COVER ART made by James Shedden. Read our illustrator interview with James here.

THE BOOKLET is designed by Julia Pax and put together in InDesign by Silja Haddal Mork.

View the booklet.

Please DO NOT upload the full zip to your own server without our permission. Use a link to our zip instead.

ABOUT LOST TAPES

Lost Tapes is a musical project born from the exchange of cinematic and musical references between two friends. The friendship between Pau Roca (La Habitación Roja, Fantasma#3 and Litoral) and RJ Sinclair (Tokyo Sex Destruction, Lions Constellation and It’s not not) was forged through meetings in Madrid and Barcelona in various concerts and festivals. The two spent long hours chatting and recommending articles, books, music and movies. In those months they also started to circulate recorded tracks between Madrid and Vilanova de la Geltrú that ultimately resulted in the musical project Lost Tapes.

It’s the result of two musicians, in two different cities hundred of kilometers apart, but eager to collaborate, create and record songs without pretension; only with the desire to create something together.

The songs started with homemade computer recordings or simply voice notes. From there, they began creating tracks of distinct instruments that would form the compositions. They also integrated samples of legendary groups such as The Ronnettes and lyrics and sound cuts from movies that were referenced in songs like “Come With Me”. The presentation of these songs will combine two musicians, film projects and the use of loops and drones to reproduce the atmosphere of the songs. The name Lost Tapes is a reference to mix tapes with compilations of favorite groups that accompanied road trips and VHS tapes with movies and music videos exchanged among friends. These are now lost in time, and this project is an attempt to recover them with renovated songs. In our cassette players were groups like Ride, The Chills, The Go-Betweens, The Pastels, Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, Spacemen3 and The Field Mice from labels like Creation, Sarah, Slumberland Records and Bus Stop Records, among others.

The tapes disembarked from Santi Garcia’s studio Ultramarinos, where three have been mixed (the fourth was lost after the disappearance of a laptop and was only saved as a mixed version by Mark Greenwood). They will form the first EP produced by their own label (Lost Records) in 2013.

COVER ART made by Håkan Carlsson. Read our illustrator interview with Håkan here.

THE BOOKLET is designed by Julia Pax and put together in InDesign by Silja Haddal Mork.

View the booklet.

ABOUT SKELOCRATS

Skelocrats are a band from Dublin who have released 2 EPs, Whip Crack Away and Hot Yoga, which are available together on the exhaustive collection, The Complete Skelocrats. They make simple, brisk guitar pop music, somewhat warped by recording room insect interlopers. They are members of the Popical Island collective. Band members also play in Land Lovers, Grand Pocket Orchestra, Groom, Lie Ins, Ginnels, No Monster Club and Deputy Fuzz.

ABOUT THE COVERED SONG: 

We have encouraged the single-bands to make a cover version of a song they think deserve more attention. Skelocrats  has chosen to cover “Poupée de cire, poupée de son” by Serge Gainsbourg, originally performed by France Gall.

Skelocrats writes this about the song:

Poupée de cire, poupée de son was the winning song in the 1965 Eurovision Song Contest, sung for Luxembourg by France Gall. It’s a catchy song. The original has the galloping cowboy rhythm that we employed in Beat Your Buddies, which you can find on The Complete Skelocrats. Bronwyn had signaller a wish to take her French language singing for a walk, so it was the perfect marriage.

The original can be heard and viewed here:

James Shedden has made the cover art for Lost Tapes’ single on EardrumsPop, and this is our illustrator interview with him. So, who are you, James?

In short… I’m James, I live in London and I make things.

What are you working on right now?

I’m working on a handful of personal projects. I’m currently trying to produce as many images as possible with people & animals as focal points to make up for their absence in most of my previous work.

What are your favourite tools?

Cardboard, pencils, paint, paper, Photoshop, the printer.

 How do you begin / conceptualise a project?

Thinking, researching, writing & sketching.

Please tell us about the process of making the EardrumsPop-cover! Is this the way you usually work?

Yes, it’s my usual and fairly specific process, which involves: thinking about an suitable concept; trying out some composition ideas to get depth, tone & balance right and have a go at some colour combinations; working on the final surfaces, textures, marks, lines & colours – and then finishing touches appear along the way. Many of my images involve cardboard models, but the EardrumsPop cover and a handful of other recent works are cardboard-free.

Who / what are your greatest Visual Inspirations?

This is a hard question to give a satisfying answer to… let’s stick to Paul Klee for now.

Is music or other forms of art an inspiration?

