The American Analog Set - The Golden Band (1999), Know By Heart (2001), Updates (2001)

Bought in Reading HMV in 2005

Here is another band that I am going to talk about as a whole, rather than do a separate piece for each record. This is in part another reflection of my CD buying behaviour, in that I bought these CDs in quick succession. It is also a reflection on the band’s musical style. You could play me a song from any of these CDs and I would not be able to tell you which it came from. That is not a criticism of the music, but my attempt to articulate that the American Analog Set have a singular sound that need not be adjusted. You know what you’re going to get.

I was first made aware of ‘AmAnSet’ by my friend Andrew in 2003-2004, when we lived in the same house. He had bought their latest record Promise of Love (2003). In particular, it was opening track ‘Continuous Hit Music’ that Andy wished to play to me. There are other great songs on there, like ‘Come Home Baby Julie, Come Home’, but it was that opener that struck me.

It must’ve struck Andy too, because he started making music that was more than a little indebted to it. He, our other housemates and I started joking around about forming a band. Had things gone another way, we might’ve ended up playing acoustic music with brushed drum beats going at a decent mid-tempo lick, with some woozy keys draped over the top. It didn’t turn out that way at all, but there was something of AmAnSet in that band that I could hear, even if no one else could.

By June 2004 I was working at HMV in Reading. Promise of Love was never in the racks, but other albums of theirs were. I started collecting them them, getting the final one, Updates, soon after 16th November 2005 (it still has my customer order sticker on the front).

Not long before that I bought Andy a birthday present, 2005’s Set Free. Since then the band seem to have been what is invariably called an indefinite hiatus. If only bands like this could carry on. Too many bands reform these days, and it’s never the right ones.

Andrew Kenny, founding member of American Analog Set, has also contributed to Broken Social Scene, and has another band called the Wooden Birds. I know next to nothing about either of them.

Aerial M - Aerial M (1997)

Bought in HMV in Reading, on or soon after 16th August 2005

With some records I’ll be able to tell you exactly when and where I acquired them. Most of the time this will be because they are among the more important ones in my collection. Not with this one. It’s a good record, but it’s only in listening to it now that I realise I am more familiar with it than I thought.

The reason I’m so sure of the when and where with this record is because I bought it when I worked at HMV. It’s not the sort of thing that is readily stocked, so I ordered it in. And there in the top left corner of the case is a price sticker (normal price stickers go in the right corner, left for customer orders so they’re easily recognised as such):

CUSTOMER  £14.99

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Aerial M Aerial M

CD WIGCD037

ANTHONY (STAFF) 16/08/05

065724/01 1

Working in a record shop can spoil you. It spoiled me to a degree. This purchase is a good example of how. I bought this record seven and a half years ago, and I could barely remember it before today. When you want to buy records, and you have a generous discount, and the easy means of ordering them in free of charge, it is easy to get carried away and buy stuff just for the hell of it. The readiness to hand cheapens it, allows you to take it for granted.

I’d become aware of David Pajo (a.k.a. Pajo, a.k.a. Papa M, a.k.a. Aerial M, a.k.a. M) some years previous when I bought another of his solo works after hearing the most blissful sound on a record shop stereo. Since then I’ve picked up the odd thing here and there, sometimes solo, other times in some band or other (Slint, Tortoise). His work is not the most readily available stuff, so one idle day I must have passed some time in HMV by going through his back catalogue and ordering his debut solo album in. Pay day will have come round and I will have gone to my hidden stash of wants and bought it.

Before putting this CD on my laptop I would have guessed that I’ve not heard it since I bought it, but it comes back to me on hearing. It’s a good short record, but not a startling one. As you would want from David Pajo, it’s a pared down affair, with judicious use of minimal instruments. There’s little more than guitar, drums and the odd synthy noise similar to some of the bleeps found on Pajo’s Tortoise albums. There’s a backwards track (penultimate track ‘Compassion For M’ sounds very close to a reversal of opening track ‘Dazed And Awake’, something that reminds me of ‘Waterfall’ and ’Don’t Stop’ on the Stone Roses’ debut album), but apart from that, it’s a straight and pleasant instrumental guitar album. Perhaps it's the unassuming nature of the album that has led me to neglect it for so long. I regret that, but it will be a fun thing to put right.