papa sprain | peel session

i must thank last fm user connecti_cut, and our previous papa sprain benefactor, darren durham, once of fortdax, for passing this on. as i've said before, there were precious few papa sprain releases, so getting hold of a new one is pure gold. especially this session, which displays a slightly less "feathered" version of the band, giving what i imagine is a fairly good impression of the band as a live act.

::: time bath
::: i got stop
::: you are ten million needless people
::: cliff tune

you can read a little more info about the session here. sadly can't find any pictures of the band at all. once upon a time i had a copy of a fanzine with a load of live pictures of them and butterfly child. can't remember what it was called - it may have been kerosene but not sure... those were the days.

bbc radio one session broadcast 1 may 1992.

where are they now.

trumans water | peel sessions

trumans water is a band to hold onto fiercely. chaotic, sprawling, churning, controlled, breathless, breathtaking. how the hell did they remember those arrangements? all i can say is they must have practiced a lot.

john peel famously played their debut album, 'of thick tum', in its entirety on his show. smart man.

released by strange fruit in 1995.

your plastic culture sucks and it's gonna blow!

cocteau twins | bbc sessions

the complete sessions, running from 1982 to 1996. see the complete tracklisting on wikipedia.

released by bella union in 1999.

numberwang 1
numberwang 2

70 gwen party | peel sessions

i once asked victor n'dip of duo 70 gwen party to write a recipe for my fanzine, speeder, so he did beans on toast, which was pretty much what you expect, apart from the stipulation that the toast had to be burnt. that sums up the band pretty well: quintessentially english, but slightly bitter.

fiercely independent, largely ignored and generally commercially unsuccessful, the band released a raft of 7" singles and a couple of lps on their own snape label. most of the singles had text-only photocopied sleeves, largely devoted to useful underground contact lists and rants against the mainstream media's bias towards those bands that advertise in their pages.

fortunately, john peel suffered no such bias and had them in time and time again. here's the sessions.

released by snape in 1995.

beans a la toast.

uzeda

when steve albini curated atp a few years ago, uzeda were definitely the band to watch as far as i was concerned. coaxed out of retirement by steve, their set was pure joy. rare it is that you see bands so clearly enjoying themselves on stage, unabashedly. but then uzeda is a band that seems to be all about let your true emotions pour out. just listen to the cathartic wails of agostino's guitar, mimicking the primal screams from giovanna. and then there's that rythmn section, the bass adding serious meat to the drum's bone structure.

er anyway, enough bad music criticism, uzeda don't get talked about much these days, so here are some songs you should own. hunt down their records...

from the ep 4 (touch n go)

::: surrounded
::: sleeper deeper

from the album different section wires (touch n go) [download from the epitonic page]
::: the milky way

from the peel sessions mini album (strange fruit)
::: it happened here
::: well paid
::: higher than me
::: save my snakes
::: spread
::: slow

the cranberries | peel session

it seems hard to imagine now that the cranberries were ever in a position to be offered a peel session. while today they might be largely forgotten, for a while they were huge, a great wailing behemoth of a band, churning out increasingly bland soft rock/pop ditties to be lapped up by hoards of americans (mostly). stories abounded of singer dolores o’riordan’s diva-esque behaviour, while no stories whatsoever abounded of the three sleeper blokes. in short, the cranberries were not a cool band.

but i still remember reading about them for the first time in nme, cutting out the cute picture of dolores and sticking it on my wall, then going out and buying dreams on 7” single. back then they were just a shy irish indie band, first on the bill before stereolab, providing back vocals on moose’s first album, doing a peel session.

sorry, quality isn’t great – these are ripped from a third generation cassette copy – but somehow the hiss adds to the general wispy atmosphere for me.

::: waltzing back (peel session, first broadcast 16 january 1992)
::: linger
::: wanted

zipped here.