“London, the affordable years. Circa autumn/winter 1990-91. In the no man’s land between the arse end of Camden Town and the red light end of King’s Cross, sits St Pauls Crescent. Located in the shadow of the Maiden Lane estate, where the high walls of the whitewashed concrete housing units cast a menacing Clockwork Orange vibe over the area, the street is short and terminates in a dead end. Number 44 turns out to not be a Georgian townhouse, common to the area, but a small industrial yard set back from the road. At the rear is Playground Studios. Housed in a former car repair workshop, the building is a single storey, breezeblock construction. The rear borders a footpath overlooking the electrical umbilicals and parallel steel of the London Overground railway tracks, while at the front, the potholes and ruts of a short driveway are filled with dirty rainwater, that does nothing to brighten the reflection of the overcast skies.

Entry is via a set of battered double doors and finds you in a concrete corridor, flanked on both sides with wire mesh storage cages, where overhead strip lights cast their fluorescent wash over the stacked musical belongings of nascent and semi-successful bands, waiting patiently for the recall to action. At the end of the corridor is the studio office, small and functional with a couple of low desks, a stereo, shelves stacked with files and assorted paperwork and where the build up to Gulf War One plays out on a small black and white TV to an audience of empty chairs, grimy coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays. Take a right turn before the office, however, and you find yourself in an open area bordered by four heavy, soundproofed doors. Behind these are the rehearsal rooms, although the smallest – Studio 4 – was until fairly recently used merely as a storeroom. But, with the various boxes, bags, cases and other rubbish now cleared, the room contains detritus of a different kind – both human and electrical. Cables, chords and Converse High Tops. Marshall stacks and matted hair. Cymbals and symbols, vibrations, noise and blabber and smoke. With heads full of ideas and a new Ampeg bass rig and recently acquired vintage Jazzmaster, both of which need putting through their paces, Swervedriver have settled into Studio 4 to begin the writing sessions for their upcoming debut album.

It’s been a busy year so far. The band have signed to Creation Records, recorded a session for legendary DJ John Peel, shared stages with My Bloody Valentine, Jane’s Addiction, The Lemonheads, The House Of Love, Soundgarden, Buffalo Tom and many others, headlined their own UK tour, appeared live on national radio and the ‘Son Of Mustang Ford’ EP has broken into the Independent Top 10. With all that accomplished in a few short months, there is plenty to live up to and still much to do.

The first sessions take place between 25th of October and 7th of November. Whole songs, basic ideas, jams, riffs or sometimes just mere fragments are all filtered through the channels of an outdated mixing desk and onto the reels of a cassette based Portastudio, all four tracks with the meters in the red and the tape in glorious compression. ‘Sunset’ and ‘Sandblasted’ emerge fully formed in time to be included as part of the live set during the upcoming tour in support of the ‘Rave Down’ EP, which starts at Middlesborough Polytechnic on 8th of November and continues all the way through to Oxford Venue on 15th of December, after which the writing sessions reconvene.

Jimmy Hartridge’s home, a squatted basement flat on St Augustines Road, is only a couple of hundred yards away, as is The Murray Arms, a shabby local boozer located on the corner of Murray Street and Agar Grove and within sight of the back door to Playground Studios. A pattern soon develops – all day spent making noise in Studio 4 then into the Murray for refreshment and then a short walk to Jim’s for a smoke and to review the day’s recordings, cherry picking the best bits for retention or development. This circuit will become a familiar routine over the upcoming weeks, especially when heavy snowfall brings London to a standstill for a while and everyone is forced to crash on Jimmy’s floor for a few nights, until the weather situation improves.

January 1991 sees the band take a break for a day to play a sold out gig at the Camden Underworld. ‘Sci Flyer’ ‘Pile Up’ ‘Hands’ and ‘Flawed’ all make their live debuts. “Swervedriver hew their melodies from the hills themselves” reports Melody Maker magazine “There’s an extremely pure and raw feel to the way they wield their melodies – great slabs of noise lurching into each other in the most elemental manner”

As a reward for the success of the gig, the band move into the larger and slightly more secluded Studio 5 at the Playground and with the album recording scheduled to begin in March, the songs start to take their final shape, although new ideas continue to come. ‘Feel So Real’ appears in the last week in February, as does the beginnings of ‘Never Lose That Feeling’ (but that’s a story for a different time frame).

