By Crayon Fields Released September 2006
Animal Bells is an unruffled, dreamy pop masterpiece from this young Melbourne quartet, 12 minor key pop masterpieces filled with soaring harmonies and ringing 12 string guitar. Think the Zombies, Byrds and Beach Boys, but also think the peculiar genius of singer/guitarist Geoff O’Connor who has deft and idiosyncratic touch all his own.
By Misora Released August 2006
Misora is a near-perfect folk masterpiece, recorded in Tokyo in 1972, alternating full-bodied arrangements (produced by Harry Hosono of Yellow Magic Orchestra and Happy End) with Sachiko’s lonesome guitar and pure, soaring vocals. For lovers of Judee Sill, Vashti Bunyan or Joni Mitchell.
By Always Released April 2006
Nine songs recorded on cassette four track with Lakes’ Sean Bailey. Here’s what Matmos’ Drew Daniel had to say about Always in his review for Pitchfork:
“The googly eyes, nude photos, and hand-drawn rainbow crayon squiggles that adorn the cover of this beguiling artifact point in several directions at once: outsider art, gay rainbow flag, childhood [...]
By Lakes Released December 2005
Lakes’ debut self-titled album is a completely self-recorded affair made at home on one-track tape decks. All overdubbing was achieved by putting the first track through Sean’s home stereo and playing along. Despite this, the sound on Lakes is huge, claustrophobic and powerful, sidestepping any issues of fidelity through sheer dynamism. The album alternates between [...]
By Lakes Released December 2005
Lakes’ debut self-titled album is a completely self-recorded affair made at home on one-track tape decks. All overdubbing was achieved by putting the first track through Sean’s home stereo and playing along. Despite this, the sound on Lakes is huge, claustrophobic and powerful, sidestepping any issues of fidelity through sheer dynamism. The album alternates between [...]
By Kath Bloom Released October 2005
Finally is a compilation of Kath Bloom’s heartbreaking, lovelorn and remarkably beautiful songs recorded since the early 90s, when after a period of child-rearing, family life and daily financial struggle, Kath began to return to the studio. These are songs recorded on the fly in friends’ lounge rooms or cut-rate studios, but they reveal a [...]
By Tenniscoats Released October 2005
Many Tenniscoats fans say that the band’s meditative intensity has never quite been captured in the studio. It is for this reason that Chapter Music is releasing a compilation of their live work. Live Wanderus (named in Saya’s imaginative English to reflect the words Wander, Wonder, Wondrous and Us) presents songs from each Tenniscoats release [...]
Live Aoiheya January 2003 documents an entire brief performance by this unique band, incidentally the first Maher show that Chapter boss Guy Blackman saw after moving to live in Japan in 2002 (he returned to Melbourne in 2004). It captures the band in a variety of guises unusual even for them, including an extended abstract [...]
Guy Blackman In Japan is a ragged but atmosphere-rich document of Guy’s time in Tokyo (September 2002 – March 2004). It features five songs recorded in one afternoon, with one microphone, the weekend before Guy got on a plane back to Melbourne, plus three songs recorded at the last live gig he played in Tokyo. [...]
Fourteen amazing Japanese folk-psych bands, most part of a Tokyo scene centering around the Majikick label, run by Ueno and Saya of the Tenniscoats, with older bands Maher Shalal Hash Baz and Nagisa Ni Te as two primary inspirations.
