The Beat Surrender

Back in the day when I used to wear short trousers, had scabby knees from doing massive slides whenever it was slightly icy, climbed trees and played conkers having soaked them in vinegar I discovered indie music.

Now indie music comes in many forms, you’ve got the sanitised, clean cut stuff like Coldplay, Travis and Keane, you have the slightly more rough around the edges bands like Razorlight, Hard-Fi, and The Kaiser Chiefs who still have definite pop leanings. Some bands are a little leftfield like Mercury Rev, Arcade Fire, Flaming Lips and The Earlies, they’ll be critically acclaimed, sell a decent amount of records and be pretty big on college radio in the States, but if you want to get to the true heart of indie you have to dig around amongst the smaller labels, the ones who know they aren’t going to get played on the radio, they aren’t likely to get too many lucrative support slots and they don’t really care to be honest because they know how they want to make music and that is exactly what they do.

Now when I first started out on the rocky road to indie ruin, the bands that I liked that fitted into this category tended to be on labels like Too Pure, I’m talking about bands like Pram, Laika, Mouse On Mars or the ones who turned up on a split single on Fierce Panda and were never to be seen again, or the most successful of all these underground bands Stereolab who flew in the face of everything that was around them at the time with oodles of moog, lyrics sometimes sung in French sometimes in English, droning guitars and all manner of other things going on, these were the bands and labels that nobody in the mainstream knew what to make of them and that is why I loved them.

I don’t play conkers anymore, I only go for a big slide on the ice when I don’t think people are watching now, but sometimes after playing five-a-side football on the astro turf pitch, I might have scabby knees. One thing that hasn’t changed in all this time though is the fact that I still love the obscure bands that leave gig-goers scratching their heads wondering what has just happened on stage in front of them (Prolapse anyone?), I still love labels that put out singles by bands because they like what they do rather than chasing the quick buck with a copycat band of the current favourites in the NME.

One label I’ve discovered recently that fit the criteria perfectly for me are Transformed Dreams, a Dutch label run by an affable guy called Marcel. On this label you won’t find any superstars, you won’t find any chart hits but you’ll find releases by the weird and wonderful Zea, Space Siren, Seesaw and a little known band called Persil who were introduced to me by the much missed John Peel on one of his shows shortly before he died.

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