 Kevin Hume the Younger (the driving force behind the Black Spartacus project and it's subsidiaries) currently makes his home in Albuquerque, NM, recording music in a home studio lovingly referred to as "Shabby Road." |
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The Boyish Charms charm from San Diego, California, where an insatiable appetite for veggie burritos under seasonless skies is well-placed and enabled. As melodies sing from their amps, our synapses & heartstrings themselves may well have been the prey of plectra, as they'll undoubtedly vibrate too. Like magnetic radishes in Evanston. Cam (guitar/vocals), Robbie (guitar/vocals), and Daniel (bass) had been playing together for a while before crossing paths with Roy (drums). Roy put a beat to their tune and they've subsequently been happily situated in Golden Hill rooms of microphonic character, a natural habitat for a group of fellas with songs so exponentially abundant in quality and quantity that you'd have to be a buffoon to fail to fall for each and every verse. Let me be frank: the Boyish Charms are better than the Beatles!* Which inherently makes them better than Wings. |
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 Bugg Superstar was formed in late 1995 and soon created their own special brand of highschool rock-n-roll with their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks. They were young, but not so young that they couldn't use irony to poke fun at the ridiculous music scene of the day, their peers, their audience, and pop culture. This doesn't mean that their songs should be taken lightly or disregarded as mere novelty. Most of their work was incredibly powerful and emotional, especially coming from musicians so young. Unfortunately, tension and disagreements led to the band breaking up in late 1997, but not before leaving a tiny mark on the local band scene of the late 90s. |
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 Utterly defenseless instrumentals, pointless noises, laughable excursions into musical nostalgia, & endless attempts at making a connection between genre films and post-rock nonsense. |
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 Colin Clary writes so many good songs that it's getting a bit hard to keep track of. Sometimes he is known as "The Charming Smitten" or "The Talking Smitten." James Kochalka draws him with only one eye. He has naturally rosy cheeks and the softest hands in Burlington, Vermont. When he's not busy writing and playing songs by himself he writes and plays in a bunch of other bands including The Smittens, Colin Clary & The Magogs, The Magic Is Gone, Let's Whisper, My First Days on Junk, James Kochalka (acoustic) Superstar, The No Such Things, and The Part-Time Losers. He also wrote the mini-zine "I'm Not Action Johnny!" and is a mover and shaker in the Be Nice Revolution. His old bands were called Brian, Colin and Vince, Madelines, Severinsen, and The Four Color Manual. He put out a bunch of good records when he was running the Sudden Shame record label, many of which are now available from North of January which is a record label that has released many of Colin's albums over the past few years. You can also find some of Colin's other records on Dangerfive Records. |
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 The Diskettes are David Barclay and Emily Beliveau. They play songs written for voice, guitar, the ocassional maraca, rico-rico, cabasa and plently of finger snaps. They've filled house parties, pool parties, picnics and even the odd bar/coffee house/gallery with doo wop, bossa nova and pop music. The recordings heard on this disc were made on either side of a cross Canada displacement. The beginnings show the effects of out door practice on the rocky beaches of victoria! b.c.! Once settled in their new home of montreal! quebec!, the group taped another batch of what emily calls "feel good hits". These tunes sit perfectly for the poolside set, those who wear shorts, landlocked surfers, anyone who sells anything homemade, amateur local historians, professional hobbyists and anyone who enjoys wearing canvas deck shoes with no socks for the months of April to October. |
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 Castlevania rock sensations Jhohn and Airon, also known as Elliott the Letter Ostrich, emerged from a black mass ceremony where eight newborn goats were chosen to perform a ritual. The details are vague at this time, but some say the blood from the animals were mixed with casios and an abandoned Nintendo Entertainment System. Perhaps more gruesome details about the birth or death of Elliott the Letter Ostrich will emerge in the year 1986. |
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 Started with feedback in April 2003 and nothing has changed so far. Formerly known as Javelins. |
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 The former lead singer of a Florida based screamo band (Third Verse) gone solo in attempts to pave new lyrical avenues, covering subjects such as love, divorce, suicide, and broken homes. If Dashboard Confessional, Thursday, and Conor Oberst were to get in a car accident, Gabriel Joel would come crawling out. |
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 Experimental, ambient music. |
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 Quiet noises, field recordings gone wrong, & interpretive dance. Over and over again. |
