Bluetile Lounge was an Australian slowcore band, formed in Perth, Western Australia in 1991. After releasing their debut full-length album, Lowercase, in 1995, Bluetile Lounge signed to the American independent labelSmells Like Records, which released the band's second and final LP, Half-Cut, in 1998. Attracting little attention in their home city, Bluetile Lounge found a small but dedicated following overseas, in part due to the support of international acts such as Sonic Youth and Low. Since splitting up in 1998, Bluetile Lounge's profile has continued to grow through websites such as Tumblr and Last.fm, and their two albums have been ranked among the best of the slowcore genre.
History
Bluetile Lounge formed in Perth, Western Australia in 1991. One of the band's early songs, "Concrete/Tunnels", featured on a compilation tape released by Guy Blackman's Chapter Music label. Blackman went on to become Bluetile Lounge's first producer. In 1995, Bluetile Lounge recorded their debut album, Lowercase, in a Masonic Hall in the port city of Fremantle, south of Perth. The band chose the recording location for its acoustics, giving the album a "big, roomy natural sound." Alan Sparhawk, frontman of American band Low, encouraged Jason Reynolds of Australia's Summershine Records to release the album. Sub Pop and Shock Records distributed Lowercase in the United States and Australia respectively. Andy Hazel of Double J said the album's songs "don’t so much begin and end as appear, glitter, linger and recede. At times brittle and delicately constructed, there is a muscularity and sense of purpose that lulls and stuns." At the insistence of Sonic Youth, Bluetile Lounge played the Perth leg of the 1996 Summersaultmusic festival. In 1998, the band returned to the Fremantle Masonic Hall to record their sophomore LP, Half-Cut. Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley released the album on his label Smells Like Records. Reviewing the album for CMJ New Music Monthly, Lois Maffeo praised the band's compositions and "crystalline" sound, as well as their ability to maintain a "clear mental union" while playing at a "glacial" pace. Bluetile Lounge disbanded in 1998, and occasionally reforms to play live in-studio for Perth community radio stationRTRFM. Today their albums are considered surviving remnants of a 1990s indie scene in Perth that has largely faded into obscurity. In 2017, in ranking Lowercase as the fifth best slowcore album, Anthony Carew of called it "a five-song, 45-minute study in isolationism, in a persistent loneliness leaving one feeling utterly unmoored; unsurprising sentiments for a band from Perth, the world's most isolated major city".
