As we embark on a belated spring clean and scrub the grot from every inch of our once carefree retail environment, we're turning up all manner of strange and wonderful things: orphaned shoes, obscure Japanese cooking condiments, and deadstock copies of this, one of my all-time favourite 7"s, which I first came across via a tip/gift from the kind gent behind the redoubtable Not Unloved label. Released in '98 on Tinseltones (home also, I see, to singles from the amazing Electroscope and Clock Strikes Thirteen. Do they still make labels with names like Tinseltones?!), it's the work of Michigan dream-pop duo Mahogany and it's just... perfect. I'm not massively familiar with the band's other work, it looks a bit more straight-ahead and commercially-minded (or maybe it's just the questionable early-2000s nu-gaze cover art it all sports), whereas the two tracks here, 'Altima Futura Automaton' and 'Aetherophone', seem content to hover in a perfect private eternal moment of weightless ethereal indie-pop galaxy-tremble. Urge you to check this if you're into Spoonfed Hybrid, Hydroplane, Tropic of Cancer, Lightning In A Twilight Hour, or Stereolab at their most blissy and bleary....
