Friday! Today I start mailing Den Baron 7″s to everyone who has per-ordered! Remember that the official release date is July 1st! And also remember that I am heading to Spain next Thursday so if you want to save some postage I can definitely bring any records to you in Spain. I’ll be in Madrid, León, Gijón and Oviedo, but I can probably go to a post office too!

Now there is Copa America happening today and tomorrow. Probably will be busy with that. But here are some new pop finds for you to enjoy!

Destello Floral: “Vacío Temporal” is the newest song the Mexico City band has shared with us all. It is also the first single from their debut album “El Tiempo Lo Destruye Todo” which I hope gets released soon. I don’t know much about them but it seems there is just one man behind the music, Iván Flores. In the past he has done a wonderful song of the classic Julieta Venegas’ song “Lento” worth checking out!

Foliage: the San Bernardino project of Joseph Walker will be releasing a tape and vinyl on Z Tapes next September. This album will be called “Take” and as usual sounds gorgeous. We can preview on his Bandcamp three tracks, “Pattern”, “In Reference” and “Talk to Me”. They are lovely. The album will have in total 12 songs. Can’t wait to hear it all!

Holy Tunics: our friends from Meritorio Records in Spain have released the Brooklyn band’s new album called “Hit Parade Lemonade Supersonic Spree” on vinyl  just a few days ago. It contains 11 tracks of guitar pop influenced by the Paisley Underground scene. You can preview them all on Bandcamp. Something worth noting too is that the artwork for the sleeve looks great!

Peachier: some tweepunk from Portland, Oregon! This band formed by Rachael, Danny and Tom sound like lots of fun! So far they have a 5 song Ep titled “Life is Peachier” that is only available digitally so far.

Cristina Quesada: our friend Cristi has a new video out as she continues to promote her latest album “Think I Heard a Rumour” which is out now on Elefant Records. This time around she has a new video for the song “Love at Third Sight” which is a top dancey and disco pop track! Prepare to dance!

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Why not write today about an obscure flexi that was released in 1985 by the band The Big Sleep? I know nothing about it to be honest. I don’t own the record and have no clue where they were from.

I am sure they were British. But where from exactly? I do know that the flexi was released by Underground Records (STOP 1) and included two songs, “Saints and Scholars” and “Heaven Can Wait”. As of today I’ve only listened to the opening track, a superb guitar driven pop track.

The sleeve gives us some information. The band was formed by Stevy Baker on vocals and guitar, Raymond Robinson on bass and backing vocals and Darrin Robson on drums. The two songs were produced by Keith McCormick for 1×1 Productions. They were engineered by Hugh Matier who also played keyboards on the record. Both songs were recorded at Matrix Studios in July 1985.

Aside from this flexi the band appeared on the “Messthetics #6: UK ’78-82 “D.I.Y.” Bands A & B” CDR compilation that was released by Hyped to Death (H2D#49). I do own some of the Messthetics, but the proper CD compilations, not the CDRs. So I wonder if these CDRs came with any interesting information about the bands, if it had a booklet?

Rateyourmusic does give some further details about the band, one that is pretty interesting. The band hailed from Belfast! I wouldn’t have guessed. They formed in 1984 and disbanded in 1997. That’s a long time. And only a flexi released? That’s odd!

Thanks to this information I could find them on Irishrock.org. There it mentions that the band was around over this long period on and off and recorded many demos and played many gigs (among them the Guinness Festival Showcase in Dcember 1986 in Belfast – which maybe there is footage of it, anyone knows?). Raymond Robinson left the band after releasing the flexi and was replaced by a member of the band The Keep (it doesn’t say the name). Later on Robinson’s cousin Kenny Armstrong played bass in later incarnations of the band and Robinson also returned to The Big Sleep.

There was plans to release a record with the song “Saturday Blue” in the 90s, it was even financed by Terry Hooley, but it never came to be. Darrin Robson was later involved running the label called Fantastic Plastic, which was based in London and released some fine records like The Sultans of Ping, Television Personalities, Bearsuit, The Wannadies, The Blue Aeroplanes and more.

Something that surprised me here were the photos of the flexi. It seems it came in many colours, blue, green, black, yellow and orange. It mentions too that the flexi was financed by adverts of local businesses that were printed on the back sleeve!

Now what are they up to now? And is there any information about these other demos that were recorded by the band? I’d love to find out. And more especially, I would love to listen to them. There is barely any other details about the band on the web. So finding about that would be fantastic. Who remembers them?!

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Listen
The Big Sleep – Saints and Scholars