Label: Dedicated
Year of Release: 1995
It's common enough to upload tracks by sixties outfits for whom background information is scarce, but nineties bands - especially nineties bands who were signed to well-known labels - seldom fall through the cracks so easily. By that stage in history we were all just starting to go online and leave dirty great Internet trails about exciting new bands we'd just seen and heard, and much of that information is still available today.
Superalmendrado, on the other hand, are an absolute mystery. Signed to Dedicated, the home of Spiritualized, The Cranes and Chapterhouse, this seems to be the only release of theirs which made it out into the public realm, and even then I've only ever seen Promo copies of it, leading me to suspect that it never received an official release. This is a jarring, dischordant piece of work which makes use of angst rock drumming, needles-on-the-nerves guitar lines, and forlorn vocals to bring three tracks which are not easy on the ear. Whether you consider this to be genius or utterly unlistenable may depend upon your tolerance of rock music's more experimental strands - but one thing's for sure, this isn't pop.
The whereabouts of the band presently remains as big a mystery as the full details of the line-up, but Craig Ward appears to have been the most active since, leaving Superalmendrado to join cult Belgian band dEUS not long after this single crept into the world. Whether his departure spelt the end for the band as a going concern or not is difficult to ascertain, but on the face of the little evidence we have available to us, it's probably safe to say that it won't have helped.
Anyone with any other background information on this band should get in touch to fill in the blanks. I'd be grateful for any help received.
Tracklisting:
1. Gotta Give It Up
2. Shedtronics
3. The Ballad of John Harlow
3 comments:
Glad you like it. Check out POX (On your House)
It wasn't the deus thing that ended the band, Craig left on account of personal reasons.
The band survived that.
As a matter of fact Gotta Give It Up as it appears here already has another guitarist playing.
It didn't survive meddling of management and label companies, something that was quite prevalent at the time.
I pretty much wanted to do an unrehearsed gig, with a couple of friends, after breaking up with the bass-player and the guitarist that followed Craig over some drug-related issues.
I personally knew the guy who organised the concert, and he was looking forward to it, even after I told him it wasn't going to be what he expected.
But the powers that be thought it was too much of a risk and cancelled the entire thing.
Seeing as the drummer was the only one left from the original almendrado's and he sided with management, I just called it quits.
As for the mistery, well, I'm paranoid as hell
Thanks for getting in touch with all the additional information!
In terms of the release of the record, do you know that it definitely made it as far as record shops? I have no reason to doubt that it did, it's just that the only copies I've seen are all promos.
I don't think it made it to the stores.
Not really sure though, it might have, my memory fails me on a lot of things that went on in that time-period.
I think it was indeed mainly used as a promo thing. Airplay, getting gigs, you know the drill.
It got us a support tour for Ween for one.
Which, afterwards, made me decide never to do any support tour for anyone, even if mr Van Vliet got down on his knees and begged.
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