Day 137. In the end I will be around all August. It is quite impossible to have vacations this year if you live in the US.
Anuncio en Blanco: the latest on the Mexican netlabel is a new album called “Un Lugar” by Anuncio en Blanco. At the moment we can preview two out of the 9 tracks included, “Siento Que Estés Aquí” and “Juntos Otra Vez”. Both are nice dreamy tracks. The album is to be released on August 14th.
Boosegumps: some low key bedroom pop in the “5 demos” tape release on Lost Sound Tapes. This project by Heeyoon Won from Philadelphia does remind us of The Softies, right? Especially the track “Perfect Autumn Day”.
Ribbon Stage: this New York band is releasing a 7″ EP with 5 tracks on August 7th. Right now we can preview two of the songs, “Favorite Girl” and “Cry in the Driveway”, two noisy pop songs that were recorded in Brooklyn and mixed in Olympia. Makes sense!
Shiny Times: “So Alone” is the newest track from Kim Weldin, one half of Tape Waves, is really good! If you like sweet, smart, melodic bedroom pop, that doesn’t sound too lofi, then this is perfectr for you.
Fritz: and perhaps my favourite song in this little review is Fritz’s “Arrow”. This band hailes from Newcastle, Australia, and is formed by Tilly Murphy, Cody Brougham and Darren James. Check them out!
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Who were 99th Floor? This Swedish band is a mystery to me. I don’t own any of their records (yet). But I think I will be able to get some information on the web!
It looks like their first ever release was a self-released 7″ with two tracks, “Dreamland” on the A side and “The Blue Hour” on the B side. It also looks like this was a promo release. And only 171 copies were pressed! The release had a sleeve, a black and white photocopy looking logo of the band. Here we also see who were the band members:
Andreas Brodow: bass
Anders Lindgren: guitar, piano
Bengt Lindbäck: guitar
Gunnar Sätterkvist: musical box
Ylva Lindgren: vocals, glockenspiel
Of course the first questions is if Anders and Ylva are siblings or family?
The band’s next release was a 7″ on Joker Records (JOKE 920). This label was based in south Stockholm, in the Johanneshov area and interestingly enough it was the first indie Swedish label to release a CD in 1989. That same year, they released the “I Walk Alone” 7″ by 99th Floor, with that track on the A side and “Blue Hour” on the B side. We know too that Anders and Ylva wrote the A side while the B side is credited to both of them and Bengt too. The band lineup continued being the same as the previous 7″ and one detail one here is that Anders Hörling was the engineer for both tracks. It is also worth mention that Ylva by this time had changed her last name to Håkansson… and that in the label of the 7″ we see Lindgren spelled Lindhgren for Anders. What was the correct spelling then?
So far my favourite song by them is “(Take Me To) Wonderland”. It may change after listening more and more their songs. I have just discovered them a few weeks ago. Well, this song was their third single, a 7″ with that song on the A side and “It’s Time to Leave” on the B side. This time around the band would change labels, now the label to release them was Exercises in Style (EIS 003). The year of this release was 1991 and the people behind this early 90s label were John Cloud, Joakim Jähnke and Peter Lindholm. The band members were still the same on this record. The two songs were recorded at Park Studio in Stockholm, with Anders Lindhgren from the band and Jan Olov Gullö (from the bands Sjöstrom&Gullö and Safari Season) as producers. Per Sommarström would design the art of the sleeve while Joakim Pirinen, a well known illustrator and comic book artist, provided the drawings. So now, can we agree that Lindhgren is with an H? Or did Anders change the spelling of his last name?
Their next release would be a CDEP called “”Sad Songs on a Happy Day”. Four songs were included in this 1992 EP: “Happy Revolution”, “Annie C/o Loneliness”, “Say Hello to the Day” and “Inside of Me’. It was released by Gullö Gram (GG-5991) which was possibly Jan Olov Gullö’s label who once again co-produced the songs.
Two years later, in 1994, the band would release a CD single with two tracks on Hawk Records (HAWKCDS1173). The songs were “Happy Revolution” (is this a different version of the previous release?) and “Window with a View”. I notice too on the credits on Discogs a credit for Lars Sköld (who played on Tiamat, Avatarium, among others) on drums, Malin Bjurberg on backing vocals and Niklas Olsson on organ.
In 1995 two of their songs would appear on the Swedish movie “Vackert Väder”: “Happy Revolution” and “Window with a View”. The same songs as the CD single. Then a few years later, in 1999, the band would again contribute a song to a movie, “Mamy Blue”.
The band also appeared on 5 compilations during their time. First in 1989 on the compilation “Nordic Sounds Volume 2” released by Joker Records (JOKE 917) they had the song “I Walk Alone”. Then the next year, in 1990, their song “Sell My Soul” appeared on the compilation “Motion” on Exercises in Style (EIS CD001). Munster Records from Spain would include them, in 1991, in the comp “Not the Singer but the Songs: An Alex Chilton Tribute”. On this one they would cover “Nightime”.
In 1991 the band would also contribute “Another World” to the LP compilation “The 4th Adventure” released by the Danish label Guiding Light Records (JEWEL 4). Lastly, “Happy Revolution”, would be incldued in “Pop & Rock! (Hit Acts Sweden 1995)’. This last one was a promotional CD released by ExMS (INFOGRAM 27) in 1995 in Sweden.
Then something quite surprising is that in 2016 the band released an album in MP3 format through Gullö Gram (SEVJR160001). I wonder if these were new recordings or sort of a retrospective. Who’d know? There were ten songs in this their one and only album that was called “Different Colours of a Stone”. The tracks were: “Dreamland”, “Ydoi”, “Happy Revolution”, “Having Fun”, “Carried by Imagination”, “Another World”, “Waterfall”, “Funny Tragic World”, “And Death”, “Outside my Window”.
Something that I noticed too is that Ylva, Anders and Lars had been in the band Safari Season that had releases even in the US on Zip Records. And this band actually has a website. Here it tells that he started his music career in the punk band Ebe Johnsson’s Swing Quintet, in his hometown of Karlstad. Then he would move to Stockholm and there with Ylva they started 99th Floor. With this band they would play in many festivals in Sweden and get airplay and TV appearances in Sweden and abroad.
And that’s what I could find. If they were popular at their time I am sure people remember them. Oddly enough there’s not much online about them, and I couldn’t find their TV appearances on Youtube. I’d definitely would love to learn more about them. Who remembers them?
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