Beautiful Noise 12" album

$24.00

Beautiful Noise 12" album

$24.00

Side A
Letting Up Despite Great Faults - Hearts and Flowers
Japanese Heart Software - Little Cat
Fawns of Love - Miranda
Strawberry Generation - Glasswings
Dayflower - Flail

Side B
The Suncharms - Saddest Sound
Mariana In Our Heads - Million Years
The Arctic Flow - C'est la Fille de mes reves
They Go Boom!! - Not Knowing
The Proctors - The Final Kiss

"Beautiful Noise"- reviewed by Simon Heavisides

Trapped in Amber

As we haul ourselves, shellshocked and weary, to the end of a brutal year the artists featured on Beautiful Noise give us a refuge from it all with a dose of utterly gorgeous (instrumental) dream-pop bliss.

At first, it seems Sunday Records have thrown a bit of a curveball here, but really, from a label that seems to be all about finding beauty and feeling in small intimate moments, it makes total sense.

I'll admit there was a part of me resistant to the idea of an all-instrumental album, (yes, OK I'm a Philistine), but that part ran up the white flag around twenty seconds into Japanese Heart Software's, Little Cat. Fading in quietly, before kicking in with rumbling bass and chiming guitar, at which point the synth enters and rips your heart to shreds. Exactly as it should be. All I can say is, we need a JHS album asap...

Million Years, from Japan's Mariana in our Heads, twists the knife even deeper. A reverie of crystallised heartbreak, the thud of syndrums like a lonely heartbeat. It's the soundtrack to a half-remembered memory, trapped in amber, replaying again and again.

They Go Boom!! Hand down a vintage 1990 track. Unknowing was rescued from an old cassette tape and is a masterclass in minimalistic lo-fi beauty in stark contrast to what you might expect.