Music, yes, very much so. Other forms of art too, but you don’t have all day… It’s not strictly part of your question but I am a musician (my band is Hoshal Patrick, hoshalpatrick.com). It’s a very big part of everything for me. I listen to the radio while I’m working & in general anything that comes with a strong recommendation.

Describe an average working day.

Get up, wash, breakfast, turn on the computer… I work from home where a routine is especially important, but doesn’t make for an interesting answer to this question.

What are your future plans? Any exciting things you are looking forward to?

 The plan is always to stay busy, work on new projects, resuscitate old ones. Hopefully bigger & better projects await, though sometimes smaller can be better too.

What question and answer would you like to end this interview with?

Håkan Carlsson has made the cover art for Skelocrats’ single on EardrumsPop, and this is our illustrator interview with him.  This is how Håkan presents himself and his art:

I started drawing at a early stage in my life making small picture books about a character called The Thumb. I didn’t know how to write words so I forced my mother and sister to write the sentences while I sat next and told them the stories. Since then I´v had a long love for pen and paper.

For 10 years or so I’ve been working with art and graphic design in one form or another. I started my working career as a flash developer, then through interaction and visual design, but I always return to illustration. Lately I´v been mostly working digitally as an visual designer but doing more and more illustrations whenever I get the time to sit down and do it.

My work is most often connected to music which is another passion of mine. For quite a while I played the drums in Stars in Coma and I also create own music under the name Joueur Noir. I always think in music when I´m doing illustrations and always try to have a musical theme.

My illustrations usually lands in warm and cosy colours, a kind of retro look with a lot of textures and a naive sense in form of characters and their surroundings. I always try to incorporate details that you wouldn´t normally take notice of in my illustrations.

What are you working on right now?
Right now I´m working on a large scale map of the town i live in which will be available as a print sometime in the future. Apart from that I´m also doing the artwork for the upcoming Stars In Coma album and taking commissions for illustrations whenever I have the time.

What are your favourite tools?
When illustrating: Pen and paper, ink, my wacom, photoshop, illustrator and SketchBook Pro for iPad.

Please tell us about the process of making the EardrumsPop-cover! 
My first idea was to build the cover around different trees, like one tree for each season, but when I started adding and removing parts it made me shift direction an turn it more into a bigger landscape. I had no clear idea of where I was going to end up, so it was more trial and error to nail the composition. Listening to Skelocrats during the process, I got a great feeling of their melodic and catchy songs, and thought a children´s book inspired cover would fit nicely.

Is this the way you usually work?

Sometimes it happens like that, and my experience of it is that you have to go with the flow and it will eventually turn out great. But it won´t necessarily turn out the way you thought it would be from the beginning. Quite similar to writing a song.

Who / what are your greatest Visual Inspirations?
I most often look in the world of comic books for inspiration, like the works of great artists Frank Miller, Eddie Campbell and Dave Gibbons. More contemporary illustrators I like are Andrew Kolb (kolbisneat.com), Gustav Dejert (gustavdejert.blogspot.se) and Jonathan Burton (www.jonathanburton.net) to mention a few. I also like museums a lot, to clear my mind and look for new things. Market places is also a good place to fill up on new images.

Is music or other forms of art an inspiration?
Music is of course a huge inspiration. I often take a line from a song and build a story around it or make it into a picture. But music and art is so connected it´s hard to see where one ends and the other begins. I have been listening to music and drawing all my life so for me, they are quite the same thing.

 What do you listen to?

I listen to a lot of different things, and I don´t like to exclude any genres. But it´s mainly indie rock and pop that comes from my speakers. I also like more mellow instrumental things. Right now I´m listening to Joywave, Teen and Susanne Sundfør while working. The swedish Jazz pianist Jan Johansson is also a favourite. His music tends to keep me focused and relaxed.

What are your future plans? Any exciting things you are looking forward to?

It´s been a long cold winter in Sweden so the thing I´m looking forward to the most right now is the spring…

What question and answer would you like to end this interview with?

COVER ART made by Martin Linnankoski.

THE BOOKLET is designed by Julia Pax and put together in InDesign by Silja Haddal Mork.

View the booklet.

THE STORY OF EVA ON THE WESTERN CASTLE ISLAND

Once upon a time there was a young Malaysian girl called Eva. Eva lived in the city of Johor Bahru with her mother and little sister. Just like all Malaysian girls she was spending her days in karaoke booths, huge shopping malls and night markets. Beside her ordinary life she also happened to be a pop star. A pop star who was performing for thousands of people while touring around the country.