So, what you hold in your hands in the results of all those weeks’ work. The audio quality is not pristine but considering our rudimentary recording skills and the technology available at the time, it was never going to be. You may hear an occasional bum note, or a dropped beat here and there. You will definitely hear the hiss of amplifiers and the buzz of FX pedals but most importantly what you will also hear are the songs as they first emerged, fresh and to all intents and purposes, played live. Some would undergo further refinement as the album recording progressed but this particular release is a time capsule, a document of a crucial period in the band’s development and as such it deserves to be shared. It contains the best moments of those original Portastudio tapes expertly tidied up, restored and balanced by persons eminently more qualified than ourselves. However, the result is still raw and immediate and takes you straight into that grimey rehearsal room in Camden Town during the winter of 1990/91.

Apologies for the omission of ‘Rave Down’ by the way. That was written earlier in 1990 and recorded straight away, bypassing the demo stage altogether. No early recording of that song exists. You can also find the original demo of ‘Son Of Mustang Ford’ on the ‘Juggernaut Rides’ compilation, which you already own, of course.. right? So, as a bonus, also included here is a version recorded during the ‘Raise’ sessions but not used. Cleaner, more restrained but with a unique coda.

Thanks go out to everyone who helped make this project happen, especially the Tascam company of Japan, who invented and sold the Portastudio home recording device. Without them, this particular record wouldn’t exist at all and keeping track of ourselves during the writing of ‘Raise’ would have been considerably more difficult.”

Adi Vines 2026. 

credits

releases October 23, 2026

Adam Franklin – guitars left channel & vocals
Jimmy Hartridge – guitars right channel
Adi Vines – bass
Graham Bonnar – drums & percussion

Recorded at Playground Studios, Camden Town 1991

https://swervedriver.bandcamp.com/album/raise-demos

I’ve been wanting to upgrade my vinyl record storage for a while now. I recently moved and decided to see what was available. I had been using cheap Ikea Kallax shelves for a while now and wanted to find something nicer.

The USM Haller shelves appealed to me in many ways except for one important one, price. They are asking $3500 for the one I was interested in. They tend to go way up from there as you add on more storage. That just wasn’t realistic for me.

I decided to look for alternatives to see if I could find the same look, at a comparable build quality, but at a much more attractive price.

My search turned up a number of options but many turned me off for various reasons. Mostly construction & build seemed off or cheap, or they were sold on suspect websites.

I then came upon this option on Amazon, made by Arvora, which seemed to check all the boxes. It’s not cheap by any stretch, but compared to USM Haller, they are substantially more affordable.

While the price varies by size and style, the specific model I wanted was over 80% less expensive than a USM Haller.

I did some research before making the purchase. I did an image-match search and found what appears to be the same on eBay as well, such as here and here.

I felt better about my return options with Amazon if I ended up not being satisfied so I decided to take a chance with that one.

It arrived much sooner than the original expected delivery window. I received it 4 days after placing the order if my memory is correct. I caught the delivery driver laying putting it down rather hard. He didn’t know I was standing in the doorway. After it banged down a bit too hard for my comfort, he heard the front door open, glanced up and said, “my bad.” I took it inside and quickly dug into opening it up and seeing what I was about to get myself into.

Right from the start, I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the parts. The poles are high quality, durable steel. Very attractive! Not cheap or remotely flimsy. The white panels were also on par with the original brand ones I’ve seen in my local DWR.

It came with decent instructions, albeit not perfect or overly explanatory, but they were adequate.

I was able to put it together without much frustration but there are times where you need to pay attention to photos and have an idea of the logic of how things need to assemble.

The only real confusion I had was with how the hinges attached. This is one area where the instructions lacked. It wasn’t hard or intricate but it wasn’t completely obvious. I was able to figure it out after a bit, and I’m sure I looked like a dog looking at its owner, with its head cocked at an angle, trying to understand the vague instructions. They simply slide into the appropriate side panel corner, with the screws loose, and then you tighten down the screws once they are fully seated as far as they’ll go into the corner. The metal rectangular piece serves as a little bracket that tightens down to hold the hinge in place. It’s a pretty simple in concept. The instructions say to loosen up the screws but they don’t really explain how much or what exactly that means. The screws were already loose and probably sufficiently so.

