demo Tim Chaplin : demo (UK,2003)*
I read about Tim Chaplin in Dream Magazine. He was being described as "a cross between Greg Weeks and The Clientele in a lo-fi afterlife. Guitar and synthesizer paint sad watercolors in a fading afternoon light." That made me curious. This 4 track demo revealed a singer-songwriter with an underground lo-fi feel of writing, with his almost sleepy voice a bit on the back, with acoustic guitar and electric guitars more to the fore, -a sandwich, with a neo-psych underground pop cheese slice part and a singer songwriter meat part, pressed with a salad of underground rock driven by the guitars, with a certain amount of chaotic and cloudy inspiration of really musically distorted sounding guitars with some carrots of additional percussion and a mayonnaise of backwards effects, pressed in an urban rock sandwich-. In between this woolly wall of sounds the inspiration itself is hidden, distorted and fuzzy like the guitars. A wet sweatshirt, the new fashion of pants half down to the knees, and "the wet look" (designed by the new barbers) I can imagine it all there. This unclear unwashed look forward, protective in its expression, creates this recognizable underground cellar environment to shelter yourself in. The recognizable objects that give affection, in and with sound above the guitars sounds, are things like the nice organ, and handpercussion, all very close, standing next to each other. Instead of comparing this to Greg Weeks I would prefer to mention singer-songwriters like Ring. If this mood being described suits you, go ahead and try it.
The 4 tracks on the demo were "This Road was made for the rain to come down", "try", "femme with a j", "don't know why I don't know why". These tracks will appear on other albums later.
A side project of his :
Private Luminous : demo (UK,2003)*°
Luminous is Tim Chaplin's different, other project. Here instrumental parts and experimenting with collages of ideas is the main inspiration. First track, "Little School" is a very fine little minimal experimental track with funny background vocals and equally fitting sounds, some of them slightly distorted, but as multi-layered combination of sounds and ideas "roughly poetic", in a way very funny, and highly enjoyable. A great little track ! "Spazmodik" is a underground electronic loop piece with some distorted ? sounds and additional background vocals (-my recording here seems to be recorded a bit too loud for this track on the demo CDR ?-). As an underground rock piece it really passes the test for originality with flying colours. The combination of different instruments, ideas have been compiled with a balanced portion of inspiration, including humour. For instance like the collected electronic loops of ridiculously fast rhythms touches, combined with this funny melody, some echoed effects and an additional taped voice. These create a cyber-dadaistic moment. Also last track, "Everything right" still succeeds in sounding fresh and inspired by accidental semi-unprofessional experiments, with as result a creative and joyful highly original package of a new or a new contemporary Pop art. These tracks reminded me a bit of some experiments Harald "Zack" Ziegler did before, not with his ambient tracks, but the most humorous tracks with sound collage and additional toy instruments. Very promising.
VA : The Golden Apples of the Sun -selected by Devendra Banhart- (US,(UK),2004)**** 
