OTR: Camera - This is Camera

[illusionofjoy]

After LowSunday's Elesgiem (2001), it seemed that Shane Sahene was through with moody shoegaze. His first post-Sunday band, Camera, was all sorts of sunny, bouncy garage rock. It's a shame they didn't last long. Typing in the URL of the website printed in their sole LP leads one to a page full of weird links and Asian script. My computer probably has a virus now...

The most notable internet testament to Camera's existence is a glowing review on allmusic.com for 2006's This is Camera. And in a blink, seemingly, it was over. Shane Sahene moved on to a new project: The Tearing Spiders. Nate Fitzgerald (keyboard) co-founded the club night Super Secret Dance Party and is currently DJing at WRCT. I haven't a clue what the other three members of the group are up to.

This is Camera is a fun - and fast - album. There are ten songs total and the longest among them only clocks in at three minutes and twenty seconds. Overall, it sounds like what The Strokes would sound like if The Strokes weren't a bunch of annoying nasally wankers.

joi_division and I were dating when I first saw Camera live; she told me that she'd been invited out to a show and we went. I'm not sure where the show was, but I suspect it was The 31^st Street Pub where they were playing. I also don't know who the opening act was...which is probably for the best. In any case, This Is Camera had yet to be released, but the band was selling one of their early EPs (which had I any money at that point, I would have purchased). I'm not sure if they did it on purpose, but I recall that the packaging for the disc was in a "kick out" case (also known as an "ejector case). Done on purpose, or a happy accident, I thought it brilliant to name a band Camera and then have their CDs in a case wherein the mechanism for removing the disc was akin to an old-style camera trigger. In my opinion, they should have released all of their CDs like this. Unfortunately, This is Camera is in a digipak (my least favourite form of CD storage).

Hard to believe this disc is almost done over the course of me writing - what - five paragraphs? Some good things just go by too quickly...

Comments

[joi-division.livejournal.com]

The opening band was Shade, it was at the 31st street pub, and we uh...hooked up that night for the first time. LOL

Also, that cd was just a single of their first songs that he sent me- it wasn't the full length.

Shane has been working with another band- but the name escapes me at the moment.