The one door wasn’t lining up as perfectly as the other so I reached out to customer support and they were very responsive, helpful, and genuinely concerned about my satisfaction. I realize this sounds exaggerated, or like a sales pitch, but it’s true. I felt like I was dealing with a local mom & pop shop who cared. They spoke decent English too, although I have no idea where they were located, but I assume not in the US.

The support rep also confirmed that each shelf can hold up to 66 pounds. Filling up each section with records would be heavier than that so I elected to not fill up the middle shelves all the way. I think having more weight on the bottom is pretty safe. The shelf construction feels strong enough to support it but I decided to not risk it on the middle shelves.

The naturally slick metal material makes the records want to slide around so I wanted to find a solution for that. I ended up buying large metal bookends and strong neodymium disc magnets to hold the bookends in place. I only used 2 bookends on each middle shelf but I put more on the lower ones to give all the records more support. I think I used 4 on each lower shelf, for 8 total on the entire bottom level.

Buying enough bookends and magnets wasn’t cheap, and added to the cost of the shelving solution, but I thought it was worth it. If you don’t have that many records then you may not need them.

One thing to note, and this wasn’t obvious from the description or photos, the locks do lock but they don’t give you a key. They told me that they are designed to be ‘locked’ by any thin metal item such as a coin. Their reasoning for this seemed like a cop out, “because customers easily lose keys”.

So they do lock if your only intention is to keep out toddlers or just someone being casually nosy, but if someone really wants to unlock it, it’s incredibly easy. You can buy locks that fit if you want to use a real key. There are sellers on eBay, such as this one, that sell locks and other parts, as well as nice quality felt that you can use.

In the end, I’m quite pleased with this purchase and will buy another piece from the same vendor, Arvora, again. (Edit: I’ve since ordered this mid-century modern coffee table and am also very pleased.)

Here are some other cabinet styles from the same vendor I used. They come in other colors too.

Catherine Wheel guitarist Brian Futter has released a new song featuring Belly singer Tanya Donelly. It’s available on Soundcloud now. Brian was kind enough to answer some questions about this new work, and a bit about Catherine Wheel.

Look for the EP release on February 10, 2026 on various music services. (Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, etc)

How did Good Day Father come to fruition?

“Ever since Tanya sang on Judy Staring At The Sun, I’ve always wanted to work with her on something else. The last couple of years I’ve felt my musical imagination have a rebirth, song ideas everywhere. I needed a vehicle for it, so Good Day Father was born. The name comes from the phrase my son uses to get rid of me on the phone when he’s bored with me… Tanya was my first choice for singer. Very pleased she said yes!”

How many songs featuring Tanya are you planning to release?

“We’ve recorded a 3 track EP, which will be released through 2026, with plans for another EP in 2027.”

With modern home studio recording, cost and convenience are obvious advantages. But now that you’ve written, recorded, and released music in this era, have there been any unexpected benefits? Any unexpected drawbacks?

“The main benefit is for me is being able to create and build songs to completion, from garbled idea on a phone through to finished living song. That’s the personal joy of the whole thing and it’s how I got into being in a band in the first place. Now you don’t have to persuade a record company to loan you tens of thousands to get there. The downside is obviously everyone is doing it, the world is awash with new songs, human and AI derived, so in most cases music has no financial value to the songwriter anymore, other than performing live. I don’t think the present landscape for music is worse than it was, it’s just just different.”

How might having these tools have affected your past work with Catherine Wheel?

“Catherine Wheel always had its own little studio, we created demos/b-sides very quickly, I can’t see the benefits of today would have speeded anything up for us really, we were a lean machine!”

Alternapop related tangent – read my 2007 article here on what it was like to collect music in the 90s as a Catherine Wheel fan, trying to obtain the dozens of non-album b-sides

A related question for those interested in your past work, which is likely most everyone reading this, do you think some Catherine Wheel albums, such as Ferment or Chrome, would benefit from being remixed or remastered? If so, is there any chance that might happen? I know that Cherry Red supposedly “remastered” Ferment for the 2010 reissue but I’m not sure how that was done, or if the band had any say in it.

