run001
sarandon - "the miniest album" 7"
out now in an edition of 500. a joint release with banazan records.

seven songs in ten minutes, scratchy jerky pop songs in the finest tradition of eighties indie heroes like big*flame and bogshed (or minutemen if you're american). recorded and mixed by scissorkicks at the cooler in just over 7 hours.

click the appropriate button to pay using paypal or send a cash/cheque made out to joe morris - it's £3ppd in the uk and £4ppd every where else.

note: north americans should order from the banazan site.

reviews

unpopular
"Not quite sure how I passed this by before, but I just discovered Sarandon’s The Miniest Album 7” (split release on the Run Out and Banazan - home of the brilliant My Teenage Stride - labels) lurking beneath a pile of papers in a corner of the Geek Lair that has gone un-charted for a long long time. Not sure how it got there, either, but there it was. I’m so glad I unearthed it too, because it’s a darn fine concoction of sounds that recall the likes of Big Flame, Nightingales, early Wolfhounds (when they had the ‘LA Juice’ coursing in their veins), Hellfire Sermons, Yummy Fur, Emperor Julian, Playwrights… all the classiest of references of course. Songs of brevity and delight, and not unlike This Poison! whose Magazine collection I reviewed for Tangents recently. For anyone with a love of angular abrasive sounds with glorious Pop hooks, I’d say this seven track artefact was pretty much essential. Damn it, I’m even off to buy a second copy. And after you’ve downloaded the tracks on their website, I strongly suggest that you should too."

splendid
"Christ, they don't make 'em like this any more. Unless they were around then and are a bunch of (probably scruffy and) obsessive characters. And they are. So they do. It's early in the 1980s. It's late at night and you are lying in bed with a battery-powered transistor radio tuned to Radio 1 (no FM in those days.) You've got the covers over your head, tucked under the pillows to muffle the sound from your Mum and Dad in the next room. This makes you very hot and you are perspiring. You are tuned -- of course -- to John Peel (Rest In Peace, John) who is playing records that sound like a cheese grater having a wild time with a couple of metal rulers and a box of tacks. All have a bad case of the jigs and are good friends with a bloke who likes to half-sing enigmatic, probably clever but you can't tell, one-liners around the zig-zag noise and the songs are over almost before they've started. It takes something this good to make me feel 12 years old again."

unpeeled
Oh this lot are great aren’t they? What? You haven’t got this yet? Shame, it’s a brilliant record sprung from an idea so brilliantly simple it makes a letterbox look like a Yes album sounds. Said idea being to write and record some sinewy, skewed, barbed and beautifully catchy pop songs. Mind you, they are dangerously fractured, check “Pin Up”, the Dammed do Talking Heads and it’s so perfectly sweet and short, “I’ve had enough of this and I’m going home” they say and then, they do! Brilliant. Why fuck around and waste time with traditional pop-padding. Sarandon songs consist only of the ‘good bits’, like dinner without sprouts. One of the best bits is the crap-jap guitar blitzing on “Make Fun”, very punky, very diy, lovely. Please check them out at www.runoutrecords.com and then weigh in with a purchase.

artrocker
"It just HAS to be an English band doesn't it with that jokey self deprecating title? The ghost of the Fall, Wedding Present, Half Man Half Biscuit and the like hangs heavy around UK indiedom (and probably always will)... but I digress. This is a 7" vinyl mini album - wadaya mean there's no such thing! I've got one here!
"Scratchy, thumpa-thumpa, shouty and great, and a minute later it's over. 'Birds', it's a one line song... and that's literally one line, but a good one. The clean guitar is frantically hacked and beaten (what was that about the Weddoes?) and, hold on a second, there's a tune - and I think I could whistle it. That old school indie thing is in there alright but this sounds like 2004 all over.
"'Make Fun' is pure Gang of 4... no it really is! A cracking bass run and herky jerky drum pattern so cool that we almost don't need the Andy Gill guitar daggering, which are the 'dressing'. Whether this is a wonderful, playful, biographical story of having fun with an older woman or a sad paedophilia commentary I'm not sure... I sense the former.
"It is authentically post punk meets C86 scratchings and janglings with deadpan, honest, kitchen sink autobiography vocals. 'Your Devotion' sounds like an appalling cover version attempt at The Loving Spoonful but at 78rpm - in other words, charming, funny and catchy. 'Bored' is perhaps THE one or perhaps it's just to me that it feels like an anthem for a bored new youth and a cry for something to happen. Classic adolescent suburban 'tedium is the medium' tales, and oh so English. The menagerie on the sleeve... I must be missing something. 4/5 "

x-mist
"first EP by this amazing new band, 7 songs combining the scratchy, jerky Post-Punk sound of classic british bands (think of JOSEF K, the early days of the MEKONS and SWELL MAPS, etc.) with a MINUTEMEN-like approach!"

norman
"Sarandon release their debut 7" single. In fact this turned up at the towers early this week and we were so impressed we e mailed the band to get a load off 'em cos we know you're all gonna want copies. It's 7 tracks in total and tis called The Miniest Album. I've been asking the boys to brainstorm who they sound like and this is what we've come up with so far....Big Flame, Bogshed, Fire Engines, The Wolfhounds, Josef K, Small World Experience, Death By Milkfloat, A Witness, Hellfire Sermons and more obscure bands you won't have heard of. It's absolutely fantastic indie guitar which will appeal to folks who are getting to The Rakes, Help She Can't Swim, The Futureheads at the mo. It's that kind of spiky indie gear. Brilliant stuff indeed and a bargain for 7 tracks! "

also available from:
black lodge
norman
x-mist

sarandon website
sarandon on myspace

download:
"pin up"