At some point Eva got sick of the plastic doll-like image she was forced into. Eva was miserable. Eventually she decided to leave her old life and move up north to the great green forests of Finland. In this barbaric country she then met three weird but friendly fellows who were playing music to survive the cold and dark winter. The music these strangers were playing was extremely exotic for a girl used to the disco-bum-bum-dance-hall stuff played back home. Despite the ridiculous band name “Western Castle Island” (later on she would learn that there (maybe) was some sense in it…) Eva got positive vibes from these guys and found herself in no time behind the microphone being part of a sweaty jam session.  These weird fellows were astonished by her unique voice and were begging her to join the gang. This definitely was the singer they had been searching for ages! Eva joined the forces and Eva on the Western Castle Island was born.

The story has just started and only the future can tell how the adventure continues.

Bandcamp: http://evaonthewesterncastleisland.bandcamp.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EvaontheWesternCastleIsland
SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/westerncastleisland
Tumblr: http://evaonthewesterncastleisland.tumblr.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/Castle_Island
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/WesternCastleIsland

We have started working on a new Between Two Waves compilation!

Between Two Waves is a collaboration compilation. All bands included are new collaboration projects by our favourite bands. Two or more artists collaborate on making one new song together, and the project will have to find a new name for themselves. The first wave of Between Two Waves was released in 2009, and several of the projects we included then are still working together in 2013. 

Contact us if you are interested in participating, either as a band/artist or as an illustrator. Our email: team@eardrumspop.com, Subject “BTW2″. Details for illustrators will be given by email.

Details about the project can be found below this player. The first BTW-compilation can be downloaded for free here. Here are a selection of songs from the first compilation. 

Here are the details about the project:

1. The deadline for delivery will be mid October, and the release will be in December/January. We need an “interested!”-message from you as soon as possible. Send it to team@eardrumspop.com or reply to this message.

2. Quality is a priority. We will only include the best songs, and songs that fit the overall sound of the compilation.  Included or rejected, you are of course free to use the songs afterwards in any way you want.

COVER ART made by Jacob Borshard.

THE BOOKLET is designed by Julia Pax and put together in InDesign by Silja Haddal Mork.

View the booklet.

Feel free to share it with your friends, play it on your podcast, use it on your mixtape etc, as long as it’s used non-commercially and as long as you do not edit the songs in any way. Please link back to this page if you use it online. Please DO NOT upload the full zip to your own server without our permission. Use a link to our zip instead.

ABOUT JACOB AND LAURA

Jacob Borshard’s three albums of heartfelt ukulele pop songs have won him effusive praise from the odd admirer. He bought his first ukulele in 1994, was an early figure in the so-called ‘ukulele renaissance’ of the early 21st century, and is committed to playing the instrument until long after it isn’t cool again. That said, he recently went crazy and bought a 1957 Fender Musicmaster guitar, though he promises to only play four strings at a time, for continuity’s sake.

Laura K has a sweet songbird voice, tinged with a little salt from the South Seas port of Brisbane and finished with a little sugar from the refined city of London, where she now lives. She’s often seen performing as a keyboardist and singer for the wild combo group Tigercats.

Jacob asked her to sing on these three songs, and thankfully for everyone involved (especially the listener), she said yes!

 Lyrics:

About Us

What does he know about us?
What have you told him about you and me?

From the night we met,
to the unsightly mess,
when all was low,
what does he know?

I can’t believe that it’s been years,
We said we’d meet again some day,
when the hurt was past us,
we’d dust off the ashes,
but that reunion never came.

We were wild,
we were raw,
We had yet to dull our claws,
We had yet to dull our claws,
Full of blood,
And full of spit,
We made pearls out of it,
And everyone a fatal flaw.
Oh, it laid us low.
Oh, oh, oh,
I guess you know.

Here’s the street in San Diego,
Where the Stormtroopers stood,
And watched us fight.
Then on the bus,
I held you close,
As we slipped into the night,
In a beautiful light.

I haven’t told him much about us,
Apart from all the wrongs that I could list,
But not a word,
Of the tenderness,
That was still in the kiss,
That was our goodbye kiss.

Here’s a street in San Diego,
Where the Stormtroopers stood,

And watched us fight.
Then on the bus,
I held you close,
As we slipped into the night,
In a beautiful light.

Baby we had yet to,
We had yet to dull our claws,
Baby, we had yet to,
We had yet to dull our,
We had yet to dull our claws.

Never forget,
Never forget,
Wookies, Wookies,
Wookies are for friends!
Never forget,
No no!
Wookies are for friends!