“Yeah, we gave Cherry Red permission for Ferment ‘remastered, but at that time none of us were interested in anything CW, we were all living other lives, so the whole thing went unpoliced by us. It would be different now. A proper remastered release would be closely governed.”

What else have you been working on, music-wise, over the last 25 years, and in what capacity? I think you did some composing for the British indie film ‘Home’ (2021).

“I’ve written the scores for a couple of films recently. Really interesting to start putting sounds over images and storylines, interpreting the film with sound sympathetically. An annoying aspect of that is you can’t help analysing and critiquing every sound or piece of music behind everything you see on tv or the big screen…hard to turn off.”

Home (2021) on IMDB

Good Day Father links:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• Soundcloud
• Bandcamp

A year ago we posted a few lesser known shoegaze artists. It’s time for more.

 Salon Music – Who Just Can’t Be Happy? (1995)

Salon Music is a Japanese new wave/shoegaze/rock duo consisting of Hitomi Takenaka (竹中仁見) and Zin Yoshida (吉田仁). They have released twelve studio albums, between the years 1983 and 2011.

Two songs in particular stand out as being Shoegaze, Wanna Be Tied, and this one, Who Just Can’t Be Happy? Recommended if you like Panda Riot.

Majesty Crush – No. 1 Fan (1992)

Hailing from Detroit, Michigan, Majesty Crush formed in 1990 and broke up in 1995. The band’s lineup consisted of lead singer David Stroughter, bassist Hobey Echlin, guitarist Michael Segal and drummer Odell Nails III.

Majesty Crush served as the opening act at shows in the early 1990s for such bands as Jesus Jones, Mazzy Star, and The Verve. The song No. 1 Fan picked up significant radio airplay on Windsor, Ontario’s 89X, and led to Majesty Crush signing with Dali Records, a Warner/Elektra subsidiary. They released Love 15, the band’s lone studio album, in 1993. AllMusic’s Joshua Glazer described the album as “a testament to what might have been, if only the band’s four members lived in Manchester instead of Detroit.”

majestycrush.bandcamp.com (digital)

Numero Group vinyl reissue (2024)

Sway – Fall (2003)

Formerly a four-piece noisepop outfit from Ventura, California, Sway is/was an on-going one man dreampop project and alias for songwriter/producer Andrew Saks.

sphere – Topography of the White Sea (2011)

Formed in 2007 by guitarist Makoto Gomi, the group took a break after releasing its third album in 2011, but resumed its activities in 2022 with the release of its fourth album after 11 years, featuring Shoko Inoue as a new vocalist.

Numero Group have announced the pre-order for a new compilation for Majesty Crush.

Driven by lust-fueled limerence and drifting far from conformity, Butterflies Don’t Go Away captures Majesty Crush’s transient, yet subversive mark on the landscape of American shoegaze to come. Tracked between 1991-1995, the quartet reimagined the collapse of the American rust belt as a late-night, nail biting fever dream/revenge fantasy. This deluxe 2xLP compiles their Love 15 album, singles, EPs, and rarities, all remastered from the original tapes, with thorough annotation and visual documentation in a 24-page booklet. An immortal transcendence if there ever was one.

Majesty Crush was filed and misfiled in one category or another throughout their brief but extraordinary career. They answered the call to open up for just about every dream pop, paisley, or shoegaze band that made it to the Midwest in the early part of the 90s… Mazzy Star, The Verve, Julian Cope, Chapterhouse, Curve and My Bloody Valentine just to scratch the surface. This linked them with a scene and a sound not necessarily their own…they were far too ambitious to gaze at any shoes, especially their own, and with a frontman, David Stroughter, who sometimes seemed to channel Syd Barrett, they were not hiding behind layers of guitar. Their less-told dimension is that they also shared stages and collaborators with uncategorizable locals like Laughing Hyenas, His Name Is Alive, and Jack White (in Goober & the Peas)… members also grew up around Motown royalty, and at any show you might find kin to Diana Ross, or P-Funk members, or Marvin Gaye songwriters.

