Welcome to Bliss/Aquamarine - an alternative, underground and indie music website.

For those that don't yet know me, I'm Kim Harten, a music fan based in the UK Midlands. On this page I will provide background information on Bliss and Aquamarine, and attempt to answer some of the questions I'm often asked.

ON AQUAMARINE:
Aquamarine was originally a paper fanzine, but has for the last few years been a webzine based on this site. The paper zine was founded 1994 and ran for 20 issues. Its original emphasis was on indiepop and related styles, and early issues included interviews with some important names from the indiepop/noisepop movement, such as Sarah Records and Boyracer. As time went on, the music featured in the zine got more diverse. Whilst I was not completely closed to reviewing well known music, the music I actually liked tended to be very obscure, and the focus of the fanzine reflected that, with most of the featured music coming from small independent labels, including self-produced projects. As well as uncommercial music being what I myself preferred, I also felt this kind of music needed exposure as the big press give little or no coverage to it and even some fanzines ignore it. Aquamarine is not one of those "indier-than-thou" fanzines though - if I like something on a big label I'll write about that too. I don't like to limit myself to just one type of music and would rather judge music on how it sounds, not what label it's on or what scene it's from.

Musical genres covered by Aquamarine at this point included indie-rock, punk-pop, spacerock, psychedelic, progressive, folk, folk-rock, the more melodic side of experimental, and various other styles which are less easy to categorise, alongside the indiepop and noisepop Aquamarine was mostly known for.

In 2000 I started this website, with the first online issue of Aquamarine being completed in 2001. The zine has an overall positive emphasis, simply because I prefer to write about what I think is good.

As word got around about the site, I became snowed under with things to review. Due to other commitments I had less and less time to focus on zine writing, and the backlog of review materials got too big to handle. In 2003, after much thought, I realised that the only way to control this backlog was to change my submission policy. Whilst I'm very much into music and didn't want to miss out on anything, the only realistic way to keep up with reviews was to only accept music from regular contacts.

If you have sent me music before and you know that I like it, please feel free to continue sending your music for review in Aquamarine. If I like your music then I want to keep on promoting it! Once the backlog has gone down, I will be able to start accepting submissions from new contacts again - watch this space!

In the meantime I would appreciate not being bombarded with questions about when I'm going to review things I've already been sent. Aquamarine is a part-time project and things get done when I have the spare time. I always contact people to inform them that their review has gone up on the site.

ON BLISS:
Bliss was a DIY tape label started by myself in 1993 and continuing until circa 2002/3. For those unfamiliar with tape labels, there was a burgeoning community of such labels back in the 90s, where bands, or someone working on their behalf like a manager or small label, would send their songs to the tape labels, who would assemble home-made various-artist compilations as well as full tape albums by one band. Tapes were sold on a non-profit basis and therefore artists were not paid for their involvement, but it offered them free publicity to appreciative music fans. The tapes scene was closely associated with the fanzine scene and there was a real community spirit, in which the people involved all helped each other out with promotion by sending out each other's flyers. These home produced tapes and zines were sold by mail order around the world, being advertised primarily through flyers spread around the underground music network, fanzines, and word of mouth. The tapes and zines movement was a worldwide phenomenon and my own label, like most others, included artists from many countries.

The earliest tapes on Bliss covered indiepop and noisepop, while later tapes included a more diverse selection of music as my name got about and I was contacted by bands involved in other genres. The common theme was basically that of melodic music, genres including indie-rock, punk-pop, spacerock, psychedelic, progressive, folk, folk-rock and various other styles which are less easy to categorise. The tapes were a genuine reflection of my musical taste, not just a hotchpotch of whatever I was sent, and showcased music I felt was high quality and in many cases highly underrated.

The label was started in the days when many tape labels were extremely lo-fi and included a lot of messy, unprofessional music/noise, and because of this tape labels had a bad name. I wanted to change their reputation and instead release tuneful, well-recorded music. A lot of people have commented on how they found the sound quality, and quality of the music itself, superior to other tape labels. There had since been a few more lo-fi (but melodic!) artists featured on the tapes, on occasions when I felt that the song itself is so good that it shines through the lo-tech recording, but there isn't that much extremely lo-fi stuff on Bliss. This isn't to say I'm against homemade songs and out to alienate those that record at home - I have released a lot of material by home recording artists. It is possible to make a more than acceptable quality recording at home. The sort of thing I have a problem with is lo-fi in its extremest form; music recorded on a 2nd hand cassette, where the tapehiss drowns out the song, and the sort of messy, random experimentation that even a five year old could make.

