It’s a cool gimmick to give your new record away for a dollar. Better still when that release is simply STELLAR. (Note: caps.)
Fanfarlo’s ‘Reservoir’ is on heavy rotation this week here at TVD HQ and as such, we tracked down the band’s drummer Amos for a chat:
“I came to record buying late on, mainly through being content watching my mix-video tapes of bands performing on long lost British TV shows such as Snub TV, Club X, Night Network, Rapido and an imported Canadian show called The New Music which warranted setting the video player’s timer for a ridiculous time in the morning.
Somewhere along the line, under the guidance of John Peel’s ears, who was my other source of new music, I purchased my first 7″ from the Our Price record shop on Wembley High Road. Released in the summer 1991, whilst I was still at school, Heavenly’s “So Little Deserve” on Sarah Records would be the start of my record collection, and two years later, my graduation to live music, sending me across London to watch a slew of experimental (Rollerskate Skinny), instrumental (C.B. Beaumont), surf-punk (The Mummies) or Riotgrrl-affiliated groups (Lois, Heavenly and Delicate Vomit is one gig that sticks in my mind as inspiring).
By the time I’d reached art college, I was attending more gigs than galleries, as I had to explain to my tutor. This was after he’d requested I compile a tape of Dick Dale for him, who was now in vogue due to the inclusion of “Miserlou” in the opening credits of Pulp Fiction. When I moved into my new space at college and tacked some striking 50’s B-movie posters above my desk which I’d found discarded in my locker, Jamie, a kid from the year above me threateningly asked, “Why have you put my posters up?” Realising that we shared the same pop-culture aesthetics, we bonded over a love of Pavement and Dischord records, whilst his girlfriend, who was my classmate, was a fan of The Sea Urchins – Sarah Records’s first ever release.
After college, another defining moment was the Bowlie Weekender in 1999, a one-off festival which was the brainwave of Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch. The venue was a holiday camp in Camber, on the South-East coast of England. I was having a bad day at the office when a friend phoned up and persuaded me to re-think my decision of not wanting to go. He was right. Under one roof you could witness Godspeed You Black Emperor!, The Pastels, Sleater-Kinney, The Flaming Lips and the headliners Belle and Sebastian amongst others. Labels brought their back catalogue to sell on makeshift stalls, and bands welcomed newly made friends into their chalets. Such was the influence of the event, that club nights, festivals, indie labels and bands formed mere months later. At Bowlie, I was reunited with Jamie and by the end of the year, we had a band that, before we’d even played live, had released a 7″ of our own.
I had seen Fanfarlo play as a duo in the winter of 2005 and immediately fell under their spell. I bought their first 7″ on the same day I decided to join the band, and within two months we were performing those songs and others that would be released on a variety of London based labels (all on vinyl too). Our album “Reservoir” will be pressed onto vinyl for the first time this year, which is a format that excites us – from the enlarged cover art and design to the new dynamic of having a pause after track five, which is when you’ll have to flip to Side B.”
