My Heart Is Like a Town You Moved Away From

Spanish label Elefant has a sale just now, and they're also selling some second-hand stuff - not only released by Elefant but lots of other stuff too. Apart from finally picking up the sold out Po! compilation, I found a record on sale that I didn't even know existed. I'm sure I saw a copy of the last single by The Gravy Train as well, if you want to pick it up.

When I first heard Aventuras de Kirlian, I was shocked to see that the songs were recorded in 1989! It sounded a lot like Pipas, and many of the songs were not much longer than "Minilife". After reading about them, things started to fall into place, especially when seeing that they're almost the same band as Le Mans. They only released one album with two accompanying singles (the picture is of the cover of the "Un día gris" 7" on Dro), with minimalist pop influenced by bands such as Marine Girls, Felt and Love.

What I didn't know was that in 2001 Elefant released a compilation of their demos, called 86-88, with 17 tracks at an impressive total of 20 minutes. The artwork is great and it has liner notes by Alejo Alberdi, who discovered the band, got them a record deal and produced the self-titled album released in 1989. Not that I understood much of it though, as it's all in Spanish. But it's not hard to understand that they became quite influential in Spanish indie circuits and I refuse to believe Pipas has never heard them. Here's one of the up-tempo tunes on the compilation - dance!

CLOUD 83 Aventuras de Kirlian - Los genios