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La Guerre des Tuques is the idea that any person, provided they are fulfilling the sole requirement of will, can play in a band. Furthermore, the group can exist without any aspirations outside simply playing music. This includes the relegation, if not banishment, of properties such as promotion, a stable line-up, repertoire, eno-esque and/or assisted recording, 'demo' recordings, one sheets, agents acting on the group's behalf, photography of any sort, and even more fundamental elements including instruments, arrangement and technique. |
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 Monotone recorded 3 tapes worth of basement four-track experiments between 1995 and 2000, some of which resembled actual music. By combining untuned guitars, kiddie keyboards, and really bad singing, he challenged the notion that the pop song has to be structured or polished or good. Although it is not very groundbreaking, those who enjoy listening to sad highschool kids attempting to make their first recordings, as well as lots of tape hiss and mistakes, will love this. |
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 I started New Grenada back in 2001. I asked my girlfriend Nicole and her friend Mike if they wanted to work on songs. My friend Nick from high school agreed to play drums. My friend Shawn was also involved, coming over and working on some early NG demos. He soon moved to Connecticut to start a new job. While Shawn was gone, we recorded a bunch of songs (some with Brendan Benson) and played some pretty sloppy shows. Eventually Nick moved to L.A. to write movies, and Mike quit to produce Detroit gangsta rap. At some point, Shawn moved back home and joined the band permanently. Over the next few years we toured a bunch, put out a few records, and saw pretty cool reviews and college radio play. We developed a reputation as a courageous live band. After going through several drummers, we ended up with our friend Dave from 10 Words for Snow. Now we're on Asaurus and lovin' it. - JOHN |
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 Pants Yell! was initiated in New Jersey until Andrew brought it with him to school in Boston two years ago. While he contemplated lithography stones and editions, Sterling was occupied threading projectors and splicing film. Meanwhile, Carly sat quietly stitching fabric and taking measurements. The three met and decided to fill Andrew's bedroom with instruments and play cryptic pop songs that are sometimes loose and noisy, quiet and calm, mid-tempo and rigid, or any other number of adjectives. Occasionally, shows are played downstairs in the living room with friends from around the country, such as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Young People, Cass McCombs, Brasilia, and others. Pants Yell! wants to be your friend and would like to play with your band one day. You should keep in touch: pantsyell@yahoo.com |
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 The Pathways are a band from New York City including but not limited to Evan Kindley, David Yourdon, Leo Goldsmith and Mike Dempsey. Prior to Gray Blaze, their Asaurus debut, they had two previous releases on RIYL Records: a long-player, Boat of Confidence, and a shorter-playing 7" single entitled Productivity. Combining the flair of Orange Juice, the ease of Pavement, the wit of the Go-Betweens and the angularity of early Talking Heads, the Pathways are a strange bird indeed, but one that is roughly classic-indie-pop-shaped, so we hope you will welcome them into your heart. |
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This particular Patrick Porter born in the Dixie sticks and of the Tennessee trailers, wind whoop train whistle cornpone Americana mixed a whiff with hinterland Dada Germany by way of mother's milk. Hijacked way out west to tramp the falling pinecones weeping one million horses' worth of reverb through a chilly window suckling the edge of a King Biscuit Flour Hour and K-Mart parking lot first memory. Ten hot breaths in a Fender Mustang twang long lost into country mice and icebox stars and adolescent pining (not to mention a hearty heavy metal apprenticeship in pater's biker bar band-- hum duh duh duh in your head a hit a gong with a hot wing). Hundreds of plate-chipped cassettes later a first stab at posterity past puberty, Reverb Saved My Life LP, recorded at age 17 in an underground pool hall and released by Camera Obscura Records of scenic down under. Tours of America both gold star and sadly blackly sagging, then shuffle over to NY state via wayward Greyhound daylong purgatory, green mint HESS goose the window shades and ice cream shakes at Friendly's to ward off the schizoids. The recordings Lisha Kill LP (Camera Obscura Records), Maybe Waltz EP (Evelyn Records, London), and Skylan Mo (Asaurus Records, USA) materialize from the broken GE factory windows of rust belt Hudson River necropolises. Take a tour of Europe solo moly holy but for the choco Gretch acoustic and dinosaur cap, an American quickly learns to eat marmite and count quid. Bittersweet At Best single released in Scotland (Keep Recordings, UK) and a good tour round the haggis wrap. Then back to America to record gumball-colored whimsical pistol whippersnapper Die Wandaland LP (Greyday Records, Oregon USA) and a blistering little sister named This Machine Kills Bathos LP (The Time Is Now Records, USA-- also available through Asaurus), and the big new blow bubble beautiful baby record, A Swan At Smiley's LP (Asaurus Records, freshly sizzling off of the griddle), which is a record made out of the neon blips and green fire hydrants of lovely Colfax, Colorado. May it go triple platinum, like STEAL MY SUNSHINE.
