Frosty 7

B-flower - Stay Still 7" single

B-FLOWER

'Stay Still' 7"single

 

 

Tracks: Stay Still / Last Snow of Winter

Songs: Hideshi Hachino, Masaru Miya

Recording: Tokyo, Japan

 

Sleeve photos: Akiko and Kiyoko


Story

If you haven't heard B-flower before, you'll be pleasantly surprised hearing a foreign tongue (Japanese). Despite that,  this B-flower single was received surprisingly well by UK music press. Beautifully simple Stay Still earned many fans (Harvey Williams of Another Sunny Day still affirm this to be one of the best indiepop singles), meanwhile on B-side awaits a drama unfolds - I really like that.

 

This is the last release with our humble sleeve design with word processor. Front photo is an old family picture, cutey 5-year-old Yuki (Akiko's brother) with Tetra-pak carton of milk.

 

Sleeve was printed by the trusty JUMA Printing in Sheffield, who was the fanzine-writers' choice of printers back then (yes, cheap). This was long before computers and scanners at home. We made up the design with pasted b/w photo and the word processor (one with a tiny slit of a screen) did the best it can.

 

When the sleeves came back from the printer, it was a disaster. The b/w photo came up just as it was - a grey oblong photo stuck in a corner. We got in touch with JUMA, who said they thought we knew what we were doing (by then, the 7th record, I suppose) and went on as was. Well, sorry we didn't know what we were doing, Mr JUMA. They promptly re-printed the sleeve with the desired effect at no extra cost.

 

As I'm writing this in 2014, 20 years on, I typed in JUMA Printing Sheffield in google box. Apparently as it came out, they are still in business. Bless them!