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Wednesday 29 July 2009

Dart

Bit of an odd one today with Dart, a band I know very little about, but came up in my digging around because the B side to this single is a cover of an album track by Sarah stalwarts the Field Mice.

The internet doesn't know much about Dart so I thought it would be nice if you lot heard them as well, they're a rather nice swooping indie band from, apparently, San Francisco - making them only the third non-British band I've done on here I think.

So, what do we know? Well, the band contained at the very least three chaps called Rick Stone, Lauren Axelrod and John Stefan (the drummer), they seem to have been active from 1994 to 1995 and released three or four singles and an album on Che Records which is described as

"Just dramatic enough, just artistic enough, Dart created an understated treasure with 36 Cents an Hour, steering clear of most independent music trends in America and the U.K. of the early to mid-'90s to create something that couldn't quite easily be boxed up. Guitar pop? Shoegazing? Strings and piano? Indie rock? All of the above, with often striking results"
by the All music Guide; rather nicely I thought.

A myspace fan page gives a bit more background, but that really seems to be it, so if you know anything, please pop a comment below after having a listen to this:








Dart - Sleepless (right click etc...)

Excitingly the single is on red vinyl and this song contains either the longest false ending I've heard on a song for ages, or it's a very short song twice on one side. It's also a 33rpm 7", which is bound to lead to some Peel-esque wrong speed hilarity; I know it did for me the first time I tried to copy it...

3 comments:

  1. I don't think I can add anything historically except some personal stuff. I started the Galaxie 500 web site and mailing list in the mid 90s and Lauren Axelrod from Dart got in touch with me - we exchanged emails and mix-tapes (hers were much better than mine - I was such a novice, unexposed to the truly obscure!) and met at a Luna show in London in 1995. She baffled me by asking about the well-being of a friend I didn't even know she knew and didn't know that she knew I knew him (Harvey Williams of The Field Mice/Another Sunny Day). We lost touch probably about the time that she left Dart - which I think was just after the first album. Sleepless is a great single.

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  2. Charles Wyatt of Dart went on to become a member of Piano Magic, before forming Charles Atlas. Both bands are recommended. Great blog, btw.

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  3. matt greenberg, who played keyboards in several lineups of Dart, also went on to be in Charles Atlas and Whale Fall. He was formerly in the Rosemarys.

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