https://pentiments.bandcamp.com/album/sunshine-has-blown
It’s taken a while to post this, as though I’m super proud of the record, it is mixed with sadness.
In mid-2000s Brisbane, Adam Park and I would regularly play music together at my house. He would splice reel-to-reel loops from tapes he’d found at thrift stores and I would improvise on various instruments and effects. He never ‘auditioned’ loops before playing them, but just cut them in random spots to see what came out. One day he pressed play on a short loop and the words “your sunshine has blown” repeated over and over in a weird country-singer cadence. It was hypnotic, so we decided to name our band “Sunshine Has Blown”.
In 2006 Michael Donnelly was publishing limited edition CDR’s every few weeks, on his amazing label musicyourmindwillloveyou. He invited us to do a release, which I delivered within a few days. The four tracks are a mix of home and live recordings from small Brisbane concerts, featuring Adam and me, alongside contributions from Joe Musgrove, Velvet Pesu and Scott Sinclair.
Like so many underground releases at the time, it was much loved by about 100 people. Which was great. But around 2010 someone uploaded SHB to YouTube, and gradually the music started circulating in scenes, places, and communities very far from Brisbane. People were sharing the album on obscure psych and noise lists, buying copies on discogs, and speculating about how it was made. It had especially found a niche amongst listeners interested in the ‘hauntological’ aesthetic.
And then, out of the blue in 2021, Guido Gamboa from the Pentiments label in Chicago emailed to ask if a) I was the person involved with this record and b) If he could reissue it on vinyl. I was so pleased to say yes. When I contacted him for the first time in a while to share the news, Adam was very surprised and happy too. He never mentioned that he’d been unwell, but then a short time later I received the news, shockingly, that he’d died in Brisbane. It’s still a hard thing to process.
The LP was released late last year and is dedicated to Adam Park. I hope you enjoy it. Australian friends can get a copy at Naturestrip Records and everyone else via Pentiments bandcamp. Or, listen on YoutTube.
Enjoy x
Joel Stern