The Hair Thieves are a duo from Shropshire UK, creating an eclectic mix of indie pop rock with a smattering of soundtracks, punk, rost rock and any other genre we think of on any given day.
2020 is the 20th anniversary and we still don't take this very serious at all.
Showing posts with label "the hair thieves". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "the hair thieves". Show all posts
We had such a laugh shooting the video. Hopefully, that will come
across in the video and everyone takes it in the silly way we intended. It is made up of lots of the 800+ photos we took on Sunday afternoon.
We are rather pleased with how it turned out.
In other news. December, I believe, is the official 15th Anniversary of The Hair Thieves. So Chris might go out and play some very old Hair Thieves songs during the month at open mic nights in and around Shropshire.
We have four of five songs now in various states of finishing for EP8. More news about that in the coming months, with holidays coming up and Christmas, it will be slow going until the new year.
Due to house moves, holidays and festival season, we are unlikely to do much work on the mixing, until we reconvene in September. So I think we will be looking at a late Autumn, early December release.
E has started mixing a few of the tunes. The final tune, I started mixing at the weekend. So a couple more iterations of the mix to follow in the next week or so.
So over the coming months, I am going to work on the artwork and try and produce an animated video for one of the songs.
I am also going to work on some solo material. Things left over from old Hair Thieves sessions that were abandoned or things in weird tunings or timings.
So we will be back in September with more news and a finished EP!!!
Well it has been a little while since the last blog post.
February was mostly taken up with Chris doing FAWM. Where he attempted to write 14 songs in 28 days. He managed 10 songs. Two of which will be future Hair Thieves songs.
The first, "The Distance" was demo'd in the last blog post. I think we are possible keeping that back for EP8.
The second song is called "Love is Overdrive". Which will be on EP7. It is pretty much written now, just needs re-recording, which I started doing over the weekend, in a different key to the demo on the Soundcloud.
March was taken up with holidays and some work finalising the instrumetal for EP7. See the video above for E practicing a guitar part for the ending.
So EP7 progress is being made. Two songs written and in the process of being recorded.
One song in a partial written state and our usual re-record an old song, not started, but we know which song it will be and will possibly be the last old song to be re-recorded, since we have run out of ones we want to re-record.
So over the next month, we are going to crack on with EP7. It probably won't be finished until Autumn, so location changes may be in order soon, so we might end up downing tools for a couple of months over the summer. We shall see how things pan out.
Personally, I'm getting itchy fingers to go out and start playing live again, even if it is only open mic nights. So time to get the acoustic out and start practicing a new set of tunes.
Biggest Disappointment of the year: Elbow - The take of and landing of everything.
Being a huge fan of the first three albums, I feel a gradually quality drop off over the last couple of albums. This one, I have listened to probably 20+ times and I couldn't name a single song off it, let alone hum any of it. Shame really.
Great Hope for 2015: The Anchoress
As a huge Mansun fan, any project that Paul Draper is a part of is of interest. I'd previously been unaware of Catherine A.Ds work. This is a great slice of anti pop. Good tune, great melodies. Looking forward to the album (plus Paul Draper's solo album....)
Plus it is not often that an EP comes with a free Mills and Boon book (mine is called A world of Difference!)
Disqualified from the top ten:
1. Erica Nockalls - EN2
Should be in the top five. Disqualified on account of not having a video. So nothing to link to.
Possibly less bonkers than her debut "Imminent Room", this is a more sweary, cutting, harder, heavier, faster, angrier Erica, with moments of beauty just to disorientate and confuse you.
Plus "Whatever makes your heart bleed" is possibly one of my favourite tunes of the year.
Nearly Made the top Ten:
On another day any of these might have made my top ten.
1. John Wesley - Disconnect
John Wesley is probably best known as the touring guitarist for Porcupine Tree, of which there are several nods to on this album. Everytime I play it, I think I should listen to it more often. One bonus is Alex Lifeson on Once a Warrior.
2. Thom Yorke - Tomorrow's modern boxes
Famous posterchild for being released on the bitorrent network. This did inspire us to release our EP6 onto Bittorrent. We were presently surrprised how many people downloaded the full package of EP and video.
I have to be in the mood for this, sometimes it just irrates me, other times it is just stunning.
3. Ed Sheeran - X
I went to see Ed Sheeran a couple of years ago. For one bloke with a loop pedal, I was blown away.
I was worried that this album would be terrible after his great debut. I would be interested to hear the album he scrapped before coming up with this.
It does have some dodgy moments (Sing what is the point of Pharrell Williams on this), but that might just be too many tracks on the deluxe version.
4. Royal Blood - Royal Blood
Great album, but does make me want to go and listen to Death from Above 1979 afterwards. Sorry.
