Starting your own record company would never rank in any financial adviser’s top 10 investment tips: in fact, it would be in the high-risk category, along with buying a racehorse and backing an independent movie. But that has not deterred Elijah Wood. Nor is Simian Records some sort of vanity project for the record mogul formerly known as Frodo. If it were, he would hardly be signing as his first act a cult band who have been slogging away for the best part of 15 years without managing a single hit. It must, therefore, be his genuine love of their resolutely uncommercial psych-pop music that prompted Wood to make his debut as a label boss this summer by releasing, to a largely indifferent world, New Magnetic Wonder, the sixth studio album by the Apples in Stereo. Wood signed the Apples not so much because of his belief in their untapped commercial potential as from a simple desire to share his love of their music. [More]