More Indietracks announcements. Gosh, it was just a week ago that I had reviewed the first batch of bands. And now there’s more! Also DJs were announced! I will need to figure out who are the people behind these DJs names as well, maybe someone can help me with that. This is what Indietracks posted:

We’re delighted to announce that Amber Arcades, Gwenno, Spinning Coin, Tigercats, Colour Me Wednesday and Tinsel Heart are among 24 artists and DJs added to the Indietracks 2018 line up today. They’ll join artists we’ve already announced for this year’s festival, including British Sea Power, Honeyblood, The Lovely Eggs, Dream Wife, Girl Ray, Sacred Paws, Darren Hayman, Even As We Speak and Anna Burch. Other artists joining the bill today are Linda Guilala, Best Praxis, Ex-Vöid, Sugar Rush!, Mighty Kids, Happy Spendy, Worst Place, Marlaena Moore, Tim the Mute, Navina, Rafa Skam and All Ashore!. Plus we’ll have late night entertainment from Asking For A Friend DJs, Bum Notes karaoke with Ruby Waters, Des Was A Bowie Fan DJs, Passionate Necking DJs, Recordsville Social DJs and Time Machine Disco DJs.

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I just discovered The Electrosonics. Really. I must admit that I have a bunch of 7″s by their label, Drive-In Records, but not any of their CDs. It happens that The Electrosonics only released in CD format on the label during the 90s. So yes, I missed them. Now I should try to catch up, get copies of their 3 releases, sit down, play them, and enjoy.

If you are into shoegazy sounds this might be for you. Dreamy girl vocals and guitar pedals. It is very nice indeed. And I’m even more surprised as I noticed that band members were later on Paper Moon, a band I do own all of their albums!!

And yes, if I said Paper Moon, it means the band hailed from Canada, though not from Winnipeg as Paper Moon but Vancouver. It happens that after The Electrosonics split Heather Campbell moved from Vancouver to Winnipeg. But yes, not here to talk about Paper Moon, which even has a Wikipedia entry, but about The Electrosonics.

I was lucky to find a handful of songs on Youtube and discover their music, though I must say that after hearing “Roo” I wasn’t exactly hooked. But then “Triamene” played and thought, this is brilliant! I want tom hear more. But neither of these two songs appear on their first release, the CDEP “Infra-Yellow” (DRIVE03 & QUID007) that Drive-In Records and its sister label Quiddity Records released in 1996. On a cardboard sleeve, this CD only had 3 songs: “Infra-Yellow”, “Retroflex” and “Star Stream”. All of them recorded at Downtown Sound Studios in December 95 and mastered at Gold Rush Studios in April 96.

The band was formed by Eric White on bass, vocals and guitar; Curtis Hobson on drums; Heather Campbell on guitar, keyboards, backing vocals; and Clare Kenny on guitar and vocals. Heather also took care of the artwork for the CD and the photography was done by Curtis. The engineer and producer for this record was Paul Siczek. A nice feature of the CD was that it included lyrics. It seems CDs these days rarely include the lyrics.

Their next release was the CD EP “Rampion” (DRIVE19) released in 1998 by Drive-In. This one had more songs, 5 in total. They were “Lazy Maisy”, “Triamene”, “Roo”, “Unsung Engine” and “Memory Bar the Door”. This time, August 1997, the band recorded at Bullfrog Studios in Vancouver with Howard Redekopp as the engineer. The songs were mastered by Craig Waddell. The images on the record are credited to Beatrix Potter. Here the band is much more detailed on what instruments they played. For example Curtis played a Moog Rogue, korg bass pedals and Roland beat box. Eric played a Moog Taurus and a lap steel. Heather played farfisa, arp axxe, Moog Opus 3 and Jupiter 8.

The band continued releasing with the Grand Rapids, Michigan, label that Mike Babb used to run. So a third CD EP came to life in 1999 and it was titled “Neutron Lullaby” (DRIVE36). This time the CD had one more song than the previous one, 6 then. But the truth is that three of them were remixes of the first 2. So, we find “Neutron Lullaby”, “Back on the Light” and “Prodrome” and also “Neutron Lullaby (Object Remix)”, “Back on the Light (Pre-Ignition Mix)” and “Neutron Lullaby (Dream Sequence Mix)”.  As you know I’m no fan of remixes but it is understandable as it was the late 90s. The Object Remix was taken care by Kevin Bolster, the Pre-Ignition Mix by Andrew Withycombe from The Ampersands, Hydroplane, The Cat’s Miaow and many more, and the Dream Sequence Mix by the band Buddha on the Moon.

The songs on the “Neutron Lullaby” EP were recorded in September 1998 at Lemon Loaf Studios in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. Also on this record we see that Michaela Galloway, who would later be in Hinterland, is credited for vocals and flute. Was Michaela Galloway behind the name Clare Kenny? I see her name in different bios but for some reason it only appears on their last EP.

