hell.o.
a long long time ago when ireallylovemusic was just getting into gear, the site was amazingly featured in indie magazine the fly.
from this brief burst of fame came a very succinct email :
‘do you know moshi moshi ?’
being the first real email from a record label that i had heard of (a freaky zan lyons track on an nme freebie cd) i was somewhat taken aback and rather chuffed to say the least.
however, following the email, i was provided with the labels back catalogue to date including such names as j xaverre, matt harding, junkboy, and the missing in action,anti-hero that is ingo star cruiser. these records totally opened my ears to the whole lo-fi groove that until then had completely passed me by.
i had a new love, and all was well in the world.
following message board madness, a few gigs and drunken get togethers i came to find out more about the whole moshi moshi label.
tis a labour of love run by a bunch of music obsessives who happen to work within the beast that is the music industry, so when the label started to release profile increasing records by bloc party, the rakes and even the media meltdown electro pop of hot chip such, the chances of me getting these ultra hard to find releases became more and more troublesome.
moshi moshi for a while became the label of choice for limited edition 7″ singles and scene setting hipsters. while the 7″ format is lovely, they can be hard work for those of us that get too many cd albums per week to listen to. so, as a natural byproduct my love affair with the label was put on hold.
thankfully, a chance meet up with the label folk last year at glastonbury revealed that they were concerned about becoming a label that helps launch bands onto major labels and little else, they also told me that they wanted to get the label back into releasing albums, the future looked good.
however, these things never happen overnight.
so imagine my surprise when on saturday a big noisy clunk of the letterbox revealed the following albums on my door mat :
sukpatch : twenty-three
tilly and the wall : bottoms of barrels
mates of state : bring it back
lo-fi-fnk : boylife
matt harding : expectation
hot club de paris : drop it till it pops
not only that, but after years of relative inactivity the moshi moshi website has been revamped into a beautifully minimal centre of excellence.
the best news is that all the albums, bar none, are wonderful. from the indie pop classic styles of tilly and the wall, to the twisted synth pop innocence of lo fi fnk, and the late night lo-fi meanderings of matt harding each album has something rather special going on.
proper reviews will, of course, appear in the relevant place.
somewhere hidden away on ireallylovemusic is an old moshi moshi logo desktop, could be a perfect time to dust that down methinks ..
till next time,
mark e