Hypnotizing Sea

Full of emotionally glistening, superbly written, melodically engaging folk/pop/rock.

Yet another impressive triumph.

The most criminally under-appreciated indie band in America.

From start to end, this is first rate folk rock and arresting indie pop for literate, intelligent, music-loving fans.

Surely, with an album as good as The Hypnotizing Sea, fame and fortune can't be far behind.

An LA treasure? You bet.

TBW is among LA's most intriguing club acts, and the quartet offers a typically tantalizing taste of what it does.

A songwriter who is comfortable referencing Kerouac, Nostradamus and Shakespeare, yet also capable of moments of sublime simplicity.

Moments of sublime simplicity.

Fredrick's vocals are awash with lugubrious erudition and candid welcome.

Thirteen new tracks from "the most criminally under-appreciated indie band in America" (The Big Takeover, USA). Possibly their strongest set of songs to date, and certainly a modern day pop classic! This is the bands first UK album release, and will hopefully go a long way to helping them achieve the same repuation and adoration in Europe as they have enjoyed for so long now in America.

The Black Watch are from Los Angeles, and are the musical vehicle for John Andrew Fredrick, a Ph.D. in English who teaches in The Writing Program at The University Of Southern California. He writes "witty, literate, unpretentious songs in the vein of Robyn Hitchcock", and Pink Hedgehog are proud to be releasing their first ever UK pressings. Starting with The Innercity Garden EP and followed by their amazing new full length album, The Hypnotizing Sea.

John Andrew Fredrick formed The Black Watch in 1987 after he'd received his Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He was married and deeply unhappy, a great change from his perhaps excessively felicitous childhood growing up as he did in Santa Barbara flying kites, playing sports and listening to The Beatles.

The first incarnation of the band included a surfer, a Native American, and a Joe College UCSB Crew Team Member. They played in kilts and were very terrible. They listened to too much Joy Division and The Cure and opened for Toad the Wet Sprocket. They made a demo of four songs which you will never hear, got one of those songs on a commercial alternative specialty show in their hometown, opened for The Church, and kind of drifted apart. Thank God for that!

In 1990 tbw hooked up, at Dr. Dream's suggestion, with Joe Chicarrelli, one of the nicest producers in the western hemisphere, a guy who'd worked with AMC, The Verlaines, et alia. The result was Amphetamines, a CD which is now out of print, and which was originally put out by Zero Hour Records. It garnered lots more nice commentary from the underground press and included a single, "Whatever You Need," that also got some decent commercial airplay. Oh yeah: the disc was also produced by Chris Apthorp and Scott Campbell.

The Black Watch continues to play shows and record (now with Scott Taylor on bass and Rick Woodard drumming: both from a Silver Lake punk-pop band called Velouria) - there's lots more music coming from this little indie pop band that could. The Black Watch, have been compared to the likes of XTC, My Bloody Valentine, Robyn Hitchcock, New Order and/or, perhaps most flatteringly, a sad Beatles. Now, seventeen years after Fredrick last put on a kilt, Pink Hedgehog Records is proud to release the band's first UK pressings.