I find an interview to Michaela on the website Step and a Half. Here when asked about the Electrosonics she says:
I used to be in Space Cadet, and in the Electrosonics. I am a much better musician now than I ever have been before. Joining the Electrosonics was very educational. Suddenly I was playing the Starfish Room (a big jump from the Press Club) and recording on something other than a 4-track. The other members of the Electrosonics were older than me, had been on tour and in the studio before. I feel like I really cut my teeth in that band. In the Electrosonics Eric White really had primary creative
control.

There are a few compilation appearances for the band. The first dates of 1996 and was a CD compilation called “Tiddleywinks (Volume One – Fun For Kids of All Ages!)” that was released by Chester’s Funtime Record Collection (CFRC 9503-2). Here the band contributes the song “Star Scream”.

In 1998, on the US CD compilation “Losing Today Volume 1” that came with the Losing Today “The Sky Is Grey” magazine the band appears with “Roo”. And the next year, on another US CD compilation called “Installation:03” that came freely with the third issue of the magazine Masstransfer, the band shows up with “Back in the Light (Pre-Ignition Mix)”.

I check the band members and I feel there are more than one Clare Kenny (unless she played in Orange Juice and The Apartments?) and Eric White (was he in the late 70s in The Kentucky Colonels? Doubt it!). On the other hand Curtis Hobson doesn’t sound like he was in the funk band ADC Band in the late 70s either, right? The only one that seems to have the right listings is Heather Campbell, who played in Paper Moon, Bossa Nova and also lately in The Intelligence Service.

A bit more of searching and I find that actually Clare Kenny was making music in 2014, I found a Bandcamp for a band called “What’s Hot!” where she was involved with. Much, much, punkier than The Electrosonics I must say. Then I stumble upon an old Myspace page where there are plenty of photos of the band.

Another find on the web is a review of a gig where The Electrosonics were support of a band called Perfume Garden on February 5th, 1998. This is what it says:
Clare Kenny is haunted by eyes. It’s fifteen minutes to showtime, and she’s starting to get a little stressed. She tries to find the beer tickets. She tries to find the rest of her band, the Electrosonics. She ponders Perfume Tree’s attempt to ‘choreograph’ the Electrosonics’ performance. And then, in front of the stage, in place of the usual disco ball, she’s confronted by the photo-mobile. It’s a the Electrosonics, gazing at their shoes zoetrope-like contraption which projects old photo portraits onto the walls. Old eyes stare blankly at Clare. In Victorian times, the London police would take pictures of the eyes of Jack the Ripper’s victims in the belief that their killer’s image would be burned into their retinae. Old eyes. Clare’s had enough of this.
Clare’s father (western Canada’s number one Jacques Cousteau lookalike) has driven all the way from Alberta to see her play; apparently he was getting a little bored. But the Electrosonics don’t disappoint. The set is tight, and with a guest appearance from Wendy Young (ex-Kaneva) on backing vocals and flute, the Electrosonics’ sound gets an extra layer of warmth and richness. The sound retains the Sinead O’Connor singing for Slowdive element it always has, but it’s a welcome thing to hear the keyboards becoming better integrated into the overall sound and the songwriting taking on more complex, suite-like arrangements. In other words, the Electrosonics are doing what all good bands should — evolving and improving by challenging their own abilities.

This is the online version of the Drop-D magazine. It actually has two more entries for The Electrosonics, but only an interesting  mention:
Look at the Electrosonics. With an independently-released CD out and a tour under their belt, but without airplay on a station that the general public isn’t afraid to listen to (face it, listening to CiTR is just too “icky” for your average Z95 fan to contemplate), the best they can do is scrape together less than ten friends here to see them. Well, it’s the public’s loss, really. Mildly sloppy though the performance is, there’s enough eau-de-Slowdive hanging in the air around them to make you realize how much you miss shoegazing. Though the pedal steel guitar is sadly absent from their setup, Claire Kenney’s Perfume Tree-style vocals and an occasional keyboard fill that quotes Zbigniew Preisner’s soundtrack work (The Double Life of Veronique, etc.) more than make up for it. The Electrosonics are just keeping the dreampop torch burning, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

I can’t find much more about The Electrosonics. I do find more information about other bands that the members were involved with. It must be that The Electrosonics were active in the 90s, when the internet wasn’t yet as popular. What I do find on the web it indeed dates from those dates on websites that look very old, antiques really. I have many questions of course, like if there are more songs recorded by the band, or if they were in any compilations at all. In Twee.net, they are listed as an American band, maybe that is a reason I never looked into them. But now I want to know more about them! Do you remember this brilliant Vancouver band?!

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Listen
The Electrosonics – Triamene