Their song 'Last Day' was, by far, my favorite song of that compilation. Happily, I wasn't the only one...
This year, Cloudberry Records released an album featuring songs recorded between the period the band was active. A collection of 10 songs filled with a DIY aesthetic, Sarah Records echoes and jangly pop melancholy...
COMEBACK OF THE YEAR!!!
site twitter
------------------------
"2012 has been a year of comebacks, resurrection, even. From the mighty Stone Roses to the more modest album we put out on Cloudberry, everyone seems to have risen like Lazarus. That sounded really simple, " the album we put out....". As though it was an straightforward act, an easy offering.
Let me explain: The Deddingtons disappeared around 1992, having been together for just under 3 years. Those 3 years crystallized a great deal - from barely being able to play our instruments confidently, to writing and recording. Excitement when the A&R man from WEA in New York called and said he, "loved our stuff.." through to the disappointment of the same guy seemingly disappearing from the planet, after we'd recorded a new bunch of songs. This was an age of being home-spun: not merely an affectation, quite simply there was no other way we put our demos together. Second-hand gear and "letraset" press packs; hands sore from hand scoring and folding cassette inserts only for the next batch of record label rejections to arrive, neat (and not so neat..), polite (and not so polite..) but nonetheless resolute in their messages. Slowly our dreams of being, "nearly as good as The Sundays" ebbed and faded.
Roll forward to 2010 and a cold autumnal Sunday when I absent-mindedly tapped "The Deddingtons" into You Tube and up popped "The Last Day" which a guy called Greg had uploaded, being a favourite track from the Leamington Spa series of compilations. Well this was a surprise to me, and the other Deddingtons (once a Deddington, always a Deddington....) as we had no idea that this track had snuck its way from our cosy Loft into the big wide world. People got in touch in many ways. Roque from Cloudberry sent me a note via YouTube introducing himself and we became friends. He interviewed us for his blog and from there suggested we might like to release some tracks. What a great idea. But where were they? Well, the original masters are probably in a landfill site somewhere after a helpful housemate of Chris King's decided to declutter their shared cellar. It might be argued that we were the original "Indie Landfill", but we'll leave that to the academics. What is important though, is that back ups had been taken by the ever-diligent Matt Wright and languished, unheard for many years on a DAT tape. We individually listened back to our younger selves (there was even a rehearsal recorded, which acts as a very personal timecapsule..). Something started to re-kindle and, to paraphrase Paddy McAloon, if you fan the embers long enough...
Throughout 2011 and early 2012, mixes were passed back an forth across the Atlantica as 1s and 0s over the ether, photos found and scanned and in June and Cloudberry Kitchen records (of New York, by coincidence) released "The Deddingtons" in a beautifully presented digipak. Four (much older and, in my case, more 'well-upholstered') friends got back in touch and, in the safety of a secret location, even managed to rehearse again. Our songs could now be heard. 2012, we raise our glasses to you.
Our TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2012, in no particular order, but of which at least 5 are old flames....:
LINDEN Bleached Highlights
DYLAN MONDEGREEN S/T
DIIV Oshin
BILL FOX One Thought Revealed
BILL FAY Life is People
THE SHINS Port of Morrow
THE WEDDING PRESENT Valentina
NADA SURF The Stars are Indifferent to Astronomy
THE DEDDINGTONS S/T (well we wanted to be in at least one top ten....)
Come say hi on twitter at @TheDeddingtons
No comments:
Post a Comment