Featuring one song from the LP and one exclusive recording. Leading with ‘Elegant Elephant’ a delicious hook laden pop song that will surely bring us sunshine as summer looms on the horizon. The exclusive song is ‘Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor (On the Bedpost Overnight)’ is a recording by One Happy Island that features Pete and Ian of Horowitz. This fun cover of the Lonnie Donegan classic shows the playful side of One Happy Island.

01 Elegant Elephant
02 Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor (On the Bedpost Overnight)’ – One Happy Island featuring Pete and Ian of Horowitz

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NET005 features Falling and Laughing, a two piece from Birmingham.

‘Lights Out Birmingham’  and ‘Compilations of Sweden’ are two previously unreleased songs by the band. Describing themselves as indiepop, or in an attempt to point out the futility of boxing a band into a genre – they also have created a genre all of their own ‘Chordgazing’.  Nice.

The two songs on the release are fantastic and they’re a little pointer of what is to come on their soon to be released ‘Bunnyhood’ EP – which should be out in the next month or so on Odd Box.  Exciting Stuff.

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Godsmania are a hidden gem of indeipop goodness.  They have a previous release on their own label Spanner Records – which is available on their website for a free download as well.  The sound that Godsmania make can be best described as vintage 80’s inspired jangle pop.

These two new songs are perfect examples of fuzzed up, yet understated, guitar pop – maybe hinting at influences beyond their jangle pop roots and I can hear echoes of Yo La Tengo at their fuzzy pop best in these two songs.

“I’m not sure it gets any janglier” - Even In The Future Nothing Works
“Shambling indie pop” - Russell’s Reviews
“Pure vintage 1980’s jangle pop”  – Indie MP3

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Released:  January 2010

The blogosphere has well and truly taken The Melting Ice Caps – aka laptop-chamber-pop chanteur David Shah, sometimes abetted by a rotating cast of his talented and lovely friends – to its heart.  David’s first five singles, released for free through his website over the last twelve months or so, have variously been labeled “angelic”, “brilliant”, “filthy”, “beautiful”, “erudite”, “lush”, “anachronistic”, “stylish”, “romantic”, “witty”, “succulent”, “politely ornate”, “carefree”, “original and imaginitive” and “genius”.  Phew.

His live shows have been gathering steam (and yet more acclaim) through the addition of off-kilter video backdrops, increasingly expansive (but not expensive) arrangements and, if you’re lucky, a touch of Rat Pack in the wardrobe department.

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Released: October 2009

Factory Kids are musician/artist Christina Marie (formerly of The Modern Hour/Audn) and singer/songwriter Tim Chaplin (solo/Luminous).  They formed in 2008.

They’ve been gaining a reputation as exciting pioneers of experimental pop music.   With contributions on compilaitions released by Unexplainable Recordings, Series Two Records and their debut LP has just been released by Powertool Records.  The single is a two tracker and features two cracking songs that fuzz and crackle with beats and distortion.  This is beautiful pop music that defies easy classifaction.   There are nods to Flying Saucer Attack, Massive Attack  and The Third Eye Foundation – but this band really needs to be heard.  This is pop music for the 21st Century.

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Released: October 2009

We are shy and nervous and we don’t want people to write about who we are as people or what we wear or how far we deviate from the music that has influenced us, just the music and the artwork. We hope you don’t mind that we haven’t written about how we met or what famous bands we like or how old we are or anything. We do like Wales and cats, and whales but not Cats.

We formed at the beginning of June and have been writing lots of songs. We record everything at home on computers. We collect sounds we find interesting and record them with an iPod and put them into the tracks with all sorts of electronic trickery. All our songs are about real events or things that interest us generally, not love songs or songs about how miserable we are or how to do a funny dance or anything, and the words can sometimes be abstract but always have meaning as well as sounding musical.

‘Soft Silver Young’ is loosely based on the family who jumped off Beachy Head recently with their young son, who had died from illness, in a rucksack with some of his toys.

‘Heartland Half Seizure’ is about Oswald Mosley and Jeffrey Hamm and the anti-fascist riot in Tonypandy in 1936.

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Released:  July 2009