London quintet Still Corners usually spend their time perfecting gorgeous, shimmering pop songs, watching subtitled movies and being glacial heartbreakers. This week they took time out to make us a sumptuous 142-minute mixtape and answer some stupid questions. The mixtape features about a hundred songs, some you may know and a lot you may not. Itís a real beauty and could almost be about the band, a musical essay that might be called something mysterious like "The Endless, Impossible Heartbreak of Still Corners." Enjoy.
Not much is known about you guys other than there are five of you and you're from London.
We're all movie nerds, anything from '60s horror movies to '80s Hughes stuff to Woody Allen. A lesser known tidbit about us is Leon once saved an entire African village from a horde of ferocious army ants using only a glass of water and a shovel.
What film should I watch tonight? (Besides "Good Burger.")
Tonight you should rent Ran by Akira Kurosawa, it's about an elderly warlord in Japan who divvies up his realm to his sons and they go bananas fighting each other for power. It's absolutely stunning to watch, mostly filmed in rural parts of Japan. Very Shakespearean. It won like 25 Oscars.
Your EP Remember Pepper? came out in 2008, then nothing until earlier this year. What have you been doing all that time? Have you been in jail?
We made the EP and wanted to refill the well, take time with arrangements and sounds and just let the songs bubble to the surface.
Are you working on an album? On current form it's going to take you ages. It could be the Chinese Democracy of dreamy, indie psychedelia. But good, of course.
Yes, we're working a full length record that we hope to find a good home for and have released sometime next year.
Would you enjoy an Endless Summer? Personally, I would miss wearing coats. I like coats.
We probably wouldn't technically enjoy a never ending summer but certainly one longer than the one England usually provides. It's the grasping after the fleeting moment of the English sun that plays a role in the title and feel of that song.
Tell us a bit about the mixtape you've made for us.
It's the recipe for the perfect Still Corners cake:
3 spoonfuls of Italian horror soundtracks
2 cups of French psych weirdos
a pinch of '60s girl pop
and an ounce of modern indie pop
Wish from Still Corners on Vimeo.
Download: Still Corners, "Endless Summer"
Download: Still Corners, "Don't Fall in Love"
Download: Still Corners, Dollars to Pounds Radio Mix
Tracklist:
1. Minimum Chips – Alaska
2. Nora Orlandi - Andoppia Faccia (Instrumental)
3. Jean Le Fennec – L’ Abandon
4. Tuca – Verde
5. Twin Sister – Lady daydream
6. Electrelane - Film Music
7. Lubos Fisher – The Sermon
7. Focus Group – The Leaving
8. Les Baxter – Necronomicon
9. The New Lines - Kings Civil Calendar Control
10. The Microphones - Where It's Hotter Pt. 3
11. Trailer Trash Tracys – Candy Girl
12. Nancy & Lee – Summer Wine
13. TwinSisterMoon – Grrand
14. Joe Meek - Valley Of The Saroos
15. Piero Umiliani - Synthi Waltz
16. Unknown – ???
17. Sagittarius - The Truth Is Not Real
18. Broadcast - Poem Of A Dead Song
19. The Many Moogs of Killer Watts - The Persuaders
20. Ennio Morricone - Unexpected Violence
21. Frantz - Le divertissement
22. Unknown - ???
23. Music Emporium – Velvet Sunsets
24. Beach House – Norway
25. Fennesz – Vacuum
26. Memoryhouse - Lately
27. Shogun Kunitoki – Nebulus
28. Washed Out - Feel It All Around
29. Perrey & Kingsley - Umbrellas of Cherbourg
30. The Elephants Memory – Old Man Willow
31. Twin Peaks - Falling