Precious Recordings
Helping to keep the flames of
indie-pop rebirth and rediscovery alight simultaneously – alongside
Amelia Fletcher and
Rob Pursey’s fellow-travelling
Skep Wax enterprise –
Nick Godfrey’s
Precious Recordings is clearly in it for an Olympic marathon, albeit with a few sprints along the way. Hence, following on rapidly from a still-fresh trio of seven-inch singles from newbies and returnees, comes two ten-inch outings, bringing fresh sounds from veteran players and a near-forgotten aural slice of the past, respectively.
On transfer / on loan from the like-minded Where It’s At Is Where You Are label lands Silver Biplanes, an ensemble co-piloted by the husband-and-wife partnership of vocalist Vanessa Vass (ex-Melons) and multi-instrumentalist Tim Vass (formerly of Razorcuts, Dandelion Wine and more), kept airborne by drummer Rob Scott and guitarist Noel Douglas. Bringing four new recordings — three originals and one cover — to the turntable, Coming Up For Air is a persuasive re-introductory EP-sized offering.
Tilting into more kaleidoscopic shapes rather than straight-ahead jangles, the quartet of cuts glide along with a propulsive balminess. Thus, the hook-filled title track fuses twangling guitar lines and woozy keyboards into a swooning opening salvo; “Before Yesterday” melds in layers of drum machines and synths for some
kosmische-meets-
shoegaze haziness; a take on
Biff Bang Pow!’s “Miss California Toothpaste 1972” chugs along in a glorious rush of harmonies, fuzzy organs and
Byrdsian chiming; and the crepuscular outro of “The Twilight Underground” imagines
Spooky-era
Lush stripped of some
Robin Guthrie production gauze.
Whilst the conscious decision to
use fade-outs, rather than letting tracks reach finite endings, means that some things feel a tad prematurely concluded, there is no doubt on the merits of the gathered material itself that
Coming Up For Air encourages coming back for more.
In more traditionally occupied retrospective Precious Recordings terrain comes John Peel Session 14.09.87 from The Motorcycle Boy. A fleeting and somewhat fraught operation featuring members of Meat Whiplash and Shop Assistants — that originally only released a few singles and whose sole studio album was shelved until a much-belated 2019 archival appearance — this four-tracker is another compassionately rescued piece of history.
What an enchanting affair it is too, that sits nicely next to
Jesse Garon And The Desperadoes’
Janice Long session EP — put out by Precious about a year ago — as a capsule of the Caledonian post-
C86 spirit, that is frayed but rousing. Although there is a contemporaneous cannon-fire edge to some of the drum sounds, these well-excavated
Maida Vale antiquities have a largely ageless attraction.
Consequently, we’re
comfortingly encircled by the folk-rock yearning of “Scarlet”; the viola-topped ache of “Some Girls”; the previously unavailable
R.E.M.-meets-
Talulah Gosh bittersweet pleasure of “I Could Make You Happy”; and the smouldering pared-back beauty of “Under The Bridge”. The strikingly melancholic poignancy of singer
Alex Taylor’s performances across these retrieved BBC tapings is also magnified by the knowledge that she passed away in the 2000s.
Fittingly then, this is a both a fine tribute and postscript to one of the lesser told stories of the ‘80s underground music world.
-Adrian-
On transfer / on loan from the like-minded Where It’s At Is Where You Are label lands Silver Biplanes, an ensemble co-piloted by the husband-and-wife partnership of vocalist Vanessa Vass (ex-Melons) and multi-instrumentalist Tim Vass (formerly of Razorcuts, Dandelion Wine and more), kept airborne by drummer Rob Scott and guitarist Noel Douglas. Bringing four new recordings — three originals and one cover — to the turntable, Coming Up For Air is a persuasive re-introductory EP-sized offering.
In more traditionally occupied retrospective Precious Recordings terrain comes John Peel Session 14.09.87 from The Motorcycle Boy. A fleeting and somewhat fraught operation featuring members of Meat Whiplash and Shop Assistants — that originally only released a few singles and whose sole studio album was shelved until a much-belated 2019 archival appearance — this four-tracker is another compassionately rescued piece of history.