The Old Treehouse

I went back,
I went back to your old house,
And they tore down your old treehouse!

Nothing left,
Not a splinter,
Not an old rusty nail,
Was still sticking in her,
I went back,
I went back,
To your old house.

Your mother’s garden,
Your mother’s garden,
Lost to the weeds.
The jasmine bushes by your window,
Have all been hacked at the knees!

They tore it down,
They tore it down,
Even the old little birdies up and left town,
I went back,
I went back,
To your old house.

Where did they take it?
I didn’t see ‘em.
Did they transport it,
To the Berlin Museum?
In a cage of glass,
One inch thick,
And a plaque that reads,
“Here’s where she ran to, ran to!
Here’s where she ran to, ran to, ran to!
Here’s where she ran to, ran to, ran to!”

I went back,
I went back to your old house,
And they tore down your old treehouse.

Drew (2007)

Dead jealous ‘till I ground down half my teeth,
Sick from weaving poison ivy into wreaths,
To lay upon the waters,
And kill off Neptune’s daughters.

Seems that I became a villain from the scorn,
Torn and broken like a lilly in the storm,
Now if the hell is through,
I’m set to bloom anew.

All I wanna do,
How about me and you find?
All I wanna do-ooo-ooo . . . .

I was wishing on a star i couldn’t see,
Cut and draggled as a starving coyote,

I only thought about my tummy,
And sunk my teeth into any old bunny.

Didn’t think there was a chance for something new,
Till the stars looked down and somehow brought me you,
Now I’ve a course to guide me,
Straight for the light here beside me.

All I wanna do,
How about me and you find?
All I wanna do-ooo-ooo . . . .

I heard he’s down in Mexico with Sally,
I saw she was a cute cowgirl for Halloween,
I started stalking him on the Internet,
And what I found was a bit obscene,
Well stalking’s not for the squeamish.

I heard he’s in Mexico with Sally,
I heard he’s in Mexico, Mexico!
All I wanna do,
How about me and you find?
All I wanna do-ooo-ooo . . . .

And he hates Mexico!

ePop031 – Tiny Fireflies vs Baffin Island (Across Oceans #1)

COVER ART made by Knut B. Lindbjør. Typography by Silja Haddal Mork.

Feel free to share it with your friends, play it on your podcast, use it on your mixtape etc, as long as it’s used non-commercially and as long as you do not edit the songs in any way. Please link back to this page if you use it online. Please DO NOT upload the full zip to your own server without our permission. Use a link to our zip instead.

ABOUT BAFFIN ISLAND

Baffin Island is a collaboration between Melanie Whittle (The Hermit Crabs), Jeremy Jensen and Jake Hite (both of The Very Most). Named after the exact midpoint between Boise, Idaho, USA and Glasgow, Scotland, UK, Baffin Island combines the densely-layered indie pop of Boise’s The Very Most with the more stripped down, thoughtful folky indie pop of Glasgow’s The Hermit Crabs.

The result is as sweet as you’d expect with healthy doses of Phil Spector, handclaps, delicate vocals, and lots and lots of reverb.

Baffin Island has released one single on EardrumsPop, and one EP on WeePop!.

https://www.facebook.com/baffinisland

ABOUT TINY FIREFLIES

Tiny Fireflies are Lisle and Kristine from the Chicago-based indiepop-band Very Truly Yours, or, Lisle from Fireflies and Kristine from Tiny Microphone. Together as a duo, they are Tiny Fireflies.

The first time the world heard the sound of Tiny Fireflies was on EardrumsPop’s “Between Two Waves” compilation. We loved their song, asked them to continue their collaboration, and they made EardrumsPop’s first ever single. The duo have since played lots of concerts and released the EP “Change” on Little Treasure.

http://www.tinyfireflies.com/

ePop030 – Northern Spies

COVER ART made by David Zacharis. Read our illustrator interview with David here.

THE BOOKLET is designed by Julia Pax and put together in InDesign by Silja Haddal Mork.

View the booklet.

Feel free to share it with your friends, play it on your podcast, use it on your mixtape etc, as long as it’s used non-commercially and as long as you do not edit the songs in any way. Please link back to this page if you use it online. Please DO NOT upload the full zip to your own server without our permission. Use a link to our zip instead.

ABOUT NORTHERN SPIES

Northern Spies is 26-year-old Astrid Wiezell singing and playing guitar, piano or whatever she feels like, based in Stockholm, Sweden. Northern Spies came about after the summer of 2012 being glorious and wonderful and wanting to write about the people and things around me and how happy they make me. Using a new name also provided a fresh start after years of solo, self-titled songwriting. Northern Spies fulfills its purpose if it can hit the mark somewhere between dreamy and honest and make the listener go “Oh! I know that feeling!”.

