Fred Wines
"Pure - Low-Fi In The Laundry Room Pt. 4" CDR
Low-Fi
/ HandMade Records
Genres: lo-fi, hometaper, pop
e-mail the
artist
Feb 10 - 16 2003 |
I've
lost the sheet now, but if I can remember correctly, Fred Wines
was not very complementary about his own music. I recall him
calling his guitar parts "derivative" and making some sort
of derogatory remark about his vocals. As a result, I was
interested to see what he was complaining about.
From what I can dig up from his website, Fred is a hometaper
(think MJB and Don Campau) who has released a whole
number of homemade CDRs, including several parts to his Low-Fi In
The Laundry Room series. This is the fourth part, and it
certainly is an interesting affair. The songs are all very
personal tunes, just tracks that Fred recorded onto tape in his
laundry room for fun.
Most of the songs are just simple ideas that Fred wanted to
record in musical form. "Plastic Heroes," for example,
is a simple electric guitar and voice tune that poses Wine's
spoken vocals over a simple, repeated rhythm guitar riff - an ode to
talk rock, perhaps? "Pride & Faith," meanwhile, is
a particularly catchy tune with simple guitar and drum machine
instrumentation, and Wines' vocals and guitar solos in the
foreground. Apparently Fred just woke up one day with it
in his head. Interesting. Another infectious little tune
is "Spin Me 'Round," which also was written very
spontaneously - as Fred himself puts it: "This one just
appeared, fully formed, as fast as I could write it down."
So is this really as bad as Fred would like to think?
Well, that depends on who you are. While most people probably
won't get what Wines is trying to accomplish, hometaper
enthusiasts and cassette traders will totally dig the album's unique,
personal style. It's a niche thing, baby.
80%
Fun Fact: There are actually seven
volumes of the Low-Fi In The Laundry Room series out now (with
more to come)! Low-Fi In The Laundry Room Pt. 5 is
apparently a collection of songs by other people, including tracks by
everyone from Buddy Holly to The Ramones to Led
Zeppelin. Now that I'd like to hear!
Matt Shimmer [Vitals:
10 songs, distributed by the
artist, released 2002] |