A pioneer of the home recording movement, Linda Smith released several collections of delicate, bewitching solo music on cassette in the 1980s and 90s.  A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Linda started writing music in the late 1970s, inspired by Young Marble Giants and The Raincoats, drawn to their untrained, fuss-free approach because “there seemed to be a sincerity in their music”. Linda strived to do the same and in the 1980s started playing guitar in a band called Woods. Living in New York, she’d purchase a 4-track recorder in order to record demos before playing them to other members of the band, but soon she realised these songs weren’t for sharing. Instead she started crafting her own cassettes, thoughtfully putting together albums, which without a record label, were heard by relatively few people. “I felt like a rarity in that world,” explained Linda years later, upon realising that she was one of the women working within the small but dedicated home-taper network. “Most, if not all the people, who contacted me about my music in the old days, were male.”  

Without commercial pressure, Linda’s sound was as personal as they come, undiluted by the whims of a producer, label or engineer and instead a pure expression of her own feeling and state of mind. It’s this that makes songs like the dreamy ‘I So Liked The Spring’ even more affecting, it’s loved-up lyricism trickling over hypnotic guitar as Linda sings: “I so liked the spring last year/Because you were here.” 

Now of course, everyone from Grimes to Billie Eilish have recorded in their bedrooms, but 35 years ago home taping was deeply subversive, a chance for an artist to do things their way and share it with others without the need for a middleman. Of course, in the days before SoundCloud could beam your music into the homes of millions, this was hard work. A one woman cottage industry, Linda would make her own tapes to sell or to trade with other bedroom recording artists, designing covers and assembling the albums, too.  

"Essentially this is the best bedroom-pop you are ever likely to hear, directly from an age that did not really know what to do with it."  (JanglePopHub.) 

Music | Linda Smith (bandcamp.com)

April Magazine:

April Magazine combines the talents of a handful of Bay Area indie pop notables into a collective that releases fragile and noisy songs that land right in the sweet spot between The Velvet Underground hum and The Pastels warble with a heavy dose of slowcore static in the mix. A string of digital singles primed listeners for the group's sound; late 2021 brought both a collection of said releases -- If the Ceiling Were a Kite, Vol. 1 -- and their first LP, Sunday Music for an Overpass.

Music | April Magazine (bandcamp.com)

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