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LP
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EFFICIENT 046LP
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A Place In My Memory Is All I Have To Claim is the new album by Australian atmospheric pop trio Hydroplane, the storied "offshoot" formed by three quarters of independent pop group, The Cat's Miaow. On this, their first music after two decades plus of radio silence, Andrew Withycombe, Kerrie Bolton, and Bart Cummings return to the gentle, close-quarters musical world they shared around the turn of the century. Recorded during 2024 in Melbourne and Ballarat, A Place In My Memory picks up the thread Hydroplane set down with its precursor, 2001's The Sound Of Changing Places, though you can hear echoes of their other releases, too, with Withycombe noting a through-line from the group's 1998 "Failed Adventure" single. There's little quite like A Place In My Memory, then or now, though. Fellow travelers might include Empress, The Ah Club, and further back, Young Marble Giants, Veronique Vincent (the muffled, ticking drum machine also makes me think of Robin Gibb
's Robin's Reign). There's also an umbilical to the bedroom-crafted electronica doing the rounds in the late nineties and early noughties. Hydroplane hint at this through their approach to songwriting, which often builds creatively around loops as structural devices. Through all this, the trio achieve an effortless, organic weightlessness across these nine lovely songs. Many feature Bolton's clear singing voice, drifting along, while guitars, keyboards, drum machines and loops tickertape away. The constituent parts fit together, but they also have a curiously detached quality -- think of abstract cloud formations sharing the same sky. Hydroplane and The Cat's Miaow often dealt in emotional ambiguity and uncertainty, and the uncertainty of the nostalgic. This was always one of the most appealing facets of their music, and A Place In My Memory is thus named perfectly. A beautiful collection of drowsy, sleepy pop, humble and quiet, but resolute in its craft, A Place In My Memory Is All I Have To Claim is dream work in practice; a lovely reintroduction.
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EFFICIENT 027LP
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2025 repress. Hydroplane reinstate their formidable 1997 debut of sublime guitar atmospherics, fragile lyricism, and droning incidentals with an overdue vinyl reissue. An offshoot of the now-fêted The Cat's Miaow, the trio formed after drummer Cameron Smith decamped to London, charting new territory with tape loops, manipulated samples, and a borrowed Jupiter 4 in the wake of Endtroducing. Adopting a handle that Dean Wareham once considered calling Luna, Hydroplane intended to only ever release Excerpts From Forthcoming LP (1996), a single-sided 7" sonic collage, before imploding in mystery. Their label however insisted they deliver their taunted album. From the comfort of a Brunswick flat, they continued to record soaring melodies and restrained song structures to 4-track, sculpting dramatic Radiophonic Workshop cues weighted in reverb and near-perfect dream pop lead by Kerrie Bolton's empyrean vocals. Bored of industry expectation and largely ignored by local audiences, the reluctant performers followed the way of The Cannanes and formed meaningful overseas alliances by mail and phone, securing releases on Michigan outpost Drive-In and Broadcast launching pad Wurlitzer Jukebox. Championed by John Peel with twenty spins on his converted Radio One slot and even polling in Festive Fifty of 1997, the humble three-piece still walked to their neighborhood shops undetected. Previously only available as a US-issued CD, this reminiscent late-night suite establishes Hydroplane as an everlasting ember in Australia's beloved indie nexus.
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