Follow Astrid on Twitter: https://twitter.com/astridmjau
Listen to more of her songs on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/northernspies

And a little extra…

About The Northern Spies cover band: Let‘s Whisper

With Northern Spies covering The Smittens, we were overjoyed by two members of the fantastic band covering Northern Spies…

Colin Clary and Dana Kaplan are also known as Let‘s Whisper, and they‘ve kindly contributed with two sweeter than apple pie songs.

ABOUT THE COVERED ARTIST: 

We have encouraged the single-bands to make a cover version of a song they think deserve more attention. Northern Spies  has chosen to cover “First Bus”, originally performed by The Smittens.

Northern Spies writes this about The Smittens:

The Smittens are well established as Vermont’s finest indiepop band with four albums and ten years behind them but I still feel they’re underrated and deserve more attention.

For me, it was love at first song. They are one of my hero bands because their songs really feel like the embodiment of the indiepop ethos I love and feel passionately for. Their songs are so clever and moving. I’m lucky enough to call them my friends too and their music has accompanied the last couple of years of my life perfectly, from soundtracking roadtrips and walks to work to being the processional music and first dance at my wedding.

I love their vocal dynamic and the different voices playing off each other together with beautiful harmonies and just really great, catchy songs that make you forget a bad day or will enhance your good one.

Their songs perfectly capture life, the big and the small stuff, and they’re just as likely to make me laugh as they are to make me cry (and have done both on plenty of occassions).

First Bus is one of my favourite songs off their latest, gorgeous album Believe Me (out on Fika Recordings) and I decided to translate the lyrics and sing it in my native language Swedish as a challenge. I’d been thinking of covering it since this summer when for some reason I translated a few lines in my head while listening to it and realised it worked quite nicely. I’d never recorded or even ‘officially’ sung anything in Swedish before so it was a strange but pretty fun experience – getting the lyrics to work was a huge challenge I hope I solved!

Make sure to check out their records! You won’t know what hit you.

Listen to the original here:

The Smittens on Spotify:
http://open.spotify.com/artist/3Q2i2cvnZukRDKmVlRlEHK

David Zacharis has made the cover art for Northern Spies’ single on EardrumsPop, and this is our illustrator interview with him. 

Can you give us a short presentation of yourself and your art?

I would like to think that I draw images that would live in the world that Jonathan Richman paints with his music. Most of the works that I am most proud of have been for my band the Smittens. For the Smittens I have mixed illustration with creations made of  Clay, and Felt. My Friend Ted refers to it as “Craftic Design.”

What are you working on right now?

Right now, I am working on a poster for my nephew. I do I have a couple of Smittens related projects that I am working on.  And I always have a graphic novel that I am working on, but don’t we all?

What are your favourite tools?

Canson 8.5×5.5 Inch Black Sketch book, Palomino Blackwing 602 and Abode Illustrator.

How do you begin / conceptualise a project?

I keep a folder in my dropbox called inspirations that I am constantly adding images too. I also have draw in my sketch book constantly. So for most projects there is an easy starting for inspiration.

Please tell us about the process of making the EardrumsPop-cover! Is this the way you usually work?

It came naturally out of a conversation between Astrid and I. It was really an easy project for me and a pleasure to work on.

Who / what are your greatest Visual Inspirations?

It sounds pretentious but the discovery of the Mid Century Mass Market Big Eyed Artist such as Margret Keene, Ozz Franca, Eve and  Lee really shaped my drawing style. For current artist I really love the works of Yoshitomo Nara, James Kochalka (http://kochalka.tumblr.com/), Abby Manock (http://www.abbymanock.com) and Susie Ghahremani (http://boygirlparty.com).

Is music or other forms of art an inspiration? If so, what do you listen to?

My life is a Boy, music, his kitty and his sketch book against the world. I love to listen to indiepop (I am not just saying this) as I draw.  Many times I will incorporate lyrics from the songs into the drawings. Music inspires me to make draw without it I don’t think I would be drawing.

Describe an average working day.

I spend too much of my day hastily stapled to a keyboard designing websites for accountants.

What are your future plans? Any exciting things you are looking forward to?

I have two project in the works called “Lo-fi and in love” and “They Don’t name High Schools after Robots”. That is all I can reveal.

What question and answer would you like to end this interview with?