Pale Cocoon – Mayu (Incidental Music)

This was originally a cassette from deep in the Japanese 80’s underground. I have no idea how they came to make these delicate lo-fi pop miniatures, perhaps they heard some early Durutti Column or got ahold of the Fruits of the Original Sin, that artsy comp on Les Disques Du Crepuscule. It’s similar in feel to Japanese folk-pop band Hallelujahs or Maher Shalal Hash Baz, though both arrived a couple years later. This tape got resurrected in the mid-00’s music blog era. Why did we ever put up with those watery crap mp3’s everyone used to post? Thankfully this sounds way better as a vinyl reissue, gorgeous sleeve, lovely timid art-rock sounds, Avant Teatime in Japan.

Dummy – s/t EP (Self-Released)

The blurb on their Bandcamp talks about Kraut Rock, but to be specific this is the 90’s indie rock that was influenced by Kraut Rock. It reminds me of that scene in Ghost World where Enid dyes her hair and gets annoyed at being compared to modern punk, “it’s obviously an original 1977 punk rock look.” So this is closer to Stereolab, Unrest or Th’Faith Healers than Cluster and could have easily come out on the TOO PURE label (who had half-a-dozen GREAT groundbreaking bands). Dummy is bright and fun, unpretentious trance-pop with noise solos. The first three tracks are NEU beat rockers but there’s a lovely psychedelic folk song (“Folk Song”) with lush layered vocals, and the last track is a long ambient piece. This all sounds great on a sunny afternoon in quarantine.