Martin Phillipps treats fans to a special dose of his Chilly pop with Flying Nun’s release of Sketch Book Vol. 1, a compilation of unreleased home demos recorded between 1989 and 1995.

All songs bar one on Sketch Book have never surfaced on Chills studio albums, making this 17 track dive into Martin’s treasure trove of songs a real treat for Chills fans.

It’s an intimate peek into the strange and beguiling world of Martin’s music. Some tracks are well developed songs and some are ideas thrown down to tape and experimented with.

More so than a regular Martin or Chills album might, Sketch Book ranges over wide musical terrain, with ideas overcoming limited instrumentation at every turn. The rousing "February" is suitably Chillsy, gorgeously strange pop flows through tracks like "Haunt Me" and "Carabela" and then some of the ideas here show Martin’s scope for pure experimentation. The overtly psychedelic "Spring (segment)" is part of a ‘seasons’ project of Martin’s and on "Warm" he (consciously) apes Brian Wilson’s layered vocal effects over a charming riff.

Liner notes for all the tracks reveal what’s behind the songs, whether it be lyrical or musical themes. As Martin says, the home studio is place where Martin likes to capture the mood of a song or test where songs might go, as opposed to simply laying them in skeletal form for the Chills to flesh out. A hugely prolific songwriter, Martin will demo up to 30 songs at home before choosing songs to record for studio albums. He plans to release further volumes of these home recordings.

The songs on Sketch Book were all recorded on Martin’s faithful Tascam four-track cassette recorder, which finally gave up the ghost a couple of years ago. Since then, he has been upgrading his home studio to a digital recording set-up that can handle more of the workload of recording things to releasable standard.