The band is described, along with Low and American Music Club, as one of the linchpins of the slowcore movement in alternative rock.

Kozelek used this group primarily as a vehicle for his very personal and emotional songs of despair, pain and suffering.

While in Atlanta, Kozelek became friends with Anthony Koutsos, a drummer.

Fans expecting to see an introvert reluctantly exposing his delicate inner soul were greeted by a casual friend who was suddenly telling jokes when not manhandling his back catalogue.

Demos, by nature, are rudimentary things, often suggesting promise but rarely realising it.

Most demos are excruciatingly bad - the kind of unlistenable things you play for bemused friends so they, too, can wonder why the potential musician ever bothered in the first place.

Singer Mark Kozelek wrote songs that defied conventional structure.

Drummer Anthony Koutsos ignored the standard time-keeper temptation to speed things up.

Bassist Jerry Vessel locked into place, sustaining notes until the setting was nearly ambient.

Guitarist Gorden Mack added subtle flourishes, tonal colorings that aided the songs sombre hues.

Ivo sensed this and after minimal remixing, 4AD released six songs as Down Colorful Hill, the first Red House Painters album in August 1992.

In his early twenties, he saw the world in tragic, even melodramatic, terms.

He and a girlfriend parted ways and the nine minutes and fifty-one seconds of Medicine Bottle followed.

The obsessive-compulsive need to work through the details, to relive the experience, to make it seem less dead, made the song an epic.

There was no standard verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure that could hold such sentiments.

With the 4AD contract signed and the album released, the band began receiving positive notices in the British music papers.

Legitimate comparisons to Nick Drake, Tim Buckley, Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison were made.

Ironically, Kozelek had grown up in Americas heartland on mostly classic rock.

He liked Cat Stevens acoustic lullabies and Neil Youngs mix of ballads and rockers.

He didnt feel comfortable on stage and didnt like doing interviews.

The few shows the band did pull off were nerve-wracking, with Kozelek often closing his eyes to steady himself through the show.

With 4AD footing the bill, they could finally lay down the backlog of songs Kozelek had stored up.

The results were so prodigious they had to be released as two separate albums.

Identified by their covers as the Rollercoaster and the Bridge albums, they were both self-titled.

Rollercoaster was released first in early 1993, with the Bridge album arriving later that same year.

The release of so much material so quickly helped keep Kozelek focused.

The band had taken to playing an unusual adaptation of the Kiss tune Shock Me, which was released as the title track of an EP and exposed Kozeleks classic seventies rock roots beyond doubt.

More importantly, the Shock Me EP featured Sundays and Holidays and Three-Legged Cat, quiet acoustic numbers that marked a significant shift in the bands sound.

Once visibly nervous and shaking behind the microphone, hed become more comfortable on stage.

Red House Painters Rollercoaster Rar