Am I ready? Almost. I got everything I’ve been asked to bring. I’m only missing some CDs for the DJing time at The Miller next Thursday when The Secret History, Comet Gain and Pale Spectres may as well play the best Indietracks warm-up gig ever. The issue is my old CDs seem scratched and they skip. I have to look good in London!

My mind the last couple of days has been somewhere else though. Aside from very nice email exchange with some friends that are going to Indietracks, I haven’t been thinking much about the festival. To my surprise I havent listened to the Indietracks mix compilation that is free for download. I wasn’t even aware it existed until today. What’s the matter with me? Have I decided to live under a rock unconsciously?

So where’s my mind?

My mind is in Latin America actually. As odd as it sounds. Three events in the past week have made me watch what’s unfolding there.

1. I receive an email from a well known cultural magazine in Lima, Peru. They have stumbled upon one of my early posts on the blog. In this post I talk about a band from Wales called Peruvian Hipsters who had this one fantastic 7″ (that I still haven’t found!) that includes the song ‘Tony Hadley’. A should-have-been indiepop hit. The music writer asks me if I have any contact with the band, if I could help him as he wants to write an article about them. Of course I know it’s not really an article about the music. What the writer cares is why they are called Peruvian Hipsters. It’s an odd curiosity for anyone Peruvian, to have any sort of recognition aside from Machu Picchu and a couple other things we are very proud of. He writes me in English. He hasn’t even checked I’m his countryman. It sometimes surprises me the lack of use journalists give google. Anyhow. I help him, pointing him where to find the Peruvian Hipsters. On top of that, knowing his lack of musical knowledge and his true intentions I also point them to the now Bristol-based band Peru. I even sell it to him saying they have a song called “Cubillas” in honor of the great soccer player that dazzled the Scottish squad of 78. Yes, that one with Kenny Dalglish. Anyhow, I haven’t heard from him again.

2. A well known Peruvian writer has landed a job at a magazine. A glossy magazine that mostly prints articles and photos of the great social events of the Lima high-class. His job? Write about music. The issue? He doesn’t know anything about music. Fast forward. He reviews my latest release on Plastilina Records, the Eva & John flexi. When he sends the article to my partner telling him that he didn’t like the record, he also adds, “but don’t worry it will make them popular”. Arrogance. I find that attitude insulting. Who does he think he is? The article he writes is a mess. A true example again of the lack of use of google, calling the band a duet when it’s a four-piece. This easily to confirm if you just see a video on Youtube. A lack of music knowledge lets him slip into ignorance claiming a lack of originality when there hasn’t been a single Latin American band that had sounded like this. Surprising enough he even calls the band empty but pretentious and criticizes the cover artwork that is such a beautiful nod to the Wedding Present’s George Best. This time with a Peruvian star, Hugo Sotil, who had a great streak in Barcelona in the 70s. Funny thing is, I know google, and I search for the cover artwork of his acclaimed novels that I havent read yet, and I find incredibly ridiculous that he could actually criticize our artwork. His artwork is the best example of what pretension is. Some people shouldn’t be allowed to write. Nor even have a public opinion. Issue number two. I write about this, I deconstruct his article on the Plastilina facebook page. There’s good support. But sadly my label partner feels that he will have to answer all the dumb Peruvians for my writing. So he decides not to take part of it. I wouldn’t call it cowardice as some people go ahead and say they want to hit us, punch us, kick us, etc. Just for uncovering the ignorance of this writer. Violence. That’s the solution for them. Those who have lost any words to defend themselves. The question is, how could someone who actually admits not knowing anything about music have a space, a column, to write? Thing is, this happens everywhere, not only in Peru. Just check that article about indiepop some years ago on Pitchfork.

