Sukpatch – Lite Hits

Label: concentric circles - CC-010
Format: LP
Country: US
Released: 2025
Genre: Electronic, Rock
Style: Lo-Fi, Downtempo, Experimental

Kaleidoscopic sloppy pop nostalgia done to PERFECTION.  The long lost 90s tape you’ve been missing all your life, welcome… SUKPATCH.

Lite Hits captures the embryonic stage of a few like-minded friends across a few small towns in the US in the early 90s.  Experimenting, having fun, trying things out and sending cassettes to and fro, they struck gold.  A sound so impossibly catchy, playful and irresistibly endearing, like a mainline hit of dopamine.  So what is this sound?  Crude, syruppy drum loops peppered with sugar-sweet pop melodies and… those vocals.  Whether by accident or not, the singer Tara recorded at half-speed and doubled up on the actual recordings, leading to that unnaturally high-pitched child-like squeal.  All this caramelises into a blurred haze of late summer nostalgia, conjuring those feelings and childhood memories that you wish you could capture and cling onto forever.  It’s quick-fire bursts of pleasure (no song runs over 2.5 mins), spliced together with strange radio dialogue, drenched in the same warm sepia tones of films like Stand By Me or The Sandlot kids, really.

In matters of excavating those precious yet almost extinct amateur pop / DIY tapes, no one on the planet does it better than Jed Bindeman and his Portland-based Concentric Circles label.  But even by his own high standards, this one is truly stratospheric.  We can’t get enough.  (Mint / New - shops pls ask for wholesale) 

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In the early 90s there were a few like minded friends making a unique style of lo-fi pop music. At the core of this non-scene were Sukpatch, Land of the Loops and The Ah Club, who all tended to play on each other's recordings. As the decade went on each of them learned how to use their instruments better, smoothing over the edges, but in typical fashion, the early home recordings had a special feeling that couldn’t be replicated with cleaner fidelity and nicer equipment. Sukpatch especially were scrappy and playful, with a definite sense of “let’s try it and see what happens” experimentation, starting off rooted in guitar based, low key indie pop before adding an increasing amount of samples and stacks of analog tape loops to the process. Their 1992 mini-opus “Lite Hits” straddled the two worlds, hinting at things to come while retaining an indefinable charm. In the meantime, they hit a real sweet spot, scratching that hardest to reach pop-itch.

Sukpatch at this time were spread out all around the country, and because of that would send a cassette tape to each other in the mail, with layers being added by each member until a song was deemed complete. Within those limitations they stumbled upon a sound that, when combined with earworm-like pop melodies, brings to mind those endless summer days when you’re a kid, the ones that feel like they’ll go on forever, only to be replaced later on by a blurry sense of nostalgia. A memory that feels so close yet so far, one you constantly reach back for, trying to re-capture the moment. “Lite Hits” is like a musical dopamine push, bringing that intangible feeling closer than you thought possible.

One detail that made this era of Sukpatch so unique were the vocals. Singer Tara, who would only appear on “Lite Hits,” would be recorded live to tape at half speed then sped up for mixing, giving her voice an almost alien-like high pitch that just works perfectly. Combined with the already heady stew, these sugar sweet vocals charged the entire proceedings ahead, creating a whole that was catchy as can be.

Originally released on cassette by Slabco in 1992, Concentric Circles is delighted to present “Lite Hits” on LP for the first time. This is short and sweet like the best pop albums. When it’s over you just want to flip the record and hear the whole damn thing again (and again).

Tracklist
A1        Stickerchamp
A2        Carmine
A3        Richland King
A4        Little Ambassador
A5        Mexico City Big Vacation
A6        Hickory Tips
A7        Lucky Neighbor
A8        Beach Jeans
B1        Chloride
B2        Otha Fish
B3        Dixie Relocation Camp
B4        The Swing Clip
B5        All The Juice
B6        Juice Repraise
B7        Alligator