Spacetalk

Much of the detective work for NCL II was carried out by Ilan through his obsession for digging and collecting rare and over looked gems from the far reaches of the Italo scene.

Some of the artists featured had multiple releases at the time, some just the one before they moved on to new projects.

Playground is an artist with just one self-released 7” recorded in Sweden back in 1985. Rainy Day Woman was the b-side on the release and is the perfect opener to NCL II.

Here’s producer Ulf Hedlund Pettersson and his story.

Playground - Rainy Day Woman
In 1983 I rented an 8-track mobile recording system, along with a Roland Juno 60 synthesizer and a TR-808 drum machine and set it up in my bedroom at my parent’s house and recorded about a dozen instrumental demo songs. Problem was, I wanted them to be vocal tracks so I called my old bandmate Göran Edman who came along and put down some amazing vocals. After all the songs were done there was one that stood out from the rest, and that was this song called ‘Rainy Day Woman’. The title was taken from a dictionary on American slang, and I liked the ambiguity and sort of double meaning of the words, so that was the basis for the lyrics. It was then self-released in early 1984 as a B-side single, but didn’t really do well at all. Ulf Hedlund Pettersson

Shout to and for their NCL II review, support like this is always appreciated 🙏

Big thanks to Brandon McMahon for including Traces of Illusion compilation in his Top Albums of 2023 run down for 🙏

These albums are always a labour of love so when we get some end of year chart recognition it’s much appreciated ❤️