I know what you’re thinking. A POST/POP release and its not by a pretty girl with long eyelashes looking downwards? YES! Thats right. POST/POP’s 4th release comes from Canada’s very own KESTRELS! I tried to make them all pose wearing long eyelashes - and to their credit, they tried it, but they couldn’t do the looking down thing, so we went with a massive moon instead.

Now, everything I ever learnt about Canada comes from 2 things:

1: ‘Due South’, the 90s cop show about a Canadian mountie that gets posted to a Chicago police force. With this in mind I assume that the members of Kestrels are good at tracking and are extremely polite to criminals.

2: My experience of going to Montreal, nobody being able to speak English to me (or didn’t want to) and Arcade Fire NOT meeting me at the airport riding on a moose. At montreal airport (oddly bigger than the city of Montreal - I am not kidding about this, look on wikipedia) they asked me if I was there for “business or pleasure”. When I said “pleasure” they answered “are you sure?”.

To me, this is Canada. The land of people who dont expect anyone to actually like them, but don’t really care either way as they have amazing healthcare, quality of living and the monopoly on incredible bands. One of these bands is KESTRELS and I am happy to announce that a Ltd Edition Tape of TWO brand new tracks will be available from March 15th 2014 on this very site.

this is their bio from their site but you are welcome to pretend I wrote it - http://www.kestrels.ca/Bio/

I got to see them live when they popped over to London to support Ash a couple of years back (was it that long ago?!) and played the Camden Barfly as a warm-up. I remember thinking that I had known the lead singer Chad Peck for about a million years as “the guy in Canada who knew lots about Ash and had rare stuff” so it was weird finding out he was a living breathing person in a band that I really liked. It was at that point I thought “One day I will release a tape for this band with a big moon on the cover” and that my friends is exactly what I’m doing.

PRE-ORDER THIS LTD EDITION TAPE (ONLY 50 CASSETTES) NOW!

thank you for supporting POST/POP!

Jed

Before you read on, take a look at this video to see what we are dealing with here…

Complete and utter madness. And I love them. NO CARS are my first foray into J-Pop (I’m also releasing a tape for internet and daytime TV sensation Beckii Cruel later this year too) and I am so so excited. They are 3 girls from Tokyo (via Hackney) who are one of the best live acts I’ve ever seen.

I’d first come across them when my friend’s band was playing some dive in London and I got there a little late. by this time No Cars had already played but their name hung heavy in the air. I heard so many stories about their live performances. I heard they had a song about Tuna Fish. I heard they made an audience member join them onstage and wear a kimono. I heard they gave out kazoos so people could join in. I heard they jumped around in the crowd and sang songs from the middle about an Octopus. Quite frankly I had heard enough by this stage and it was quite quite clear that we were dealing with THE GREATEST BAND OF ALL TIME.

A japanese girl band doing j-pop meets delta blues with audience participation and costumes, hits most of my buttons. Over the next couple of years, I’d see them play quite often, and my intitial reaction proved close to the mark. Here were a bunch of ladies, fully embracing the stereotype that the western world had appointed them, and shoved it down our fat faces with tales of adventure and mystery.

So, I invited them on my radio show and you can hear it all again here: http://www.phoenixfm.com/2013/02/17/the-jed-shepherd-show-ft-japanese-girl-band-no-cars/

Yes, they made me sing their theme song with them. Yes, I think I pulled it off. No I won’t be in your band.

I loved them so much, I even bought the same guitar as Haruna because she made it cool. Taking all this into account, they were the obvious choice to release a tape for. They loved the idea, so what we have is their debut album on cassette for the first time ever!

BUY IT HERE NOW! (POSTED AFTER FEB 26TH)

Here is the digital version which you can buy direct from the band, have a listen and then come back to buy a tape!

this will be the third POST/POP release and I think it’s becoming something really really special and I hope you have liked everything I’ve released so far! It’s going really well and it looks set to be an incredible year. I have so many great new bands I feel very lucky, but so are you as you get to hear them!

Thanks,

Jed

POST/POP’s first release is a Limited Edition Baby-Pink Cassette Tape of HETTIE’s “Just The Way”. You get the acoustic version on Side B that will break your heart and put it back together again.

When Hettie first sent me this song it also coincided with the first time I ever met her. She was coming onto my radio show and wanted to have something to play as well as her acoustic session. I knew as soon as I heard the first 8 bars that this was something a little special.

About a week later, I got the very talented Kenny Lee to spruce up Hettie’s song into a POP GEM and this is the result!

There are only 50 of these pink tapes AND this is our first release so it’s like that these tapes will be highly sought after and very ebayable in the future. Try to keep it to two cassettes per address as I don’t want some entrepreneur buying them all up, only to sell it back to fans at extortionate prices!

I have intentionally kept the tape price as low as possible (only £3!) which basically covers the cost of production and maybe enough change for a Cherry Coke, but nobody ever released limited edition cassette tapes for the money. (Well not in the 21st Century anyway).

Find out more about HETTIE at www.hettiesteinmore.com or pretty much all over this very site!

If you one of the lucky buyers of our first release, then I just want you to know that I LOVE YOU and I hope this is the start of a beautiful set of low cost business transactions friendship!

Jed
@jedshepherd

Emily’s tape is out on February 14th and I am still putting them together. No one ever told me folding j-cards would be so hard In the meantime you can pre-order from the store (link at the top) and see some preview photos below. YES, I know it looks like a Smiths tape. YES it’s on purpose!

You can listen/download/Buy Emily’s EP “Who Framed Winston Silcott” direct from Emily’s bandcamp in the player below

and when you have finished doing that, you can buy the ltd edition cassette tape by clicking anywhere on this line!

this is where the tape info will go!