Cloudberry Cake Proselytism

When I did a few CDRs called The Sound of Young Java, I had considered calling the series The Sound of Young Bandung. The impressive amount of quality bands coming from that city in Indonesia has always surprised me. How come they produce that? I must visit Bandung some day. I hope. And try to answer that question. In the meantime I thought about showcasing a band that deserves more love, Clubwater. When they were around it was way past the days I was releasing CDRs. Also way past the time I…

Thanks so much to Julie for the interview! I’ve always been very curious about The Crimson Mints. I have heard one of their songs, “Makes Me Want To”, that appeared on the compilation “Positively Teenage” that came with the This Almighty Pop! fanzine back in the day. I thought it was brilliant. So I wrote about the band, the few details I knew at the time, on the blog. During the years I’ve tried to interview the band members and find more information. Happily Julie, the band main songwriter…

Molasses had two periods. One in Perth, Australia, with Paul Williams, Andrew Britten and Mia Schoen. And one in Melbourne where Andrew was replaced by Chris Gorman. I’m going to try to figure out when this change happened. Mia is a musician I have always enjoyed. She has been in great bands, among them a favorite of mine, Sleepy Township. She has also been in Above Ground Pool, Driving Past, Huon, Mia Schoen Group, New Estate, Possum Moods, Powerful Owl, The Cannanes, The Enclosures, The Curse…

Thanks so much to Darran McCrann for the interview! Some months ago I discovered a couple of songs on Soundcloud. There was no band name, but the credits of the two songwriters, McCrann and Firmager. I found they had been based in Ireland and Australia. Lots of things weren’t clear. But the songs were good. I wanted to know more. Not too long ago Darran got in touch and was kind enough to answer all of my questions with detail. I’m very happy to have learned a bit about their story. Check…

Sendai, Japan. The first time I heard about Rain Paints was thanks to a tape released by the very fine Japanese label Miles Apart Records in 2014. It was a tape that was part of their Cassette Tapes Club, and this one was the third release. It was showcasing 2 songs by Rain Paints, “Funeral Rain” and “10miles” and had the catalog number of MAP-007. This tape, limited to 100 copies, came with a cool art of a boy and his dog eating a sandwich. It also gave us the details that the music was made…

Many times in Germany. But never in the south of Germany. Munich remains a place I would like to visit. That’s where we are heading today on the blog. It is possible that the band Bismarck Idaho best known fact is that Momus produced four out of 5 tracks of the band’s one and only release, the “Beckenbauer EP” CD from 1994. The EP was released by the label Blickpunkt Pop (BP 001) ran by Marc Liebscher, also Munich based. This label is well known for having releasing the band Sportfreunde…

The Kate Rays is Kim Floyd’s current project. You can find the music she makes with Tony Chance on bass and Mark Hubbard on drums on Bandcamp. I recommend it. But I discovered some tracks on Soundcloud that predate The Kate Rays and that got me curious. Kim who usually sings and plays guitar is now based in Jacksonville, Florida. I believe at some point she was in New York City. I wonder where she was in 1997. The tracks from her project Tintern Abby date from that year. There are three songs…

Graham Moore. UK. The Crave. These are the 3 details I have. There’s a Soundcloud with a bunch of songs, from different periods. All uploaded by Graham. there are other bands here like Geek Theatre, Electrocide, Baby Doll, Wisconsin Terror Project and The Invisible Cowboy. This last one I believe was the band that was just before The Crave as it mentions a 1992 release on a compilation. The other bands I have no clue but if I was to guess they came after. For The Crave the more interesting…

Thanks so much to Mark Bryceland for the interview! I had written about the Perth, Australia, early 90s band Wash on the blog back in March. I was surprised to hear that the band is planning to reissue their songs thanks to Chapter Music! And I needed to learn more about the band. Mark also shared with me his new project and was happily surprised as well. Clearly he likes the music I also like! So it made total sense for this interview to happen. So if you haven’t heard about Wash, please hear…

