604 Decades, the Juno-winning indie label co-owned by Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger, is releasing long-lost gems from Vancouver’s musical history.
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Long before that success, Simkin had worked with a budding Vancouver shoegaze group called Movieland in 1994 who didn’t achieve anywhere near that level of renown.
Fronted by singer-guitarist Alan D. Boyd, with drummer Justin Leigh and bassist John Ounpou, the group played gigs at underground venues flogging tapes from the stage, but its breakthrough never came. In fact, the night that an A&R rep did show up to check them out, he left having signed the opening band.
Ounpuu and Leigh left to join the Juno-nominated alt/pop group Pluto. Boyd soldiered on with a different lineup for a bit longer before leaving B.C. After spending time as a roadie for Edmonton hardcore punk legends SNFU on a European tour, he eventually settled in the U.K.
Back in Vancouver, the scene of yore and how many great bands had never really received a fair shake was on Simkin’s mind. Movieland was one group he always felt deserved more.
“I spent the summer in Toronto last year and was, once again, reminded of how much more cohesive the music scene and industry is there than here with so many head offices for labels and streaming services,” he said. “There were and are always people in Vancouver doing big things, us, Monstercat, Nettwerk, Bruce Allen, but it’s a much more diffuse scene that doesn’t spend any time celebrating itself. I thought it was time someone shone a light on the past, because I had worked with a lot of these artists at the time.”
Separate from the label’s own 20 years of releases getting remastered and re-released, 604 Decades is something different. The release project’s mission is to “shine a light on a band from a period of time in Vancouver that was rather remarkable in terms of the number or great bands in this city.”
“Movieland was one of those bands I’d worked with that had a few nibbles, got close, and didn’t happen,” he said. “Listening to some of their stuff during the pandemic, I thought it was almost criminal that they didn’t get more attention. So I found an email for Alan, who I hadn’t talked to in over 20 years, contacted him and asked him if he still had the record we were shopping and if I could release it.”
Boyd’s initial response to the idea of releasing the album in 2025 was to point out that he is now in his 50s. Simkin explained that the idea wasn’t to have the group go out on tour but rather to revisit the record and the scene it came out of for the purpose of putting it out there for fans to appreciate.
“God bless him, he kept everything from performances at Downtown Sound, a great venue across the street from the Penthouse on Seymour Street which had a real vibe around it, to the recordings and more,” said Simkin. “So we are releasing Movieland’s Then & Now now, which is kind of funny given the name. There will also be a new album coming from the band that is not part of the Decades project.”
Complete with an introduction from a long-ago live show by country/punk progenitor Chris Houston, the video for the song Icarus announced the Dec. 13, 2024, release of Then & Now. Anyone listening to the material without prior knowledge of its age could easily assume that this is a new band with a healthy appreciation for the shoegaze sound made popular by groups such as Slowdive, Swervedriver and Doves in the 1990s.
The timing of the record appears to fit right into that scene, which is experiencing a global reboot right now.
“There is nothing now about it, it’s all then,” said Simkin. “But those are the songs I shopped to try to get them a deal in ’94 and now CBC is considering adding it, and Verge and XSM are loving it. Alan is thrilled, since he thought that kind of music was dead and buried.”
Subsequent 604 Decades scheduled in the new year include an album by the great Vancouver band Pure, who returned to recording last year with the release of the single issues.
“It’s a neat release that cobbles together unreleased demos, some of the very first Generation 6 Pack release in the U.S., and other material,” he said. “At the moment, we are talking to another eight bands from that era who reached out to us after hearing about 604 Decades. This project has really given me a boost of exhilaration for what I do here.”