It is a holiday today, Labor Day, so I am taking it easy. I’ll write more on Wednesday, but here is your fare of new indiepop finds from around the web!
The Bats: I found this very nice little doco about my favourite New Zealand band ever. It lasts around 10 minutes, it is a bit short, but it is lovely. It was made by Betsy Payne who I believe might be a student at the New Zealand Broadcasting School. Listening to anecdotes by the band members about their records, the recording sessions, and more was really inspiring.
Atta Girl: I need to catch up with the wonderful Chinese label Boring Productions. The latest 7″ by Atta Girl is truly wonderful! It comes with two superb jangly tracks “September” and “Regret” which would make any indiepop fan happy!
Acoustic Radiation Force: another release on Boring Productions is this one by the GREAT John Wood (ex-East Village), who I interviewed some time ago. This acoustic album, titled “Become the Sea…”, is being released on 12″ and includes 10 tracks of classic (and classy) songwriting. It is so great to see him back and in good form! I need to talk to Jovi to get these two releases, they are not to be missed!
Corpse Factory: from West Viriginia, this band has uploaded a new song (maybe his first song?) to Bandcamp under the name Corpse Factory. The song is called “Party Girl” and it is a lovely lo-fi popsong that is fuzzy and catchy at the same time. I’d love to hear more from him in the near future.
Distant Creatures: now let’s jump across the state border to Virginia and check out the song “Absolved” by this 5-piece! This track is set to be released on September 6th, not sure how or where, though it is available to stream on Bandcamp and it sounds great. Dreamy but upbeat, with female vocals, it is a fine song. Seems there are a few fine bands in the region now that I think of it. Maybe they should organize themselves and do a D.C. Popfest or something like that. Would be fun!
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I feel this might be a very short post sadly. I don’t think there’s much on the web about this wonderful band called Capital Hill. The little I know I’ll share with you of course.
I found out about them through the superb compilation “This is Manchester (14 Songs from the North West)” (ESS 133) that Essential and Castle Communications released in 1990. I actually bought this CD around the same time I was interviewing the wonderful Sandalwoods as they appear on this compilation. Another band I’ve interviewed, The Paperboys appear as well. So it looked like a good compilation to get my hands on. It is also not hard to come by and not expensive either. So if you see a copy grab it. There’s a bunch of terrific songs on it.
One of those terrific songs was the one by Capital Hill. It is called “Deep Down”.
I wonder why Capital Hill. Of course the famous one is Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. (though the original is of course the one in Rome) but there are a few places called Capital Hill, for example in Australia, in Northern Mariana islands, in Malawi and there’s even a Capital Hill Residence designed by Zaha Hadid. Oh! And there’s a 1990 album by jazz saxophonist Buck Hill with that name. I doubt any of these inspired the band.
As it is obvious, the compilation featured only Manchester bands. So yes, Capital Hill must have been from Manchester. Then we know a few other things from this compilation, like the design is credited to Quick on the Draw and the painting to Fiona Hawthorn. As I mentioned on The Sandalwoods post, the original concept for this compilation came from Pete Mitchel at Piccadilly Key 103 FM and Tony Davidson of T.J.M. Records. Tony passed the tapes of The Obimen, the band he was working on, to Pete and that was the seed that started it all.
Other than that there was a photo of the band on the compilation where we can see it was formed by 4 guys. There is sadly no information about band members or who wrote the song. No information whatsoever.
And then I start digging on Google, see if there’s any luck, but as you expect, there’s nothing. No one has written about them either. It feels as if they never existed. And I am sure there must be more songs! And I would love to listen to them. Do you remember them?
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Listen
Capital Hill – Deep Down
