Day 165. Continue posting Macguffins CDs! thanks again everyone for your support!
Here are some new finds for you all to enjoy!
The Bats: my favourite NZ band ever is going to be back on November 13th with a brand new album called “Foothills”. It will be available on vinyl and CD. At this point in time we can preview one of the songs included in the album, “Warwick”. It is great as usual to hear Robert, Malcolm, Kaye and Paul. Genius. Legends!
The Sylvia Platters: the Vancouver band formed by Alex Kerc-Murchison, Nick Ubels, Tim Ubels and Scott Wagner, have just released a new digital single called “Half Measures”. It’s noisy and it’s poppy. Worth checking it out.
Wicketkeeper: this London band that plays noisy pop will be releasing their album “Shonk” on October 16 on our friends Alvaro’s label Meritorio Records. The album will include 14 songs and we can preview 5 songs now on the band’s Bandcamp!
Family Mart: this Austin band has just one song on their Bandcamp. It is called “For Eric”. And guess what, it is a lovely song. There is no further information about them. But this is really promising!
Exam Season: lastly for new findings we head to Ringwood, UK. There there’s a band called Exam Season and their latest song is called “Your Car”. This is also very nice. Sweet and twee. It’s been a while since I heard sounds like these. Maybe early, mid-2000s?
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So I wrote about the band Hospitalle the other day. I actually wanted to write originally about Agent Simple, but one thing took me to the other and as I had never heard Hospitalle before I thought I should write about them first. Agent Simple I have heard but in due honesty I don’t remember much about them.
What I do remember is that they put out a CDR EP back in 2005. I remember even reviewing their music on the blog I used to have those days. This EP was released by the fine Bedroom Records (BED20) and well, those days I was just a student so couldn’t afford ordering from Sweden. I remember having the MP3s though, from Soulseek. Those days I discovered lots of great indiepop thanks to the different rooms where very knowledgeable people chatted and lurked. I wouldn’t be surprised if the band members were involved in this cool music sharing program.
The EP had four songs, “Make a Right at Jördfallsmotet”, “I Wouldn’t Know”, “My Punk” and “Brother”. The credits on the sleeve show that all songs were written by Agent Simple. The drums were played by Emanuel Hallongren, Lina Adamsson sang backing vocals and also played bass on the song “My Punk”. Who was Agent Simple? Yes it was a one-man band, Stefan Strömberg was our guy.
Strömberg would later play in the amazing Vapnet, Hospitalle and Otyg.
2 years later Agent Simple would release a 7″. It would be the first release on the Swedish label Fridlyst. Fredrik Söderström was the person behind it. They would release an amazing record by Cocoanut Groove in 2008 that no one should have missed. Anyhow, FRID001 was the “Shaking an Egg” 7″ EP. It had four songs, “I Can’t Think of Anything” and “Friday” on the A side and “Better Days” and “Tomorrow” on the B side.
Again Agent Simple played mostly everything, vocals, bass, piano, guitar, shaker, maracas, piano, claves, bongos and cabasa. Then we see Emanuel Hallongren (from Hemstad and Hospitalle) playing drums, bongos, tambourines, cabasa and organ, Karl Ander (from Hemstad and Hospitalle) playing piano, and Lina Adamsson (from The Magical Transit Children) doing backing vocals.
The songs were recorded at Emanuel Hallongren’s appartment in Kungälv.
The 7″ was limited to 500 copies and the first 25 copies came on a7″ shaped tote case that was also hand-numbered and could be sealed with velcro tape straps. Quite exclusive design!
I believe Agent Simple was based in Gothenburg and he played the famous venue there, Pustervik. He also played at the well-known Emmaboda festival.
But then what happened? I suppose he got much more involved in the other bands. Vapnet released a few albums. That would make sense. Agent Simple had some great songs, and I especially enjoy Linda’s backing vocals. I am quite curious if she sang in other bands. Also if Agent Simple left more recordings? Those days recording in bedrooms was becoming more and more common, so I would guess there are more songs by them. But who would know! Anyone remembers them?
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Listen
Agent Simple – Friday