Pre-order from Numero Group: Release date is March 29, 2024 – Begins shipping in mid-March

Tracklist:

Boyfriend *
Uma *
No. 1 Fan *
Brand *
Purr (Interlude) *
Seles *
Grow *
Pretty Head (Interlude) *
Cicciolina *
Penny For Love *
Skin (Interlude) *
Feigned Sleep *
Horse *
No. 1 Fan (EP Version)
Worri
Horse (EP Version)
Sunny Pie
Cicciolina (7″ version)
Purr (7″ version)
Space Between Your Moles
Seine
If JFA Were Still Together
Ghost Of Fun

[* from the 1993, Love 15 album]

Available again on vinyl for the first time since its 1998 release, it’s Swervedriver’s 4th album, 99th Dream!

Soon after its initial release, the band broke up and this classic LP was lost to the ages. Now reissued as a proper double LP, with a bonus 4th side of remixes from Alan Moulder (My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Lush, etc) 99th Dream is back in print.

99th Dream has been remastered and is being re-released as a limited-edition, ‘coke bottle green’ (available on bandcamp), extended double vinyl LP in a gatefold sleeve with three new Alan Moulder remixes! Also available is a red limited-edition.

The official announcement comes tomorrow, on 11/3/2023, and will be available for pre-order. The release date is expected to be Jan. 19, 2024.

https://swervedriver.bandcamp.com/music

Previously released albums may also be available here:

• deepdiscount
• popmarket

Pet Fox is a 3-piece, Boston based, indie rock band. Its members are Theo Hartlett (vocals, guitar), Morgan Luzzi (bass), and Jesse Weiss (drums).

Recommended if you like: Ovlov, Seam, Weezer, Slint

https://petfox.bandcamp.com/

Episode 65 of Melting Pot, first broadcast on Get Radio (www.getradio.co.uk) on September 21st 2023, features an interview with Swervedriver’s Adam Franklin.

They premiere 3 songs that will be released in January 2024.

• Bolts of Melody – “5 x 5” (17:37 mark)
• Shake Appeal – ‘Train Train’ (31:31 mark)
• Swervedriver – ‘Why Say Yeah’ (41:28 mark)

Adam talks about the soon to be released 99th Dream reissue and the upcoming new Bolts of Melody album. Planned release date for both is January 2024.

Adam also reveals that J. Mascis plays a guitar solo on a track on the Bolts of Melody album.

Listen to the whole interview here.

11:40 – Adam Franklin interview (part 1)

17:37 – Bolts of Melody – “5 x 5” (new song premiere)

21:04 – Adam Franklin interview (part 2)

31:31 – Shake Appeal – ‘Train Train’ (exclusive)

34:30 – Adam Franklin interview (part 3)

41:28 – Swervedriver – ‘Why Say Yeah’ (deluxe reissue of 99th dream, exclusive)

44:40 – Adam Franklin interview (part 4)

Curve were an English alternative rock and electronic music duo from London, formed in 1990 and split in 2005. Doppelgänger is their debut studio album from 1992 and is a continuation of the musical idiom established by the group on it’s three earlier EPs. Doppelgänger combines elements of dance music and alternative rock with the reverb-laden and distortion-heavy stylings of shoegaze.

The album reached No. 11 in the UK Albums Chart and spawned the two singles “Faît Accompli” and “Horror Head”.

Many credit Curve for heavily influencing Garbage’s sound.

Limited edition of 2500 individually numbered copies on translucent orange marbled 180-gram audiophile vinyl.

Available for preorder from many sites now, including:

• popmarket
• deepdiscount
• roughtrade

Boston’s Drop Nineteens, originally active from 1991 to 1995, have announced a new album, Hard Light. The release date is November 3, 2023.

They were one of the few U.S. based bands who styled themselves on the UK’s distinctive shoegaze sound, taking their inspiration from bands such as My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and Bleach.

Drop Nineteens 2023 tour dates:

October 10 – Washington, DC – The Atlantis *
October 11 – Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer %
October 12 – Boston, MA – The Paradise *
October 13 – Brooklyn, NY – Warsaw *
October 19 – Los Angeles, CA – The Belasco ^
October 22 – Oakland, CA – The New Parish ^

* with Greg Mendez
% with Horse Jumper of Love
^ with Winter

Order the new album:

• popmarket
• deepdiscount
• Drop Nineteens-Hard Light Exclusive LP Color Vinyl With Autographed Postcard
• https://dropnineteens.bandcamp.com/album/hard-light