In the early 2000s I decided to call it a day with new releases from Bliss. I was still getting lots of interest from artists who wanted to be on the tapes, but with the increasing popularity of CDs and subsequently the advent of online music, there was less interest from people wanting to buy the tapes. There was little point keeping the label going as its purpose was to promote music, and it was no longer serving its purpose if the tapes weren't selling enough.

Some may be wondering why I didn't turn Bliss into a CDR label. There were a number of reasons why this just wasn't possible, one being the sheer inconvenience. I have over eighty tapes out and it would be a complete nightmare to remaster every single one! My hi-fi equipment is nowhere near the computer I use, and it would be impractical to move it, so using a computer-based CDR writer is out of the question, and I can't afford to buy one of those CDR writers that's a hi-fi separate. I had been running Bliss as a tape label for years and had grown to love the whole 'tapes' ethos. As mentioned above, one of the ideas behind starting Bliss was to prove that tape labels can release good quality music, and for this to continue, it had to continue being a TAPE label.

The majority of the back catalogue is still available to anyone still interested in hearing the tapes, but once I run out of my remaining lot of blank tapes, no more copies will be made. As mentioned above, the sound quality of Bliss tapes was usually considered very good at the time, but I must stress that these are homemade tapes, with some being copied from masters that go back as far as 1993, so you are not to expect CD or MP3 quality.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that there are some missing catalogue numbers on the Tapes pages. These were for paper issues of Aquamarine and also Ultramarine, a poetry and fiction zine that ran for 3 issues.

ON THE REWORKED VERSION OF THIS SITE:
I decided this site needed an overhaul as there was too much stuff on the original site that was no longer relevant. The archive page and back issues of the online zine contained a lot of reviews and articles that were very old and out of date, going back over a decade and relating to things that were no longer available. There seems little point in keeping reviews of such things up on the site, especially the more ephemeral things like fanzines and demos.

I also found much of the old writing was no longer an accurate representation of where I'm at now. The oldest material was written when I was a teenager and still finding my 'voice' in terms of writing style. Sometimes articles would contain opinions I no longer held, and the emphasis on indiepop is not really representative of my current musical taste. I don't regret my involvement in indiepop at all; it was a life-changing experience that was very important to me at the time, but I have lost touch with what's going on in the current indie scene and don't often listen to that kind of music in my spare time any more. I get far more enjoyment from folk and folk-rock, modern takes on medieval music, and bands who are basically inventing their own genre, and wish to focus primarily on these styles where possible. I'm not completely abandoning the styles I have covered in the past but wanted the site to be a truer reflection of my current musical interests.

In an effort to give the site more focus, I have removed most of the older articles from the Archive section, removed the back issues from the Aquamarine page, and relocated some of the highlights from the back issues to the Archive page, as well as removing and updating various other sections that still featured out of date information. If I get enough interest from readers to reinstate some of the archival material, I may consider doing so, but feel that in the main, the presence of these old articles gets in the way of the current emphasis of the site and presents a confusing picture of what Aquamarine is currently about. It is worth mentioning at this point that articles written by me are my property and not to be reproduced elsewhere without my permission. This includes articles currently on the site and those that have since been taken down. Anyone wishing to use any of my material elsewhere is to contact me first.

Regular visitors will know I used to have a section on this site dedicated to The Sea Urchins and Delta. These were my favourite bands when they existed, and there does need to be a source of information on them on the internet. However much of this archival material was quite out of date, so I have relocated the more recent reviews, along with the discography sections, to the Archive page.

OTHER BITS:
In answer to some of the questions I'm sometimes asked -
I am not looking for staff; Aquamarine is written solely by me as a hobby.
Bliss is not taking on new music as it no longer exists as a currently operating label. Aquamarine fanzine is still in operation but is not taking on new submissions until otherwise announced.

I do not publicise my address on this site - if you need to send me anything through the post please email me and I'll let you know where to send it.

I am no longer using the kim@blissaquamarine.net email address as it was attracting way too much spam. Other email addresses previously used on this site are also defunct - please only use my current email address, found at the foot of the homepage.

I do not accept email attachments - any unsolicited emails with attachments will be deleted.