The Van Pelt
Same As Stone / The Swede's Down At The Beach

4
...according to our Brian on 14 December 2006.

The Van Pelt are a strange & beguiling proposition. As a fan of the Lapse, Chris Leo's subsequent band I felt I had to trace these strange, brittle roots back a little & was quite impressed by what I 'eard. A couple of lost tracks from the mid 90's have apeared on a 7" through Red Cars Go Faster. B-side 'The Swede's Down at the Beach' is spacious, downtempo minimal post hardcore with a great use of minor chords & fuzzy lo-fi feedback between atmospheric vocal led passages. These are songs that feature some seriously odd patches of de-tuned guitar mantra, most apparent on the A-side 'Same as Stone', a technique that seems to work brilliantly in all his bands. I can hear parallels with bands such as Yo La Tengo & Seam but with a monged out Sonic Youth/Rhys Chatham nod to minimalism, the songs having this kinda dreamy emo feel whilst being really individual & out of step with everything around. The true underground sound of NYC a decade ago Brown vinyl on Red Cars Go Faster

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What their label says...

Two unreleased songs recorded in 1994 at WGSN studios in Washington dc by Geoff Turner (Gray Matter). These songs have never seen the light and were played by the same members of the first album, except for Toko who joined the band a while later. This is the beginning of one of the most seminal bands of the last decade, it's a kind of document of how the whole thing started. It starts here and ends in the last months of ’97. This is the prologue. Great artwork by Angelo Milano