Worst album I've listened to:
Katy B - Little Red.
The thing with spotify is most things are on
there. So when I get the urge to listen to the number one album. I
can. A single song on its own is fine, but a whole album was painful.
At least I tried listening to something different.
I discovered Bird, whilst photographing Bridgnorth Music Festival, a few years ago and have photographed them a couple of times.
I've been looking forward to this album since then.
I believe they are in the process of changing their name.
4 Atlum Schema - Year Zero
I discovered Atlum Schema from when Andy was hosting the Right Chord Music podcast. It was a few months of listening before I checked out his music.
I had a couple of previous albums, but wasn't prepared for how stripped back, raw and fragile this album is. It took a few listens to get it. I was lucky to get a ticket to the launch party (see first video). Another grower.
3 Passenger - Whispers
I saw Passenger support Ed Sheeran a couple of years ago and he blew me away. Simply beautiful songs. When I got back home I ordered the album. I was so happy when Let Her Go went massive last year.
I was actually surprised when I walked into Tescos and saw he had a new album out.
I think this an even better album than "All the little lights". A bit more sweary, very personal and some great story telling.
2 Blue Rose Code - The Ballads of Peckham Rye
I believe I discovered Blue Rose Code on someone's Facebook page a while ago and tracked him down on Bandcamp. I loved the album "North Ten" but this is a stronger album. More country than I'd normally like, but such great songs!
1 Pineapple Thief - Magnolia
"All The Wars" the previous Pineapple Thief album is one of my favourite and most played albums of the last few years, which surprised me when Bruce said he didn't rate it that highly.
So I was looking forward to this album and in my eyes it had a lot to live up to.
It wasn't was I was expecting at all. This is the least prog, prog album I have heard. I really wasn't sure of it for the first few listens, but it has really grown on over time.
If I have one gripe with it, it would be the last track Bond, kind of just ends. No big album closer. More of a whimper.
I did buy this on vinyl as well as CD though.
So there it is. To be honest, I haven't bought as much music this year as previous years and a lot of what I did buy was compilations and re-issues.
Some of my re-issue and compilation highlights this year.
1. Tear For Fears - Songs From the big chair. In surround sound by non other than Steven Wilson. No it doesn't get a lot better than that.
Plus b-sides, remixes, unreleased stuff and a DVD.
2. Steven Wilson - Cover Version
Who wouldn't want to hear Steven Wilson cover Abba, Alanis Morrisette and The Cure (amongst others).
3. Genesis - R-kive
3 disk best off, mostly listen to the Gabriel stuff..
I will try to make this slightly shorter post than last years list.
I
am going to keep this list to albums I have physically purchased and
not to albums that I have streamed on Spotify. If I don't like it
enough to buy it, then I don't think it should be on the list.
10 I Fight Dragons - The Near Future
The only album here that so far is only released on vinyl or download. I ordered this through kickstarter about 18 months ago. Though they sent me throught the MP3s a couple weeks ago, the vinyl only turned up this week. And the green marble vinyl is stunning.
I've followed this band since before they were signed, they are a shining example of how a band can use the internet to connect with fans.
Please watch this afterwards. 1 Song, 18 versions, 7.5 songwriters.
Version 11 - Chicago is on the album....
The first entry with my name in the album credits.
9 Damien Rice - My favourite faded Fantasy
Not a massive Damien Rice fan to be honest. Mostly I know his songs from other people's cover versions, but I heard he was back after so thought I'd listened to this album on Spotify and promptly ordered it.
Beautifully, stripped back. Stunning.
8 Steven Rothery - The Ghost of Pripyat
Growing up in the '80s in Cornwall, we were kind of lacking decent bands coming down to play. I saw Marillion play at the Cornwall Colesseum several times. I always loved Steve Rothery's playing and guitar tone.
Marillion, were one of my favourite bands of the '80s and '90s. Saying that, the last couple of Marillion albums have left me cold, not enough Steve Rothery being Steve Rothery and not enough blistering, Mark Kelly, synth parts for my liking. Far too safe and middle of the road.
So essentially I have been waiting 30 years for this solo album.
There is some wonderful playing on this. Great on headphones. Everything I wanted from a Steve Rothery solo album.
The second entry with my name in the CD credits.
7 Stiff Little Fingers - No Going Back
Stiff Little Fingers have been one of my favourite bands since my brother David brought home "Suspect Device" back in the late '70s.
I have bought Inflamable Material more times than I care to mention. So I was happy to Pledge towards the new album.
It doesn't disappoint. (other than I liked the acoustic version of "My Dark Places" Jake did as part of the Pledge videos. I was surprised when it was rocked up).
A real return to form. Shame I missed them on the tour.
