Unpop Tapes!!

Unpop is delighted two tapes. Featuring the live recordings or an Unpop gig last year.

 

Both are recorded on stupidly high quality chrome tape.

Only £3 and limited to 40 copies each.

 

The Just Joans Tape 

The Just Joans are one of the most underrated bands in Scotland, producing songs that are (in equal part) maudlin and hilarious. Yet their idiosyncratic lyrical/musical vision - fusing elements of The Smiths, Arab Strap with a distinct attachment to indie pop/twee music - has made them into a cult band with a following that extends internationally, far beyond their roots in Motherwell, North Lanarkshire.  

2012 debut vinyl LP release Buckfast Bottles In The Rain is a brilliant distillation of their vision, encompassing love, regret, poignancy and hope in pop-song format. Essentially, all the good stuff. 

This limited edition Unpop tape documents a headline gig that the band played at the Wee Red Bar in Edinburgh to launch their record on June 16th 2012. Appropriately enough for a Scottish summer, the rain poured all evening long. The recording features classic Just Joans songs like 'Hey Boy, You're Oh So Sensitive', and 'What Do We Do Now?', as well as the dialogue between Just Joans singer David Pope and an irate, drunken cyclist. 
 

The Spook School Tape 

The Spook School are a young, hungry Edinburgh band with something to prove. They are four hip indie gun-slingers with a raucous attitude and mean chops. The Spook School will annoy your parents, and may well chuck your VCR out the upstairs window of your house. 

Actually, none of this is true. The Spook School are - in fact - a largely wholesome, friendly and decent group of folks (apart from their reprobate drummer). After wowing the Indietracks festival audience last summer with a rough-hewn set of scuzzy but sensitive indie pop in the sunshine, this Edinburgh quartet have gone from strength to strength. Newly signed to London pop's quintessential record label Fortuna (home to Allo Darlin', Herman Dune and many other legends), they will be putting out their debut LP later this year. 

In the meantime, there's this tape. Recorded at their gig supporting The Just Joans in June 16th, this limited edition release documents a band in rough, exuberant form, with 'History', 'Camerman' and 'Devil Of Mine' highlights. It also documents the 'unique' banter of drummer Niall.