About to wrap this “challenge” of bands with names starting with each letter of the alphabet. After this one, just one more to go.
The weekend was busy with friends visiting town and the Champions League final, but one always has to find some time to write about indiepop, isn’t that right?
Kinoue64: who is Kinoue64? It looks like it is a single person’s project from Japan. But other than that I can’t figure out any other details. The band have 3 superb jangly songs on their Bandcamp though they are instrumental. I wish they had vocals though! Maybe they will be added later?
Kidsmoke: the Wrexham, UK, band is back with a new brand song called “She Takes You Under” which shimmers! This song is the third single to promote the upcoming debut album the band will release this summer. So let’s wait for that!
The Slow Summits: this new band from Linkoping in Sweden has just uploaded 4 great indiepop songs on their Bandcamp. It says it is released by Hundred and Thousand Records, the question is, is there a physical version? Something pretty cool too is that our heroine Amelia Fletcher sings backing vocals on the opening track “The Spirit of the Lyrics” and also on “Regrets”. This is so good! Can’t wait to hear more! And please if someone knows if there is a CD or vinyl version of this let me know.
Horsebeach: a true blog favourite. I have featured the Manchester band so many times. The band is working on a new album these days which will be called “The Unforgiving Current” and the band has already started promoting it with the song “Dreaming”. They even have a video for it!
Seaside Stars: remember this band from Wieden, Germany? They released their album “The Magic of Stereo” in 2001, on Firestation Records. If you do that’s great, if you don’t that is great too. This is a great opportunity to check it out, the band formed by Hans Forster and Andi Schuwirth has made the album available digitally on Bandcamp now.
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This probably will be a short post. The letter Y is for The Yesterday Sky. Our challenge is almost over.
Only one song was released by them. It was a special occasion. But first we need to understand who were behind the band. It was illustrious people. Important names in the indiepop world. Two nice people from London: Annemari Davies and Robert Wratten who used to be in a band called The Field Mice. Yes, I assume you know who The Field Mice is, right? One of the best indiepop bands ever. They were around from 1988 to 1991 and released a bunch of records on Sarah. All classic records.
Now I remember I met once Bobby Wratten at a London Popfest. That was really awesome. I got a fan photo with him at The Lexington. Annemari I haven’t met but I love the way she sings. Together they would release records as Northern Picture Library and also later in Trembling Blue Stars. The thing is, between The Field Mice and Northern Picture Library they were called The Yesterday Sky.
They only released one song, “A Winter’s Dawn”, on the legendary compilation 7″ “International Pop” that was released by Mind The Gap (SEAGAP ONE) and Season Records (SEAGAP ONE). Mind The Gap being the label of Peter Hahndorf from Twee.net. Peter gave me a copy of this record many years ago when I visited him in Bremen. A record I cherish because it has songs by Red Sleeping Beauty, The Sugargliders, The Legendary Bang and The Yesterday Sky. All top tracks. Season Records was based in Australia of course. There was the intention of releasing more compilation 7″s by both labels afterwards but it seems they never happened.
According to the insert that came with the 7″ The Yesterday Sky only existed for this one song. I assume then that no other songs were recorded for this project? Or who knows? Maybe there were a few more in the same recording session? I would love to think that happened. Maybe in a parallel universe. The insert also mentions that the label was to release the Northern Picture Library albums on the French label Danceteria. As far as I know that didn’t happen. The label went bust and the band signed to Vinyl Japan. But that’s another story.
I find a blog called A Goldfish Called Regret that dedicated a post to The Yesterday Sky and other Bobby Wratten projects. Here the author describes with detail the song, how much it made an impression to him. Even though it doesn’t add any details or information about the Yesterday Sky, reading it inspired me. I love posts like this, where the love of music is number 1.
There is not much more written about this band or this song. Perhaps it was just a demo song. I don’t know. I just feel I would love to hear more. It probably won’t happen. But I do wonder why this project only lasted the one song?
EDIT: Peter from Twee.net just gave me an interesting tidbit on Twitter: there is a different, original version of Winter’s Dawn, but I never heard of any other songs, they moved on to NPL quickly.
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