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High-qualty 7” lathe limited to 30 numbered copies.
Locally cut in Newcastle with home-assembled covers, individually-painted labels and a zine feauturing a clandestine interview I conducted with Paul before surprising him with the 7”s.
Despite the relatively high price, I am still selling these BELOW cost price. It is more about making the songs available while still trying not to haemorrhage cash like a madman.
Includes unlimited streaming of Come Monday / Dream 7"
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
These two songs are a deviation from the regular programming of Altered States, although loose eclecticism is generally becoming more firmly the guiding principle of AST rather than toeing any genre-specific line.
Paul Snell, the nimble fingers and soft vocal behind this 7”, is an old friend of my parents’, being a fixture in my life from my earliest memories onward. He played in a rough blues band with my dad in the 80’s and ran record stores in Newcastle that I’d drop into while skating in the city on weekends as an early teen. He’s a fixture of Newcastle, having provided many heads here with the only decent outlet for records while the city was still a largely derelict shithole (it’s a slicker, gentrified shithole now). He’s always been switched-on with underground music, film and literature and, even in the years he didn’t use the internet, would somehow still lay undiscovered gems on me every time I’d visit.
These two bedroom-pop classics themselves glimmer as brightly as any gem, despite sitting on CD-R’s Paul burned for me a decade or so ago. They were both recorded in an understandably difficult period, following the passing of his lifelong love and partner, Vicki. Thankfully, he was able to positively channel his mourning and adjustment to living alone via these heartfelt songs. ‘Come Monday’ is the more clearly somber affair, a proper downer acoustic number oozing with a timeless familiarity rarely found. Sometimes a full acceptance and confrontation of your pain is needed to put it in its place, and this is a fitting soundtrack as any for the exercise. Similarly assembled with the bare minimum yet yielding maximum feeling is The B-side, ‘Dream’. ‘Dream’ provides a drum and electrified gtr / bass backbone for Snell’s narcoleptic vocal that subtly nods in the direction of 60’s oz psych. While still having the same quality of confused sadness lingering around the edges, it represents something of a drifting liberation also.
It’s a travesty that a guy who has invested so much passion and thought into music (his own and others') for many decades has never seen any of his own music released, especially when the songs are so great. Granted that this is in a very limited quantity, but it’s available now at least.
credits
released March 22, 2021
Both songs written and recorded in Lambton, NSW by Paul Snell.
Cover and archival photographs by Vicki Ryan.
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