99 CENT DREAM The Hottest Demo Of The Season/Greatest Hits Vol 10 (Best Kept Secret)
Child Of The 70s is a laid-back, minimal song featuring voice and piano; other songs have keyboard and guitar instrumentation and others have a more full band sound, although the 'band' is just one person (occasionally two people). The singer's voice is often semi-melodic, with a half-spoken feel, even though it's in time with the music, but other songs have more tuneful vocals and there's also When You Play, Everyone Loves You. When You Stop, You're Alone which actually is a spoken track. To say the singer has a flat voice would be a touch unfair - I've heard much more tuneless voices than this. It's just not a trained voice, but anyone who expects homemade indiepop singers to sing like Tom Jones or whoever is totally missing the point. Music-wise, 99 Cent Dream's homemade pop songs have a variety of moods, from melancholy to upbeat to discordantly noisy. bks@telemar.it

CHELSEA'S CORNER Two Hundred Words In Snow (Best Kept Secret)
Most of this tape is melancholic indiepop that should appeal to anyone who likes Frank Peck, Shy Rights Movement or Chuzzlewit, although some of it is more keyboard-based than those. Out of those three, Shy Rights Movement probably have the most in common with this band. A bit different to the other tracks are Success Stories which is still indiepop but also has hints of late 60s laid-back rock, A Bowl With Steaming Frustration which puts me in mind of the more laid-back side of Radiohead and Balance which makes me think of a cross between Radiohead and Mugwump. bks@telemar.it

MAVIS Seven Songs
The first three songs are a cross between old-style indiepop and punk-pop; dead good lo-fi songs. The other songs are more punk-pop - still good stuff (particularly Pigeon) but my personal favourites overall are the more indiepoppy ones, being generally partial to a good indiepop song... mavispop@hotmail.com

LAST EXIT Fade Away
Melodic rock with a dark feel, and deep vocals that remind me of the singer from Mugwump. It's powerful and tuneful and certainly not unlistenable, but somehow the songs don't particularly move me, I'm afraid... lee.appleton@informa.com

THE CONSPIRACY Prozak
Not the full length tape of this name that The Conspiracy had a few years ago, but a tape of two brand new songs plus three tracks that have been released on Jarmusic and Pink Lemon. The new songs show the band move towards a heavier sound - Motives is poppy rock but with a darker feel than much of their previous material. Psycho is definitely the heaviest track I've heard from this band - not much pop to be heard in this song; instead you get heavy rock guitars and menacing vocals. Next up is their punk song, Safe?, which I feel is superior to many songs by bands who normally do this kind of music. Then there's Letter To Matt with its angry lyrics, and Red Bird which is the more poppy type of song that I tend to mostly associate with this band. Duncan from the band is selling their Sword Of Damocles CD album for £10 and Ghost EP for £8, payment to D Pope, from 47 Yealm Park, Yealmpton, Devon PL8 2NR.

LUPINE Memories (AEM)
Two tracks of symphonic-sounding goth stuff with metal riffage ... all a bit heavy for me but if it sounds like your sorta thing contact DisAssociation Music & Media Group, 299 Martin Street, Sheffield S6 3DS.

JAMES JAM Roobarb Heart
Three solo songs from James of Mavis, packaged in a paper sleeve with hearts and flowers on. The insert describes them as "throwaway pop music" but they're far more meaningful than this description suggests. This is minimal acoustic pop with romantic lyrics that seem genuine and from-the-heart, unlike throwaway pop which is just made-up and devoid of real meaning. cowboysmile@yahoo.co.uk

BRET HART Maximum Love Vibes (Hipworks)
Hard to categorise in one word - many of the songs have pop/rock elements, but there are also blues, country, folk and psych influences on show. Often the songs have a quirky feel. You've Got A Good Thing There reminds me of the equally hard-to-pigeonhole Stinking Badger Of Java. The subjects of the songs often aren't the usual subject matter for songs; there's a song about a typewriter on here, and even stranger, a song called Dey Made Me Eat The Metal Cake... This sounds more of a complete album than No More Bandages! (see album reviews section), due to the lack of improvisational instrumentals. hipworks@mindspring.com

ARTE BIGLIPS/M.L.V. Beating the Devil's Fiddle (Hipworks)
More from Bret Hart, this time in his "Blind Pineapple" Phillips guise. This is entirely improvisation and experimentation, not a song to be heard on here, and hardly any tune. A pretty tedious listen, I wish Bret would stick to his song-based material! hipworks@mindspring.com

