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8 Tracks: Of Drone Pop – documenta

 
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Documenta are a Belfast-based drone pop septet (that word still doesn't look right no matter how long I look at it. Septet. Septet. It's just getting worse now).

Their new album 'Drone Pop #1' is influenced by "the English guitar minimalism emanating from 1980s Rugby, the darkness and light of Detroit’s hit factory, and the German Kosmische set’s concrète groove." As you might be able to tell just from reading that, it's a real trip.

We got Joe from the band to give us his 8 Tracks of… you guessed it.

'Drone Pop #1' is out now on Touch Sensitive Records.

LISTEN
George Mccrae - Rock Your Baby

I guess drone pop can be whatever you hear, but for me it is minimal chords, melody and repetition, and in this track I hear a classic of melody and repetition.

  • George Mccrae - Rock Your Baby

    I guess drone pop can be whatever you hear, but for me it is minimal chords, melody and repetition, and in this track I hear a classic of melody and repetition.

  • The Wheels - Road Block

    A lost Belfast band from the same milieu as Them, this is the b-side of their first single. The lead singer had a shaved head with a wheel tattooed on his crown apparently, in Belfast, in 1965? Far out! One chord best.

  • The Perfect Disaster - Tv (Girl On Fire)

    I love the simple yet odd structure of this beautiful song.

  • Four Tops - Baby I Need Your Loving

    I grew up listening to so many Motown records and the sound fascinated me, how rich and dense it sounded. The way this track slips so dramatically into the chorus and the ache in Levi Stubbs’ baritone still gets me every time.

  • Lil Louis - French Kiss

    Again a single note used to stunning effect in a masterclass of minimalism… and sex.

  • Clinic - Distortions

    Such a great performance, both creepy and yearning. It still hasn’t aged after, what, fifteen years? Avoid cover versions, this is the kind of track you should leave alone.

  • Suicide - Dream Baby Dream

    I had their first record for years and I picked over it incessantly but I didn’t get to hear this for a few years and it blew me away. Swimming against the tide is the right thing to do half the time.

  • Shin Joong Hyun / Kim Jung Mi - The Sun

    Steven from Documenta turned me onto this great early 70’s bit of K-pop. Such a gorgeous cyclic melody and the vocal by Kim Jung Mi is stunning.