16 March 2009

papa sprain | may

i can't take credit for this upload - the files come from darren durham, once of fortdax (great melodic electronica if you don't know - loads of stuff for download at that link), who clearly got tired of waiting for the papa sprain post i promised back in 2006!

anyway, papa sprain - what to say? one of those bands that managed to say an awful lot with very little with just three brief releases. part of the h.ark! stable alongside butterfly child and ar kane, gary mckendry's music is so fragile as to almost not be there, yet it has this soothing, amniotic presence akin to the first insides album and the first few butterfly child releases (which he mixed).

"u swell" pulses below gary's half-spoken vocal. "mayflower" is a swoon of guitar neck harmonics. "i got stop" sparkles and twinkles. "bathtime" neatly pre-empts the sea & cake's groove... 17 minutes and it's all over, but it's enough to have become something of an enigma, the lack of profile only serving to enhance the otherworldly quality of the music.

i wonder what he's doing now.

12" released by h'ark! in 1992.

it's better to burn out than to fade away.

3 comments:

Biggie Samuels said...

Thank you so much! I've been trying to hear this bloody thing for more than a decade now!

rudyard said...

Hi

I'll soon launch the official H.Ark! Records retrospective website.
All the stuff will be up there,nice vinyl and downloads, photos, stories etc.
Will make an announcement on myspace/arkaneuk blog in january 2010.

Take it easy

Rudy

dee_seejay said...

Cheers...love this