Day 104.

Not much news today. But here’s some new music!

Remington Super 60: the great Norwegian band have a new song out called “Still Near” which is slated to be released on an upcoming EP this fall. The song is breezy and sweet, dreamy and bright. The synth melodies work like a charm on this one. Lovely really.

Lunchbox: another band that is back this year is the California duo formed by Tim and Donna. After the 2018 comeback they seem to have been quiet. Happily they have just released two new songs on their Bandcamp, “New Year” and “All Around the World”.

Lazy Eye: Indonesia keeps surprising me with the amount of quality indiepop. Lazy Eye doesn’t fall behind and they have released a terrific EP titled “Digital Primavera” consisting of 5 songs. The band is formed by Isabllea Maulidya, Cahyo Ahdiyatman, Bambang Bimo and Muhammad Darmawan.

English Summer: now three very jangly songs from Caleb Carr and his one-man project English Summer. Based in Clare, Australia, Caleb has only started putting songs up this month. In his latest effort he presents us with “Our Compromise”, “I’ll Help You” and “I Know You”

Freddie’s World: who is Freddie? It seems just a guy from Oakland who has recorded 4 songs, one of them a Dear Nora cover, in his bedroom. It sounds like 2003-2004 days. When the bedroom pop explosion happened and we were all sharing songs on Soulseek. Maybe Freddie has come a bit late to the party? Or maybe not. Maybe there is interest in lo-fi indiepop once again!

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Maybe you already know them, maybe this is the first time you hear about them. Me, I know very little about them. I managed to get a copy of The Pranksters’ sole 7″ recently and here I am digging for more information.

This 7″ was released by one of the most famous Australian labels, Waterfront Records in 1988. The catalog number was DAMP 70 and included two songs, “Living Edge” and “Traffic”. Worth noting too that it was released as a double A sided record, “Living Edge” being A and “Traffic “AA”.

I didn’t try to track down this band when I was planning my failed Australian retrospective compilation. Maybe I would have been able to find more information about them. Not sure. Now is my chance I suppose by writing this article. Discogs has some basic information about them.

The band was formed by Andrew Young on drums, Darion McCafferty on guitar and vocals, James Dixon on vocals and guitar and Darren Jones on bass and vocals. The songs on the 7″ were recorded at Paradise Studios and engineered by Tom Colley. They were mixed by Nick Mainsbridge and the band at Earth Media. Other people that helped in the record were Andrew McIntosh on guitar and keyboards and Philip Kerney on bass. The artwork is credited to Darren, the bassist. Both songs are credited to James Dixon.  And we also know the band was based in Sydney.

Aside from this 7″ the band appeared on two compilations. The first dates from 1986 and was called “On the Waterfront” (DAMP 31). On this record the band contributed the songs “City View” and “Untitled Day”. Eric Van Der Sande produced both tracks.  Then in 1989 on the cassette compilation “Lemon Cassette 3” released by Lemon Music the band contributed the song “Waiting for the Drought to Break”.

Checking if the band members had been in any other bands I notice that Darren Jones had been in Glovebox and Big Heavy Stuff, Andrew Young in Barb Waters and the Rough Diamonds, and James Dixon in Amplifier Machine, Drop City, Odette and Swordfish.

I keep Googling about The Pranksters but I don’t seem to find any other details about them. Hopefully I will get some help from you all eventually. I am sure some of you remember them. So yeah, any info on them will be great!

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Listen
The Pranksters – Living Edge