Hydroplane - s/t

 
What coincidence that in the week that we should announce the release of The Cat's Miaow retrospective, this first-time vinyl pressing of Hydroplane's debut album from 1997 should appear. It's almost as if we planned it that way (we did not). For all intents and purposes, Hydroplane were essentially the band TCM morphed into after the latter lost their drummer to London, and there's certainly a great number of sonic similarities between the two outfits that suggests a continuum rather than break - you can't hide from Kerrie Bolton's astonishingly evocative voice. The minimal arrangements of those early indiepop-styled TCM songs are mostly abandoned, the blueprint for the Hydroplane sound much more in-keeping with The Long Goodbye EP released on Darla right at the end of TCM's existence. Which is to say,  a meeting of slo-core referencing delicate/fragile songwriting akin to something like Galaxie 500 or Secret Name-era Low, and the dreamier/more ethereal aspects of a label like Kranky. It's a beautifully threaded-together album, classically structured indiepop miniatures bound with soft-toned tape loops and samples, in its way creating a unique refiguring of shoegaze aesthetics that retained the characteristic introversion of the genre but used subtlety instead of noise to communicate its message. It's an approach you might see apparent in the work of a band like, say, The Clientele, though in truth Hydroplane's debut feels like a fairly unique statement, a group of people making music unafraid to be quiet, fragile and bravely open-hearted. A lost classic from the forgotten end of the late 90s. Not anymore.