Fans of '90s-era shoegaze music will want to check out Movieland, a once-mothballed Vancouver band that has now launched an archival series for 604 Records.
The 11-song Then & Now album is part of the new 604 Decades project that aims to "celebrate Vancouver’s rich, often overlooked musical history" for the Jonathan Simkin-founded company.
Future releases will include an album by Pure in 2025, but right now the story is focused on Movieland and how the band shoulda, coulda, woulda been bigger than they were 30-plus years ago.
Edmonton-raised singer-guitarist Alan D. Boyd, now living in the U.K., played bass in Montreal garage-rock band The Gruesomes before settling in Vancouver in 1991. He found work at Benny's Bagels alongside drummer Justin Leigh, bonded over Brit bands like The Stone Roses and Slowdive, then formed Movieland with bassist John Ounpuu.
Rooted in 12-string jangle and distortion, their sound was certainly inspired by drug use, Boyd admits. “There were a lot of drugs in Vancouver at that time,” he says in a 604 Decades news release. “I never really liked weed, but everybody seemed to smoke it, and there was an interest in psychedelics amongst the people that we were all friends with. It definitely informed what we were doing, that cannot be denied.”
A couple years of gigs later, Movieland was pretty much done, Ounpuu and Leigh had formed the band Pluto, and Boyd left Vancouver to roadie for punk legends SNFU across Europe.
Simkin loved Movieland back in the day. Many years later he reconnected with Boyd, who then rediscovered tapes and live footage to compile Then & Now, with new songs to come. “It’s a good time to do this,” Simkin says of 604 Decades. “People who were part of that scene will get a kick out of this again.”
I'm looking forward to the reissued Pure music, a way for Simkin to celebrate guitarist Todd Simko, who died in 2012. “To be able to put out some music that features Todd’s performances on it is honestly a solemn honour,” the label head said.
