As the name suggests, My Room Records specialises in lo-fi, home recorded stuff. Goodnite Moon have a tape, Bedtime Baroque Vol II, which is also released on vinyl as a split release between My Room and Riskykid Records. Some of the titles are kind of angry, like I Hope You Die, It Sucks and You Dick, but this isn't the noisy stuff that these titles suggest. Goodnite Moon actually deal in delicate, sparse pop songs with male and female vocals. I Hope You Die is similar to the sort of stuff done by Frank Peck. I recommend this tape to all lovers of melancholic minimalism.

Make A Wish's instrumentation on most of the tracks on their self-titled tape consists of two basses and nothing else, but it actually sounds good. The lyrics are a mixture of lighthearted stuff like 'Baby wanna hold your hand/take me to the sodashop' and much darker, depressing stuff like those in For Ron, in which the singer sings about how she told her dad she couldn't talk to him right then because she was busy, but later that night he died. This song tells a genuinely heart-wrenching story. Pony is dramatically different to the rest, it's a soul song, a cover I think.

The Sarcastic Bitch have a 13 track tape of DIY pop that's sometimes noisy, sometimes not. I liked this tape so I bought their split LP with The Makeshift Conspiracy. Unfortunately for me, this turned out to be a lot heavier than the tape, really noisy riot grrrl stuff, not my kind of thing. I like most tracks on the tape though, there's noisy stuff on here but it's a lot more melodic than the LP. Some of this isn't noisy at all - some is rather twee, like Tea Party for example.

A good introduction to My Room is the Sleepee Mix 7-inch which includes one track each from Sarcastic Bitch, Goodnite Moon, Acetaminophen, Make A Wish and Complete Sentences. For more info on these and everything else that's on offer, write to My Room Records, PO Box 264, Sierra Madre, CA 91025-0264, USA.

BACK TO ARCHIVE