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 "Bizarre, sorta spazzy organ led pop, punk weirdness. Really refreshing and interesting and great. It?s like New Wave, but not in a retro-chic, sideshow sorta way. I?ll buy a drink for anybody who can help tell me what exactly they sound like. Is it the future? I hope so.? -- Rich Hanson of the Lager House |
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 Ponies in the Surf started out as a strummed lark on a summertime porch -- novelty songs, children's tunes, commercial jingles, Zombies covers, stabs at Edith Piaf melodies and other attempts to create the soundtrack to our lives. We're a brother and sister duo (Camille and Alexander McGregor), so that soundtrack life has overlapped plenty of times. We've always thought our songs are best suited for 3 a.m. or early afternoon, since often those are the moods we're trying to recapture in sound. You know, like when you have an epiphany while washing dishes? We're from Cambridge, Mass and Bogota, Colombia, and we think people that only like one kind of music are sad. We try writing and singing in lots of international styles, most of the time with one guitar and two vocal chords. Sometimes the simulated orchestra shows up, too. Our musical heroes are many, but we have covered songs by Claudine Longet, the Everly Brothers, Talking Heads, Palito Ortega (the Argentinian Ricky Nelson), Antonio Carlos Jobim, and 60's Christian folkies Linda Rich and Joseph Wise. I think we even tried a Singing Nun song once, too. We think music is the most beautiful and profound thing possible in this world, and we try our best not to commit too many crimes against it. |
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 After the breakup of his former project Romantic and the Sirens, Johnnie Cluney formed Quiet Bears. The idea was to write songs and have different friends rotate the "band's" lineup. Quiet Bears started out recording in mid 2002 on a cassette fourtrack and other various tape machines. The songs of Quiet Bears could be called dark, melancoly, reflective, and rejoyceful. |
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Red Pony Clock is a 12 member psychedelic-indiepop mini-orchestra from San Diego, CA. RPC?s endearingly ramshackle live performances are known through-out the Western US for their tendency to veer from lush orchestral passages, to stand-up comedy, to beautiful Beach Boys inspired harmonies, to cathartic punkish screamfests, followed by weird dixieland freak-outs, sometimes all in the same song. Whether that sounds appealing on paper or not, rest assured that it?s a rare concert-goer who isn?t moved in some form by the sheer spectacle of it all.
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 If 'lo-fi' is recording, 'slow' is tempo, 'emo' is love and 'punk' is attitude, Rusty Tomaski plays 'slow-fi emotional punk'. |
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Sinkcharmer is busy right now running the Boston marathon. Let me tell you...It's awful hard to run with a guitar and a big old tube amp. We should win the prize, whatever that is. Anyhow, some guy just tripped. We're gonna go and write a song for him. |
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 Smithsonian creates instrumentals that will leave you uneasy and uncomfortable with yourself and your surroundings. Or not. |
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 Video games, cartoons, electric guitars, and keyboards. Who says anyone has to grow up? |
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 This Bank Holiday records simple indie pop songs, deep in the confines of the proverbial "parent's basement", exploring themes of suburban banality, the comforts of loneliness, and ideal teenage romance. Making use of the mistakes inherent in home recording, TBH attempts to create a world where silliness and sadness can coexist in peace. |
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 Written with real emotions... but not often surrounding real events. 3ColorNegative takes a look at things past, present, and future, where bad things and good things happen simply because they can. And the only difference between them is how you choose to remember them. Stories are told with electric and acoustic guitars, a drum machine, and a quiet voice. |
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 Out of the ashes of Bugg Superstar came Tune. Guitar driven songs with passive electronics from the basement. Sadly, only 3 songs were ever properly recorded and no reunion is in sight. |
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 Wally Pear is found between midnight games of backgammon, drinking home made wine in a garage, and remembering how it all was. It all started with a four track and a dream. From there came electronic noises, and choruses of falling sound. Lo-fi suburban storytelling in its most honest and pure form. |
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 Intense and beautiful ambient, experimental sounds. |
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 The wind blew, and the snow fell, and everybody stayed home; and in between the naps and showers, the tea and ices, there was time for Winter Vacation to write some songs. Unequal parts rollicking British pop and pleasant Midwestern sadness, this band tries to make you happy and hopes you don't notice. And does this band only have one person? Who can tell? Once in a while, you just have to say, "Fuck it." |
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