Escape before the mental hospital with the aid of Rolling Stones’ ex-manager

Maximo Claps arrived in London in 2008 on a one-way ticket from Buenos Aires, aided by former Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who had produced a record by Claps’  Argentinian band, but the group had fallen apart in a mess of drugs and acrimony. In those days Claps’ family were attempting to intervene by sending him to a mental hospital. The only option seemed to be to flee the country. As Claps recalls, „The day before flying to the UK I got run over by a car and had to escape hospital in order to make it so I arrived with bandages and my head all stitched up.”
A few weeks later Max walked into the vintage clothes shop where James Hoare (guitarist of the great Scottish indie pop band Veronica Falls) sat behind the counter reading a book on The Velvet Underground, and attempted to make a diversion while his kleptomaniac girlfriend stole a pair of boots. The distraction was such successful as that since then they have been writing and playing psychedelic pop music together, taking inspiration from Berlin-era Lou Reed, Jesus and Mary Chains, Television Personalities and West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band.

The Proper Ornaments – Wooden Head on Slumberland (US) and Fortuna Pop Records (UK)

Anyway: “She didn’t steal them in the end, they weren’t her size” – says Max.

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Kraut-like psychedelic space pop by Bear In Heaven from New York

Time Is Over One Day Old LP/CD/digital on Dead Oceans (US, buy here) and Home Tapes (US)

OOIOO is a band of Yoshimi P-We (drummer of noise punk, chaos fun band UFO or Die, founding member of avant-garde noise rock Boredoms). It was allegedly founded as a fake band for a magazine photo shoot in 1995. The joke has turned special cosmic tribal music, now in Japanese gamelan style

„Gamel” LP, CD on Thrill Jockey

Lust For Youth started as the Swedish Hannes Norrvide’s cold wave synth-pop project.  It has became a trio. Their music is like the eraly Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, New Order or Desireless (do you remember Voyage, voyage?). This “record deals with the rootless, sometimes almost inhuman, nature of traveling and touring. Hotel rooms and strangers’ beds, drugs and clubs, and the impossibility of living a regular life.”

„International” LP, CD on Sacred Bones. 3rd track is a remix.