Julie's Haircut - A Strange Musical Phenomenon?

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My goodness, where do I start with these guys? They've been in existence for 17 years, have made 5 official full albums (plus a demo in 1996 called Sexpower, and a 46 minute set of nine songs recorded in their home studio with a group of friends around Christmas 2004, called "Home Environment": http://www.julieshaircut.com/he/mainhe.html, and donated to their fansite "United Haircutters Attack": http://uha.altervista.org/), eight EPs, a few singles, and appeared on countless compilations. 
I can't find any reference to them on here at all, but they are on Proggnosis: http://www.proggnosis.com/PGArtist.asp?AID=9314, and they have certainly made a major contribution to the Italian music scene over the years. They are a very eclectic & experimental band, mixing indie rock with a variety of psychedelic overtones, whilst always retaining an impressive component of melody in their music. Are they really prog? - I don't know, but they sure as hell deserve an audition, I believe - so here goes:

 A Brief biography from discogs.com: http://www.discogs.com/artist/Julie's+Haircut"Active since 1994, Julie’s Haircut is a six piece collective from northern Italy. Their debut album “Fever in the funk house” (Gammapop, 1999), a strange mixture of garage rock, noisy psychedelia and pop melodies was hailed at by the Italian critics as one of the best debuts in Italian indie rock. The follow-up “Stars never looked so bright” (Gammapop, 2001) mixed these elements with a more soulful approach, mirroring the love for 60’s black music nurtured by the band. In 2003, after switching to Homesleep Records Julie’s Haircut released their third album “Adult situations”, the first to be internationally distributed. Here, melody and odd psychedelia mingle in a more personal way. By 2005 the music of Julie’s Haircut has moved forward towards more experimental grounds, focusing on improv and sound research, without losing touch with the groove and melody that characterized their music since day one. The result is their latest album “After dark, my sweet” (Homesleep, 2006), featuring former Spacemen 3 Sonic Boom, acclaimed as one of the best alternative Italian albums of the year. In 2006 they also functioned as “sound carriers” for some performances of former Can singer Damo Suzuki, thus entering the Damo Suzuki Network and consolidating a warm relationship with the japanese/german artist. In 2009 their new double album "Our Secret Ceremony" is released by A Silent Place".

For a much fuller biography (including a full download-able .pdf version) go to their extensive website: http://www.julieshaircut.com, which really does have everything you could wish for concerning the band, apart from free full downloads of all their music, of course. That said, all their albums and EPs are available according to the site "at a special price on any digital store worldwide". They also have a bandcamp page: http://julieshaircut.bandcamp.com/, where all their albums and a couple of EPs can be streamed, or bought.

There are some webpages that do not appear to be accessible from the band's main website; this one: http://www.julieshaircut.com/oursecretceremony/players.html for their latest album, with samples and full details of the artists contributing to each track, and this one: http://www.julieshaircut.com/afterdark/audio_eng.html for their last-but-one album from 2006.

Finally some YouTube Samples:

Plenty more on YouTube for anyone interested.

Like I said earlier, I'm not sure if this will be regarded as genuine prog on here, or just an indie rock band who are a little bit on the 'weird' side. I certainly believe that at least some aspects of their music are progressive. One thing's for sure - they are surprisingly little-known considering their extensive back-catalogue of recordings, and the length of time they have been going, so I make no apologies for posting this on here. They deserve to be heard...!  