Noonday Underground is the nom de plume of Simon Dine. As well as being A&R man at Go! Discs and producer of Paul Weller’s ‘Illumination’ album, he found the time to release a couple of albums. ‘Surface Noise’ is the second of these albums and came to my attention as it featured 2 tracks with vocals by Frank Reader of the Trashcan Sinatras. It is still available, but seems quite hard to get these days, which is why I’m posting 2 tracks from it.
Windmills is based around a sample of some forgotten 60’s film soundtrack. It’s got weird instrumentation, some plucked strings and lazy, almost spoken vocals. It is magic.
Barcelona sounds quite similar to the above and is probably my favourite of the 2 tracks – looped, sampled strings, some plucked acoustics, some vinyl crackles and some weird film noir noises in the background. Complete with a whispered lead vocal track and falsetto backing vocals, it sounds like an eerie music box, and would be great as the background music to a Twin Peaks-style movie.
If you’re a fan of the Trashcan’s and prefer their more introspective stuff like ‘Orange Fell’, these tracks are for you.
Plain Or Pan 
hi craig,
simon’s latest adventure in stereo is as co-songwriter and musical landscape artist for a singer called ‘candie payne’ – check her out on myspace and get a tenner on her for the mercury music prize. i went to see her supporting the bees last night and the effect of a ‘delic 60s band (led by edgar summertyme) re-creating simon’s samples is odd and rather wonderful. candie can’t half sing, either!
love,
frank