NERO'S ACOLYTES Albatrocity (Exoteric)
15-piece band led by the talking vocalist Martoc. This professionally duplicated cassette mainly consists of quirky synth-based pop, which sometimes ventures into glam, punk and goth territories. Much of it is kinda kitschy and likely to be an acquired taste, but I like most of it. Not so keen on Kiss of Death though, this is more of an experimental noise thing with talking over the top, a bit too dark and not tuneful enough for me. The last track isn't to my taste either, think it's a Gary Glitter cover. I can recommend the rest to anyone who likes quirky pop songs though. Costs £6 (UK/Eur) or £7 (Rest of world) from Warren Scott-Morrow, Honeysuckle Cottage, High Road, Guyhirn, Wisbech, Cambs PE13 4EQ, UK.

MARTOC Traffic is Psychosomatic (Esoteric)
More quirky, mainly synthesised pop with recited vocals from Martoc. The lyrics are often bizarre, there's songs about printed circuits in brains, the Rubik's Cube, etc... Sometimes the subject matter is a bit morbid, eg Vanessa Dane (about an unfaithful girlfriend with a sexually transmitted disease) and She Died On The Operating table (self explanatory!) The more light-hearted songs here remind me of James Call's Power tape; I can recommend this to anyone who likes Power. £5 (UK/Eur)/£6 (World) from the same address as Albatrocity.

CIRCLE BROTHERS Bitter Dream (Morc)
Post-rock instrumentals. Occasionally a little too noisy and/or repetitive, but on the whole the tracks are quiet, peaceful and relaxing, and whilst there is repetition they don't get boring. I'm sometimes reminded of Karina ESP (one of my favourite post-rock bands), particularly on Bitter Souvenir. lecluyse_wimgg@hotmail.com

ZENT ONE Mummer (Morc)
A sometimes nice and melodic, and sometimes dark and disturbing, collection of instrumentals with guitar, piano and cello, many of which are likely to please people into classical music as well as fans of post-rock/lo-fi. Pleasingly packaged, with a brown paper cover. lecluyse_wimgg@hotmail.com

VARIOUS Suspend Your Disbelief (Best Kept Secret)
In the early days of Best Kept Secret, they found many of their bands from Bliss. These days it's more often that I'll discover new bands on BKS. This is a good quality compilation, mostly of indiepop, indie-rock and noisepop bands, many of which are new to me, and most tracks are worth a listen. It's great to see Mocca on here, they're one of my favourite bands. The Kris Novak track is also brill, sounds very Cardiacs-like. Also appearing are Moonbabies, Dancing Mice, Flaming June, Nothing Else, Burning Up White, Squelch, Serotonin, Mercury Spectres, Ro-Robot, The State of Samuel, Ernie Dexter, Robot, Hinton, Carlo Morrocco (an offshoot of Vinyl Bill), Stripped, Velouria, Scintilla, Catesby, Melatone, Hunnypal and Dimbodius. bks@telemar.it

PAR AVION A Song A Day (Best Kept Secret)
Yet another band featuring Jason Sweeney, also of Sweet William, Other People's Children, Simpatico and Pretty Boy Crossover. As you'd expect from the title of this tape, it has 7 songs. Much of Jason Sweeney's other material is electronic indiepop and this is no exception, but instead of Jason singing lead vocals, this band has a female vocalist, Janiece Pope, who sings most of the vocals here (Jason sings a bit of two of the songs). Janiece has a strong voice, like a soul or dance-pop singer ... I guess this is a kind of dance-pop but for bedroom pop kids rather than ravers. There's also a track called Dip the Paddle which is experimental electronica with sampled speech. Some really good stuff here, like Dragon's Blood which might appeal to people into The Field Mice's electronic material (I always thought Sweet William and Simpatico showed a strong Field Mice influence too). bks@telemar.it

TIM CHAPLIN The 22nd Floor (Best Kept Secret)
Following his 7" on Plastic Pancake (see single reviews section), this one-man indiepop band has a full tape out. His music is all pop but with varied moods, ranging from fuzzy noisepop to minimal melancholic songs. As usual with Best Kept Secret, the tape inlay is very well designed - this label's releases have some of the most professional artwork I've ever seen from a tape label. bks@telemar.it

DELONS s/t
These songs are in Polish, so I can't understand the lyrics, but the tunes are good. 8 indiepop songs that are sometimes jangly and sometimes fairly noisy. kyry@polbox.com

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