Unearthing a classic Midwestern Britpop classic album from Ultra Sonic Edukators.

Ultra Sonic Edukators circa 2007. Photo by Morgan Miller.

I keep intending to start a regular "they shoulda been huge" series of intensely talented artists or groups that have crossed my path over the years, focusing on those that have amazing albums available on band camp, often for free. Since my decision to start writing on this site more regularly—eschewing well-thought out and complete statements in favor of just writing again—is having its intended effect of removing the mental logjam that had kept my writing to a relative trickle over the past 5 years, I'm going to give myself another mental push by sharing the 2012 album Armageddon Is In My Room from Chicago's Ultra Sonic Edukators with you.* Again!**

The simplest RIYL I can offer here is that if you're into Britpop, and especially Blur, this group of Midwestern then-twentysomethings will both surprise and delight you.

I'm forcing myself into a corner here to finally write something more robust and kick the "proper" series off over at Third Coast Review in the near future, but for now all you need to know is that this was a favorited group of mine who just launched at the wrong time. Like many other promising bands of the mid-to-late aughts, they had some industry contacts and that led to their hope of a more "proper" approach to their music career, waiting for that big (or even small but trusted) label signing at the exact same time the industry was imploding. That era created a sort of grey zone where a lot of great music seems to have gotten lost, aside from the handful of weirdos like me who kept clutching to their CD-Rs handed over to us by unsigned bands. 

The rise of Bandcamp in recent years as an easy way to distribute these "lost" albums or other archival releases has been a terrific development, and I am so grateful for the groups that have offered up their "lost gems" in this way. And I hope that by shining a new light on some of these albums, some of these groups might regain the stronger placing in the history of music that they have long deserved.

But for now, I hope you enjoy this album that collects just about everything Ultra Sonic Edukators ever recorded.

*I literally just found an email to myself from June of 2022 trying to push/remind myself to share this album and kick off a "the shoulda been bigger" series. Which makes sense since by then I would have been living in relative isolation for so long I was definitely going down deep rabbit holes trying to uncover info about bands I was starting to worry would get completely lost time...

**It appears this album originally appeared on Bandcamp in 2013, given this post I wrote at that time, but the link has long been broken.