Labels: Errol
Review by: Andy Malcolm
What a neat idea. 8 bands on a double 10″ comp. Most comps you get these days are trashy label samplers, or a collection of similar bands on one CD. A collection of vaguely similar bands on two 10″ appeals much more to me. And it is nicely packaged too, though it’s a beast to open up, and once it is open, it falls apart very easily. Bah.
Ok, let’s see what we have. Hollowphonic start things off and are from Canada. They do a beautiful piano led droney epic that you have to listen to on headphones to realise there are vocals. In a weird way it reminds me of when Still Life do their desperately sad sounding slow stuff (e.g. ‘Someone Stole My Bike’), but it’s not that similar overall, just a feeling. It is super atmospheric and very tasty, slowly building upwards and it gets a bit more lively towards the end with melodic strings and stuff. Late night as fuck. Their 2nd song is short, and once again, very very good. I shall be hunting for more on these folks I feel.
A Danish band called Diefenbach follow that with groove laden, melodic, instrumental rock, very standard and traditional I guess, you’ll be pretty familiar with this sort of thing if you listen to this style I suppose. I thought it was OK, but I find this style of instrumental kind of boring these days as it doesn’t do anything to stand out. They throw in some fairly typical electronic parts too. I liked the twinkly guitar bit a lot though, very post ’96 indie-emo! Just need a mid-western boy with a lisp to come on and go “oo-woop-de-cherry-coke-do-i-love-you-love!”.
UK indie rockers Grover (not the defunct punk band) are on side B. They do slow-burning noodly stuff with sung vocals. Seems a touch sub-Radiohead early on, but it builds up into something a whole lot more interesting than being sub-Radiohead would suggest. It rolls a long picking up steam and sounding akin to like Sunny Day Real Estate circa ‘How Does It Feel To Be Something On’ or even something like the new Bats and Mice record. I bet no-one else ever compares them to those bands by the way. Enjoyed.
The Bogart Surprise bring their daft name and guitar fondling over from Sweden. And they sport warm and bassy post-rock tones that many other ands have messed around with. Pretty solid, vaguely like a pansier version of Slint at times and ever so slightly spacey. I can take or leave this to be honest, it’s mortifyingly predictable.
Giardini Di Miro get disc 2 underway with some mellow, vaguely jazzy Aerial M type noodles. These guys are Italian. This music could be from anywhere, it’s not out of the ordinary. 2nd band on supporting a cult US post rock band in a pub in the Midlands type band. Well played but doesn’t blow my mind.
Hey, next up is disoma, featuring Collective’s very own Nick Sharp. Gawblimey guvnor, and all that! Well, this was recorded way before I sent Nick his Indian Summer CDR (because I haven’t even sent it yet), but the intro still sounds like “I Think Your Train Is Leaving”, which is rather funny. They actually have quite a lot of song structure similarities to the I-Summer here, but I am guessing this is due to a mutual love of Slint. Could be wrong though. I could have done with more of the smart screamy vocals to make this a bit more electric, but as it stands it’s fine. I have to get that CDR to Nick ASAP so he can get this band to rip off the Summer big time! This is the best song I have heard sound accidentally like Indian Summer ever.
Penultimately we have Lemko Hall, from Sweden. Kjetil of Lilac Sky records taped me a wonderful song by these guys. This starts off with a spastic free-jazz intro. They did a split 7″ with Tristeza by the way. It is nice and cosy, yet dark. Weird combo. Some cello perhaps, lots of drums and guitaring too. Quite ok.
Cerberus Shoal round things off, and this is really good. I haven’t heard these guys before but they have been around forever. Even had a song on that super emo limited series that Tree put out a while back! Anyways, it is quirky acoustic folk stuff with a droney rumble and multiple male and female vocals singing together. Very eerie in a strange way. But fuckin’ interesting and not something I am used to. It has a tribal feel to it, or something pagan, a ritual of some sort (though lyrically it’s nothing of the sort). I love hearing stuff that is new to my ears and this just is totally cool and different to most things you’ll hear coming out of the independent music scene.
I think this is 50-50. Fifty percent fantatic, fifty percent so what. The great stuff by disoma, Grover, Cerberus Shoal and Hollowphonic makes it worth checking out, it would have been better if these guys were all on the same 10″ and the less good one were on the other. Would make it easier to listen to it from my point of view!!!