The Time Lodgers are the founders of Perfect Pop Records, but they split as a band ages ago. When we celebrated 20 years as a record label we asked our founders to play at our jubilee festival at Mono, and they said yes. And they have been playing ever since. They will have one last concert in 2012 at legendary Last Train so be there, but if not – keep an eye on their homepage or Facebook for concerts in 2013 . On Saturday they wrote “Suberb øvelse i går” (“Superb rehearsal yesterday”) on Facebook, so the concert should be a gem.
Date: December 20th
Venue: Last Train
Admission: NOK 100
One of our favorite festivals is Vaffelføzz in Drammen. Our friends in The Southern Alps will attend the festival this year 
and entertain us with some of their timeless classics. The festival takes place on Saturday 14th this month, and if you love music and waffles, both individually and collectively, Union Scene is the place to be.
Doors at 1700.
Admission 200 kroner.
We can’t say for sure whether it’s a slow or a fast train coming, but we’re sure it’s gonna be a super-sonic event any way you look at it when The Loch Ness Mouse play two sets at Fossum train station on the old Urskog-Høland railway line on midsummer’s eve, June 23. The first set will start at 7 p.m., the second at 9. We at Perfect Pop promise nice weather, and we always keep our promises. Promise! We ought to mention that this narrow gauge railway has been occuring in several LNM songs from the indiepop days way back when, so the LNM playing live at this train station is something more than a far-fetched notion.
Back on the farm, you may have noticed that one of the founders of the LNM, Jørn Åleskjær, has released a solo album on VME/Tune-J, produced by his brother Ole, and with contributions from both Ole, Emil Nikolaisen and several other former and/or current members of The LNM. I’m So Glad I Spent This Day With You is the heart-warming title, and the press has reciprocated with a bunch of very heart-warming reviews. The album will also be released on the American indielabel Sounds Familyre. 
Meanwhile, back in China, or rather Ireland, a new 7” EP by The LNM has seen the light of day on the Irish Arkhanglesk Recordings (limited edition of 300 copies), with two tracks: Ask Him (a soulful tune from New Graffiti) and the unreleased Kunming, a groovy jazz/fusion impro piece – “dedicated to the city of Kunming, China, and the people we met there” – it says on the cover. Horizons are made to expand. You will find both releases in our Pop Shop.
There will be a small release party on Sunday February 26 to celebrate the debut album of the The Vacuum Dreamers. Since the band is a studio act only there will be no concert, but DJ Syrstad will play records all night long, and Robert Birdeye of The Vacuum Dreamers will also have some sessions behind the turn tables.
Venue: Café Mir
Time: February 26 at 8 PM
Admission: Free
The debut album of The Vacuum Dreamers has finally arrived our premises, and are now available in our web shop. We hope you will enjoy this release as much as we do. There will be a small celebration of this release in a few weeks, but no date is set yet. But we will for sure inform you in due time.
To celebrate their self-titled debut album released December 24th, The Southern Alps will have a couple of release concerts around the turn of the months:
Tuesday January 31 at Cafe Mono in Oslo
Wednesday February 1 at Buddy in Drammen
The trio is now a quartet, so you will find Jørgen Greiner on bass and Preben Kristensen on drums in addition to our three original boys. And as icing on the cake Cecilie Heramb Herlofson will grab her fiddle as a guest musician.
The Loch Ness Mouse will be taking the trip from the countryside to play at Parkteateret in Oslo on Friday January 20. They say that this will be their last show in Oslo for a while, so you’d better listen up! Support: Thea Stapnes.
The S/T (Same Title) debut album by The Southern Alps has swepped through the door from the pressing plant, and is from this nanosecond on available in the Perfect Pop webshop. If you don’t wanna get physical with The Southern Alps, you can avail yourself of the availability of the available downloading or streaming options from your local purveyor of digital goods. On the occasion of the appearance of the physical edition on our premises, some photos were snatched by Frode Bjørnstad as documentary evidence, proving to the world that all the talk about a record in the making was something more than just hot air.
The old friends of Perfect Pop Records, Astroburger, are playing at the hole in the wall we know as Last Train on December 28th. Be there!
Perfect Pop is proudly launching a digital only subsidiary label called Perfect Pop Digital (PPD), from which you can download whole albums or other units of music. We’re starting off with a compilation by the legendary Robert Birdeye, called Octopus In A Goldfish Bowl – The Complete Solo Recordings 1995 – 2000. This album, with cover art by Bartleby, consists of all the songs from Birdeye’s two 7” EPs, plus one song from the first Perfect Pop compilation CD. The sound quality is excellent, since these are true masters, not vinyl rips or culled from other disreputable sources (like the shoddy bootleg album released in Tasmania…) FYI: Robert Birdeye is a founding member of The Tables, and has also played with many other bands – Sister Rain, The Time Lodgers, The Soft Rebels – and nowadays he can be found behind the drumkit in The Vacuum Dreamers (if he can be found at all.) We’re sure you’ll be pleased by these 12 slices of intriguing psychedelic garage pop with purple flashes from the mind of a true artist of the aberrant kind! You can buy or stream it from your local digital music dealer.