Everson is a city in Whatcom County, Washington, United States. The population was 2,888 at the time of the 2020 census. It is the fifth largest city within the Bellingham Metropolitan Area. That’s where the next band/song takes us. It seems the band was called Supersonic. And they recorded a very nice track called “Hush” in 1993 in a studio called Seventh Heaven in Everson, Washington State, on the Pacific coast. This I have found on the Supersonic soundcloud account of Ben Walker. There are…

Wallsend is a town in North Tyneside, Tyne and Wear, England, at the eastern end of Hadrian’s Wall. It has a population of 43,842 and lies four miles east of Newcastle upon Tyne. In the mid-90s, in Wallsend, there was a band called The Sojourners. I just found about it on Soundcloud. Davy Craig, who was part of the band, uploaded 14(!) years ago a bunch of tracks. They cover a few different styles, but there’s a very good one that just makes this post worth doing, a track titled “Don”.…

I hope I am getting the band name correct and that they weren’t called something else. I found this account by a Duncan Forgan that has 19 tracks recorded between 1995 and 1999 by what looks like a band called The Cairo Years. The quality is varied, but there are some gems not to be missed like “Summer Starts Here” or “City Sickness”. The tracks available are: “Girl You’ll Never Know”, “Telling Jokes at the Astral Flights”, “Can’t Recall”, “The Other Side of Summer”, “Over You”, “Am I Bothering…

Tigerella was another band I discovered through Shelflife CD-R series. Their self-titled EP was the fifth release on that very important series of releases our friend Ed released back in the early 2000s. The EP was released in 2003, in January I believe, it included just three tracks by the Los Angeles five-piece. These songs were “Existential War”, “Rid of You” and “E-Ticket Ride”. The songs were bright. The guitars chimed. Very nice! The band was formed by Bryan Yoshida and Gilber Chinn on…

There are many bands I want to write about. Bands that I was interested back in the day and then never got around finding more information about them. So I was looking at one of them and stumbled upon a compilation called “I’m With Cupid – A Transatlantic POP Valentine”. I didn’t know about this CD comp from 2004. But I knew many of the bands there including big favourites like Action Biker, Would-Be-Goods or Free Loan Investments. So I played all the tracks. There were a few that surprised me…

Thanks so much to Olof for the interview! I had written about the great Gothenburg band Dreams End on the blog not that long ago. Im a fan of the handful of songs I knew by them, especially the ones that were released on vinyl. To my surprise I learned there were more, and they were really nice too. Olof shared some with me and it seems at some point many of them will end up being online which is great news. I had the honor to ask him questions, and I have really enjoyed the answers and…

I’m looking for information about the Irish band The Panic Merchants. I want to listen to their music. How do they sound like? I only know the name as they were on a compilation I don’t own but I know of and that has many bands I like: “Comet LP Two”. On that compilation released in 1987 the band contributed the song “Retro”. This compilation released by Comet Records (COME 2 TP) included great bands like Cypress, Mine!, Azure Days or The Practical Householders. “Retro” was recorded at Slane…

Now a nice discovery from the late 80s in Florida. In the college town of Gainesville where the University of Florida is. The name of the band was Tactile Cinema and on Soundcloud there is an 8 track album of the same name. The account is under the name of gogoray, possibly then someone called Ray. Based in Atlanta. Atlanta is not that far from Gainesville. Possibly moved after studying in UF? Would make sense, Tactile Cinema a band formed by students of the university. Seems plausible. The…

I have written about many of the Shelflife CD-R series releases on the blog. It is a beloved series of 12 CDRs that the American label released between 2002 and 2003 where they introduced a lot of bands that at the time weren’t well known. The first of these releases was from a band called […]

It’s taken years, more than a decade, for me to write this post. I’ve been enjoying Downy Mildew’s records for such a long time, it is time now. What made me write about them was that I’ve been reading the book “Miracles and Wonders: A Meandering, Cacophonous Concordance of The Jazz Butcher Songbook” by the […]

Who were Automobile? There are just three songs on Soundcloud, “Yours Sincerely“, “Watchfiend” and “Stayin’ In” that have been uploaded by a user called Martin McIntyre. There is no information about band members, no information about when these songs were recorded, nor where. The only hint we get here is the other uploads Martin has […]