3. There’s this great Mexican fanzine called Kill People You Like ran by a lovely couple, Lalo and Liz. So they did interview me for their fanzine, but that you can read if you buy the next number. I actually wrote a piece for the zine. Supposedly it’s coming as an insert, accompanying the orange-ink zine. My topic, how this dream of mine to save the Latin American indiepop scene in 2006 ended up into nothing, but now, thanks to their effort and some other people in countries like Mexico, Brazil and Peru, it’s not just my dream anymore but also the dream of many other people down south. It made me nostalgic of the days I used to discover bands on Myspace that made indiepop in places like Monterrey or Sao Paulo. The days when I made a CD compilation for a Peruvian magazine. When I wrote an article for them too. When I got all the enemies I could by telling a couple of truths to the lazy and self-indulgent music press of my country. When I cut ties with all that because Cloudberry was a much better and rewarding idea. But now I feel I can extend my arm, and feel ties with them again. Because there’s passion, there’s excitement, and I feel there could be an exciting scene brewing if all things go right. Yes. Writing such a piece had made me nostalgic. No surprise I’m flying to Peru this year after 7 years almost.

Anyhow, Indietracks. I will make myself think Indietracks 24/7 from now on. That is my new challenge. It shouldn’t be that difficult, right? As Brilliant Corners are playing!

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The Mandelbrot set is a mathematical set of points whose boundary is a distinctive and easily recognizable two-dimensional fractal shape. The set is closely related to Julia sets (which include similarly complex shapes), and is named after the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, who studied and popularized it.

That doesn’t still make much sense for me, but you can continue reading about it here. I used to be good in maths in high school though, but this seems pretty advanced. Were the kids on The Mandelbrot Set into maths? Or why did they named their band like this? I find it very odd. From what I heard when they were in the band they were pretty young, teenagers even.

The band hailed from Adelaide, Australia.
Named in honour of Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, queen consort to King William IV, the city was founded in 1836 as the planned capital for a freely settled British province in Australia. Colonel William Light, one of Adelaide’s founding fathers, designed the city and chose its location close to the River Torrens in the area originally inhabited by the Kaurna people. Light’s design set out Adelaide in a grid layout, interspaced by wide boulevards and large public squares, and entirely surrounded by parkland. Early Adelaide was shaped by religious freedom and a commitment to political progressivism and civil liberties, which led to the moniker “City of Churches”.

They released a CD mini-album called “A Place Called Kansas” in 1992 that I first knew it existed thanks to Peter Hahndorf, Twee.net master. He had included a song by them, Landslide, on this double CD-R album he was hoping to put together of obscure Australian indiepop called “The Sound of Glen Waverley”. A response to the Leamington Spa series. This compilation was never properly released even though I had once attempted to do it but I was going to clash with Egg Records’ Kevin. So I desisted. Thing is, neither him, neither me, ended up releasing an Australian indiepop nuggest compilation. Terrible. Anyhow. This song, Landslide, was SO good. Amazingly good. And then I went on a unfruitful search for this CD. Still today I’m looking for it. Any generous person out there that has two copies, please be kind to me!

The CD was released by Ra Records, who I believe were part of RooArt, if not the same. The catalog is this crazy number 4509905212. It was recorded at Paradise Studios, Sydney, during Autumn 1992 and this was the tracklist:

1 A Place Called Kansas
2  Landslide
3  More Than Happy
4  Massive
5  Julia
6  I Swan
7  Lush

Discogs lists these credits too for the CD:

Bass, Vocals – Adam McBeth
Design – Marcelle Lunam, Simon Alderson
Drums – Michael Bajer
Guitar – Brian Pyper
Producer [Assistant] – Michelle Barry, Tim Northam
Producer, Mixed By – Mandelbrot Set, The, Wayne Connolly
Songwriter – Mandelbrot Set, The
Vocals, Guitar – Christie Scardigno, Tim Mortimer

After this, in 1993 they released another CD. An eponymous CD that included five songs. These were:

1   Automation
2  Nothing You Need
3  Non-Stop Action
4   *****
5   Collider

I’ve never seen this CDs either, and I’ve only listened to Non-Stop Action thanks to a Myspace page, which is still up.  I wonder if this page was ran by members of the band.

The rest of the credits for this CD are:
Artwork By [Cover] – Simon Alderson, Nick Scardino & The Mandelbrot Set
Producer – Daniel Denholm, Mandelbrot Set, The
I know it’s not the same Scardino and Scardigno. But the coincidence is there. Does Christie who sang and Nick who designed this last CD were sister and brother?

