The Camera In the Sky

A reference to the cover of Apple Orchard's first 7" - here's one way of looking at their new ep Turning Point. It just just came out on Edition 59 which is an off-shoot of Vollwert Records in Germany, specialising in very limited editions of 3" CD-Rs. Perhaps you'd say 8€ is too much to pay for three songs? Well, there are only 59 copies of each release! At least two of the twelve releases are worth getting I would say, and one of them is Apple Orchard's follow-up to the brilliant debut album Half-Steps to Bright Skies. The first two songs are as beautiful as anything on that, emphasising the keyboards and percussion. My favourite is "Careful, Careless" which is one of their strongest songs so far, with a gorgeous melody and a bit of 12-string action. The last of the three tracks is a cover of The Sugargliders' "2-Star Motel", which you hear there - I won't upload anything as I did that when I wrote about the album earlier this year.

You might be too late to snap up the other ep I got - The Motifs' Memory's Gone EP. That was the label's first release and is now listed as 'sold out'. You never know though, the songs might be included somewhere else yet! They are three brand new songs, with "Just an Echo" as the real stand-out. "Take Mine" is playing over here.

I finally recieved their new album Cross Paths as well, and it does look good. Even the cardboard sleeve is hand made! It includes three new songs, some of the tracks from their sold out WeePOP! ep, and the rest gathered from the Japan only cd Away. That was in itself a re-release of their first album Dots (of which Swedish label Music Is My Girlfriend made 50 copies only!) with 11 more songs added. Confused? Well, there should be 37 Motifs songs all in all. The best of the new ones on Cross Paths is "TN", and it's in the wee player to your right. Order the lp from here.