Description
140g black vinyl in reverse board sleeve. Shrinkwrapped. Each vinyl order includes a CD in reverse board printed card wallet.
Joss Cope – Learn To Float
PRESS & QUOTES:
“A riot of jangling guitars, Psych Pop smarts, fuzz freak outs and off the wall psychedelia that, along with more current influences, channels Kevin Ayers and the “Canterbury Scene” possibly more than Syd Barrett and the hip London bands from the Sixties. It’s a wonderful record.” – Thee Psychedelicatessen
“A superb solo album…if you like the intelligent pastoral Psych of acts such as XTC, Robyn Hitchcock, The Blue Aeroplanes and Stephen Duffy then I can certainly recommend this.” – Retroman Blog
Born in the Midlands at the start of the swinging 60s, Joss Cope followed elder brother Julian to Liverpool aged 14 and got rapidly sucked in to the nascent post-punk scene there, meeting and playing with such future musical luminaries as Les Pattinson (Echo & the Bunnymen), Peter Wylie (Wah Heat) and Mike Mooney (Spiritualized).
He would go on to form the short-lived but influential Freight Train with Donald Ross Skinner and Barrett Douce, releasing the seminal debut album Man’s Laughter on Phil Smee’s Bam Caruso label in 1985. After Freight Train split when Douce joined the rival Mighty Lemon Drops, Cope moved to London and became part of the emerging Creation Records scene, playing with Crash, The Weather Prophets, Rose McDowell and Biff Bang Pow before putting out two albums of his own work with Something Pretty Beautiful.
Joss also contributed to his brother Julian’s albums Fried and St Julian, and co-wrote the songs Pulsar and Christmas Mourning with Julian and Donald Ross Skinner. The trio also reworked the Spades classic I have Always Been Here Before for the 1992 Roky Erikson tribute album Where The Pyramid Meets The Eye, which also featured REM and Primal Scream.
Losing confidence with Creation boss Alan McGee’s obsession with ‘finding the new Beatles’ Joss left the label in 1991 and formed a new psyche band, The United States of Mind, with Ashley Wood (Chemistry Set), Dave Morgan and Greenwood Goulding (Rockingbirds). Only one eponymously titled album of blistering British psychedelia was released on the appropriately titled DyscFunctional imprint, before the band split in 1994.
Disillusioned with a Brit-pop obsessed music scene, Joss explored his creativity in other areas, art directing music videos for MTV before editing and voicing the BBC TV children’s animated series Yoho Ahoy in 2001.
In the noughties Joss, a long term committed environmentalist, joined Greenpeace as an online producer and worked on key campaigns against overfishing, deforestation and airport expansion.
He played guitar with psychedelic soulsters Dexter Bentley much of that time, releasing the album In Order Alphabetical and the vinyl single Killer Kane on Blang Records in 2009.
That same year he met his current partner, Finnish cartoonist Virpi Oinonen, and began spending part of each year in Helsinki.
When Dexter Bentley ended in 2012 Joss joined Blang’s Sergeant Buzfuz on bass, and after a while was inspired to start writing songs again.
In 2016 he began a collaboration with a trio of top Helsinki musicians: guitarist Veli-Pekka Oinonen (Nights of Iguana, Leningrad Cowboys), bassist Esa Lehporturo and percussionist Ville Raasakka. Early in 2017 the addition of Irish keyboardist O’Reilly O’Rourke (ex-Freak Outburst) completed the line-up, and the band went into Taajuusvarjostin studio to record with producer Arto Nevalainen.
Unrequited Lullabies is the result.
What’s it about?
“The psychedelia of every-day life, for one thing. I don’t think enough of us, enough of the time, appreciate just how miraculous and weird everything going on around us (including ourselves) actually is. Love songs to the children I never had is another, plus a few warnings about what to expect from the good and the bad of life in this magical place, wrapped up in melody and riff.”
What’s it sound like?
“It’s been likened to Syd Barrett fronting the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, which is absolutely fine by me.”
Joss Cope: vocals, guitar
Veli-Pekka Oinonen: lead guitar
Esa Lehtopuro: bass guitar
Ville Raasakka: drums
O’Reilly O’Rourke: mellotron, organ, piano
recorded at Taajuusvarjostin Helsinki by Arto Nevalainen
mixed by Ian Button
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