Now planning my next holidays, which will be in a few weeks in Asturias, Spain. If anyone in the cities of Oviedo, Gijón, León and Madrid, want to save on shipping for any Cloudberry releases let me know and I’ll be happy to bring the records you want with me. Just let me know!
Now here are some great indiepop finds!
Mousefolk / The Candy Darlings: There’s a Teatime Records Bandcamp now! What a surprise! This was the coolest thing from the weekend I think. I already placed my order of this split tape (that comes with a CD) that features two favourite bands from the 80s, Mousefolk and The Candy Darlings! There are 5 songs by each on this tape titled “The Kids Just Wanna Demo”. These songs are new recordings of classic tracks and demos too! I was lucky to interview The Candy Darlings many years ago, maybe it is time to interview Mousefolk next?
The Candy Darlings: Speaking of the devil, the other release that is available to check out on Teatime Records is the 7″ The Candy Darlings relased back in the day. It seems some copies of the record were available but they are already sold out. The 7″ included 3 songs, but on Bandcamp the label has added a forth one for us to enjoy called “Railway View”.
The Crayon Set: “Summer Song” is the newest track by this Dublin 6 piece. I feel in the last few weeks I’ve stumbled upon many “summer” songs, I think it would be easy to make a mix this year. This one is really pretty, could be the opening track of this mix that lives (so far) in my imagination.
Bodywash: we can preview two songs of the “Comforter” album the Montreal band will be releasing on August 30th. These songs are “Reverie” and “Eye to Eye” and I have to say they sound brilliant. I hope the other 7 sound as good! I’ll have to wait until it is released I suppose. The album will be released on vinyl and CD.
Nax: who are these Buenos Aires kids? They seem to be intro dreampop and shoegaze and under that influence they have just published a nice new song caleld “Nuestra Noche”.
—————————————————————–
Narcissus is a genus of predominantly spring perennial plants of the Amaryllidaceae family. Various common names including daffodil, daffadowndilly, narcissus and jonquil are used to describe all or some members of the genus.
Yoko Satori on vocals, Masato Ishida on guitars, Yasushi Donaka on guitar, Maikihiko Nomoto on bass and Yoko Ito on drums were the lovely Daffodil-19, a Japanese band that released two albums and an EP in the 90s and early 2000s.
As it is usual with Japanese bands I really know very little about them. In the case of Daffodil-19 is even worst, I still don’t own any of their records. I should track them down. If anyone wants to help with this crusade, I would be very thankful too. Anyhow… where to start? 1994.
That year the band released their “Audrey Carson” EP on the Wonder Release Records label (WRR026). This label, as many you may know is a very fine one, as they released Venus Peter, Sugar Plant, Penny Arcade or Debonaire among others. I really don’t know who Audrey Carson is/was, or why they named the EP after her. That is the first mystery here. The EP included five songs and was released on CD on September of that year. The songs were “Secret Halo”, “Inbetweens”, “Miles to Go”, “Audrey Carson” and “Presence Dear”. All songs were recorded by Taro Yoda and Hajime Ohnuki. The engineer for the record was Mitsuo Yasuda. Something interesting is that the song “Presence Dear” was actually a cover of Gary Valentine. The art was created by Misa Okonogi.
Another interesting fact of this record was that the lineup was different to what we would consider the “classic lineup”. Sure Yoko Satori was on vocals and Yasushi Donaka and Masato Ishida on guitar but on bass we find Yutaka Koga and on drums Sota O’Fulton. Yutaka Koga had been in bands like Venus Peter, Ecce Homo, Jupiter Smile, Rocket K or The Playmates.
Taht same year the band contributes a song to the “Hydrovane EP” that was released by Bloody Dolphins (BDBO-E0003) and that came along the legendary magazine Beikoku Ongaku. It was the third volume of the magazine and was called “That Summer Feeling”. The band contributed the song “Non”.
It will take 4 years or so until we hear again from them. The band reappears and releases the wonderful album “Daffodilic” on Cardinal Records (BDCAR-DD0001). 11 tracks of superb indiepop, “Joan of Arc”, “Daffodilic Sunshine”, “Tangerine”, “Stranded Tower”, “Am I Troubling You?”, “Let’s Close the Circuit”, “All I hear Now is All” (this one produced by Shuntaro Okino of Venus Peter and remixed by Techla-P), “Planet News” (remixed by Eiichi Tanaka), “Cicada Daze”, “River Flow” and “Circuit Endless” (which was coproduced by Shuntaro). The band was the main producer for these songs. The artwork for the record was taken care by Mayumi Hirooka. On this record Yoko also played flute and we see that Mikihiko Nomoto was now in bass. In drums though we find Kimitoshi Sotomura who had been in great bands like Here is Eden, Jupter Smile, Penny Arcade or Sherbets. The organ, keyboards, accordion and some backing vocals on this record came thanks to Mayumi Ikemizu who we all know from Three Berry Icecream and Bridge.
That same year the band contributed the song “Let’s Close the Circuit” to another Beikoku-Ongaku compilation: “Dream On”. This time it was issue number 11 of the famed magazine. Here they shared the CD with top bands like Girlfrendo, Tullycraft or The Aislers Set among others.
In 2001 the band would contribute a cover of New Order’s “Leave Me Alone” to the tribute album “Re:Movement – Tribute to New Order” that was released by SAL Disc (SALD-002). The year after, 2002, the band had their song “Re-Creation” included in “Pop Jingu Volume 3 (A Japanese Compilation)” that was released by Clover Records (CLCD-416). And lastly, in 2003, the band had their song “Sleepyhead” on the CD comp “Radio Cookie Scene 0011 April/May 2003” that came along the Cookie Scene Magazine volume 30.
That same year, 2003, the band released their last release, the album “Circuit” on Clover Records (CLCD-418). This album had 12 songs, “Sleepyhead”, “Crimson Star”, “Re-Creation”, “Memory Circuit”, “Stick Boy”, “Marcus#5”, “Sonambullistic Ray”, “Larkspur Blue”, “Honey Blue”, “Launderette”, “I Don’t Believe in Happy Endings” and “Vermilion Sands”. This album was recorded at Stonesound Studio and in their own house studio between February and September of 2002. The record was produced by Noboyuki Ohashi who was of course in the classic band Bridge. No we see the classic lineup of the band playing the record. The art was created by Masako Kato who was part of the great band Pervenche.
Now now, what are the connections of the Daffodil-19 members with other bands? We know that Yoko Satori had been in Marble Hammock as well as in Penny Arcade as well as collaborating with Venus Peter. Yasushi Donaka was on Venus Peter. Masato Ishida was in Venus Peter, Penny Arcade, Jupiter Smile and Peltone. It looks it was a big extended family for these bands, right?
There was also a website for the band, the issue is that it now points to their Myspace which as we all know is really useless this days.
Aside from all of this information I could find on the web there is very little about them. I will try to track their releases as I’d love them in my collection, but I also hope there’s a chance to interview the members at some point. I would love to know more about Daffodil-19 and also of each and every band they were in!
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
