I’m publishing this post just hours, minutes, before I head to the airport for a few days in Puerto Rico. I will be away for 6 days, so no posts on Friday or Monday. Any orders placed these days will be mailed next Wednesday. So don’t worry!

But before I leave I’m leaving you some cool music to check out!

Zimt: “Empathielosigkeit”, one of the songs that was included in “Glückstiraden”, the debut album of the German band, has just got a video. And it is top class. Zimt is one of my favourite bands and I owe discovering them to Ronny, but now the band is on Tapete and I suppose they keep getting bigger. Maybe one day I’ll get to see them in New York? Or in Germany? It is been a while since I’ve visited!

The Sunbathers: “If Only” is the new song and video our old friends The Sunbathers have shared with everyone as they promote their upcoming album “A Weekend Away With…” that will be released by the good Chris Mac on Jigsaw Records. It is gorgeous. It brought me such good memories of the time I got to release a few of their songs, and even better when I saw them at Indietracks, when on the platform they played a few songs for me and a friend. It makes me nostalgic, their precious music. One of the albums I’m looking forward the most this year.

The Lousy Pop Group: the one man project from Depok, Indonesia, has uploaded a brand new popstatic song to Soundcloud called “I’m Waiting For You to Shine”. Will it be released in any other way? Will some of the fine pop labels in Indonesia pay attention to this brilliant song? I hope so!

Tracey Read: this is a new discovery for me, that I found through David, but it does look as these recordings are older. They date from 2001. Tracey Read had released before the “Buster Keaton” 7″ on Chapter Music, and this 8 song album called “Everything is Real” is long sold out on its CD version but it is available digitally. Lovely indiepop in the vein of Tiger Trap or Tracey Thorn (?).

Glider: there are a few copies remaining of the Falmouth’s band new 7″. It includes two songs, “See You There” and “Wen (Summer1991CE)”. The duo formed by Tom Lobban and Louie Newlands recorded these songs back in 2015 and the record was released in 2017. Now, I want to buy everything I recommend, but it is not easy. Bands that I feature, I’d love to get your records and review them, but I don’t want them for free, maybe we could trade. Drop me a line if interested. If not, doesn’t matter. I do it for the love of music. And I’m really loving what I hear from Glider. Are they still going?

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This might surprise you, but Cyclon86 will be the first band I do some “investigative blogging” since I came back from Mexico. Yes, that’s right, I’ve had a bunch of posts ready, always a step ahead.

As I’ve been rotating the countries of origin of the bands featured on the blog, I thought it would be a great idea to return to Japan. And even better with a band I know very little about, whose records I still don’t own, a blank page. I only know the songs that I’ve been able to hear on Youtube, which are just 4. Are there more? Where were they released? Interested? Then join me in this search.

Cyclon86 on Discogs has very little listed, mostly compilation appearances. There is one split 7″ though, one that they shared with Soft Parade sometime in the early 2000s I believe. It is also the only record listed for the label, Pillow Case Records, having the catalog number PCR-001. Was it a self-release by one of the bands on the split? Or perhaps it was a joint effort? Or maybe just a label that was interested in both bands? How could we find out?

The band had the A side for themselves. There they had two songs, “K Girl” and “Shooting Star”. Soft Parade on the other hand appears on the B side with “Blue Blouse Female” and “Sunday”. The first song by Cyclon86 catches my curiosity, is it about a K Records fangirl? And what about the band’s name? Is the 86 in their name a homage to C86?

The first time I heard the band was through a 2002 compilation I had Mp3s of. Must have been through Soulseek ages ago as I don’t have those files anymore. It was the “Bluebadge Compilation Vol.2 Pop Comes Up!” that was released by Bluebadge Label (BBCD-002) back then. On this gem of a compilation (there are many obscure Japanese bands on it) the band contributes the song “Letters”.

But that wasn’t the first compilation appearance by the band. A year earlier, on another CD comp, they had the song “Running Planet”. This CD was titled “Mo-Rough” and was released by Coa Records (COAR-0008) in 2001. Something interesting about this release is that Cyclon86 appears as Cyclon 86, with a space between letters and numbers. Was it how they were called originally? Or did they change a little bit their name after this compilation?

Lastly, in 2005, on another Bluebadge compilation, “Guitar Pop Crazy! (Bluebadge Compilation Vol.3)” (BBCD-009) the band had the song “Scapegoat”. I believe I’ve talked about this CD before, when I featured the fine band Margarets Hope*.

Then I’m pretty sure the band contributed to a compilation called “Sunshine Pop Show! Vol.3” released by the Smile Pop Label in 1999 with the song “Summer in the Pool”.

But most importantly, what Discogs is missing, is a split CD with the band Harmony Hatch. I could find a tracklist for the CD on Amazon Japan but doesn’t specify which songs belong to who. There are 8 in total so I’m going to guess there were 4 for each band. If that was the case Cyclon8 contributed “K Girl”, “Scapegoat”, “Summer in the Pool” and “Ice Coffee” while Harmony Hatch had “White Pearl Worts”, “Blue Blue Bicycle”, “My Red Watch” and “His Honey Bunny”. Would love to hear this records sometime, discover Harmony Hatch as well.

My next big find in this investigation was to find out that one of my favourite Japanese shoegaze bands, Bertoia, has at least one member that was in Cyclon86. That is Yuta Ikawa or Shokk as he likes being called. According to a blog I found, he also was a support musician for the one-woman band Murmur.

There used to be a Myspace for Cyclon86 too, but it doesn’t exist anymore.

On Twitter, on the Philia Records account, I find a post where I clearly see a cassette by Cyclon86, a red cassette. What is in that one? I would love to know. The mystery becomes bigger and bigger. It is strange, but I can’t find gigs they played. It usually is easy with Japanese bands to find that. Usually gigs are very much recorded on the web, on old geocities pages and such. Not this time around.

I can’t find the other band members names either. Who were they? What was their complete discography? When did they start as a band and when did they split? Where they based in Tokyo or another Japanese city? The questions are many. But there are little answers. Do my Japanese friends remember them?

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Listen
Cyclon86 – Shooting Star