A blog by the name “The Lucid Ocean Diaries” writes about a gig when the band The Lucid Ocean and The Mandelbrot Set once shared the bill. There’s a couple of little tidbits that interest us:

“We overkilled on lighting effect. As the Mandelbrots had their customary white backdrop we decided to use slides. We had a slide for every song, mostly marine shots, with one that Andrew and I found in the library of a cyclone.”

“Afterwards I just loaded my gear into the car and left. Some Mandelbrot hanger onner said we were good, and said he liked Circle, but I just couldn’t bring myself to say anything to him. I just wanted to get out of there as fast as possible!”

“I subsequently found out we got ripped off again. Apparently the Mandelbrots were given $200 for both bands. Their manager reckoned we were not entitled to any of it. But Andrew and Wayne pestered him, and we got $60 in the end, with the Mandelbrots claiming they didn’t know what was going on, like they did all the time before the gig when we requested info about it.”

They were getting good money The Mandelbrots! They were headliners. They seem to have been a popular band at least in Adelaide. How the hell are their two CDs this hard to find? That is very odd.

The writer of the article has been kind enough to even scan an article from the local music magazine called “dB” were the gig at the Big Ticket on Thursday January 9th of 199(2-3???) has been reviewed by Fiona Dalton. You can check it here. I’ll transcribe the part were the Mandelbrot Set is mentioned. Bear with me.

“We were rescued however, when the Mandelbrot Set took to the stage. Returning to the world of gigs after a two month hiatus with a set of ten songs and without their usual onslaught of dry ice effects (the management felt that a smoke machine might set off their fire alarm), the Mandelbrots reaffirmed their position as one of Adelaide’s best.

Live, the Mandelbrot Set are always far more intense and complicated than on their recordings to date, a fact exemplified by, the, ahem, pumped up versions of I Swan and Joy in Despair. Four numbers in we were treated to a new song, and just when it was reaching it’s noisiest, semiplosive heights, the whole thing just kind of fell in.

Not quite, but drummer Michael had a broken snare. There followed a bit of a wait while a snare was hastily borrowed from Lucid Ocean, wherein they thanked us several times for coming, reeled off a list of their forthcoming gigs, and Tim held up a small black box and quipped “This is an e-bow. Big Country used a lot of these.” I guess you had to be there.

Back on track they launched into Dream so Hard, Julia, Landslide and Wump. It is interesting to see that in recent gigs they have shed earlier favourites such as More Than Happy in exchange for a more guitar obsessed angle. Luckily this is no bad thing. Indeed the only disappointment of the night was that they didn’t play an encore, which would have been nice.

The only other complaint I heard murmured amongst the punters (and there were a lot ot us) was that someone in A Wealthy Record Company hasn’t yet loosed the purse strings to allow for a purchasable product.

But this has nothing at all to do with the evening, which was most enjoyable with the Mandelbrots, as ever, frothing forth with memorable pop song after memorable pop song.”

Quite interesting right? Wish I had been at one of their gigs! Did they ever reform by the way? Or they just quit in the early 90s?

Another blog, but run by the same person, Ralph Dodger, and called “Sh sh sh shoodabeen HUUUUUUUUUUGE!” wrote a bit more about the band. Thanks to it, I learn that their second CD was mostly influenced by New Order and had an electropop/dance vein to it. And that it is true, that the band just disappeared after releasing the second CD! Shame.

To add to the mystery, I once stumbled on ebay, back in 2011, with a listing for a 12″ test pressing for the “A Fractal” EP. The listing description says: “On Tweenet there is only one entry for THE MANDLEBROT SET as a cd issued in 1992.However this ultra rare 12” issued by Pure records(pressed in France) has 4 slices of classic if not virtually unknown music.Tracks are:’Love You Now’/’The Odyssey’/’Shout About it’/’Look in Your Eye’.Labels are white with a/b written in pen.Some of my friends suggested i put a reserve on this item but instead i will start at a sensible price.Sleeve ex- as there is a slight bump along base but vinyl ex. ”

Was it the same band? I tend to doubt it. But MAYBE?

And that’s about all I could find about them online. Which is not little, but still, there’s still a lot of mysterious veil covering the band. If anyone out there knows anything else at all about them please share!

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Listen
The Mandelbrot Set – Landslide