6 Iamthemorning - Belighted
A school friend sent me a link to one of their songs a couple of years ago. I was blown away by the debut album.
So another kickstarter campaign, to get to record the second album in England with Marcel van Limbeek and featuring Gavin Harrison on drums.
Classical russian prog rock. A truely beautiful album. Hopefully, my physical copy will make it through Russian customs at some point. They have stopped shipping them, until mid January due to how bad the russian postal service is!
It has been a pretty good year. We released EP6 as well as contributing a cover version to a Mansun Tribute album.
EP6 has been heard far and wide, in places such as Mozambique, Iran, Isreal, the USA, Mexico and many other countries around the world. Which for a duo from Shropshire is both baffling, humbling and totally brilliant. The internet is a wonderful tool for musicians to get their music out there.
We have started work on EP7 (see video at top of the post for an exclusive snippet of a work in progress).
So what of 2015?
Well EP7 should make it out into the world, I would also like to think that we may even venture out and play live again. Stranger things have happened.
So thank you to all our old and new found friends and here is to a wonderful 2015. Onwards and upwards.
All of our EPs so far follow a kind of pattern. This one and EP5 are missing collaborations with others. But all our EPs finish with an instrumental.
Here are a couple of snippets from the instrumental for EP6.
At the moment it is called The Fail Song.
This song has a long history. It started as an arpeggio on acoustic. Many years ago.
This tune was originally scheduled for EP5 and had the intention of having lyrics.
I then showed it to E and taught him how to play it.
He then promptly wrote the first section as a strummy section and the arpeggio was kind of lost as I liked how he started the tune. (see first video)
If I remember, it might have been called "Fear of New York" (not to do with the "Exploits of Elaine" song honest!) originally. But we were never happy with the lyrics, so it was shelved and brought out again for EP6.
I had another go at lyrics but failed. Possibly due to the time signature being slightly odd rhythmically. More likely the lack of inspiration.
So we decided to make it the instrumental.
The original argeggio, in a slighly altered and slower form now makes it way into the middle section of the song as a piano and at the end of the song on acoustic (see the 2nd video).
It thus became The fail song, since we failed to write lyrics for it.
This is currently being mixed. Hopefully, we will put it up on Soundcloud soon!
Quick update on the progress of EP6. Three of the four songs are now, we believe ready for mixing.
The lead track, is the only one left to finish recording. Lyrics are 95% there. Drums / percussion has been done. Guide guitar tracks completed. We still need to add bass and solos.
So we are very happy with the progress.
As the video shows, like all the previous EPs we have re-recorded an old song, from before E joined The Hair Thieves in 2006.
This is a reworking of the 2002 tune "Strange Familiar World". It is a personal look of how I view going back to my hometown and the changes in the people and places I grew up in.
The original idea was just to replace the drum and acoustic guitar sound from the original. Leaving the solo, bass and tremelo guitar from the original.
So essentially, E wasn't planning on playing on this. But the more I dissected the original audio, the more I realised how little I knew about recording at the time, with bad editing, causing pops at edit points, so I decided to re-record everything.
So I made E record a tremelo guitar part (his least favourite effect), as can be seen in the above Vine video.
Right, back to working on the final track left before we meet up tomorrow.
After the slight interruption yesterday from E's top albums of 2013. Here is my top 5.
5 Agnes Obel - Aventine http://www.agnesobel.com/
The first of two recommendations from Andy Mort of Atlum Schema. He blogged last week that this album was one of his favourites of the year. So I had a listen and fell in love with the track 'Fuel to the Fire', instantly ordering her back catalogue.
Both this and the previous album Philharmonics, are just simply beautiful, soulful albums. Simple and elegant. There is something about piano and strings that I just love. I should practice my keyboard skills more.
At some point, I may need to dig out my record player and play the vinyl version I purchased (part of the box set).
I discovered Rue Royale late last year, when someone posted a song of theirs on Facebook.
I just loved the harmonies. Luckily at the time, they were doing a kick starter campaign for the 'Remedies Ahead' album, so I managed to get all three of their albums for about £12. A bargain!.
I managed to catch them live in Birmingham last month and had a quick chat (and bought some vinyl off them).
I discovered Paper Aeroplanes, whilst googling for paper aeroplanes. I came across a torrent for one of their EPs. So I illegally downloaded it, had a listen and pretty much in the space of a week, bought their entire back catalogue.
Great emotional songwriting and seriously underrated.
Another band I finally got to catch live in November, when they kindly came and played in Shrewsbury.
I was photographing at a gig in May, when I took a photo of Erica with Dirty Ray. I later found out she was already on my friends list, when I went to tag her. Anyway, it turned out she had just released a solo album (being also a part of The Wonder Stuff), so I thought I'd check out a tune on You tube. 'Manikin' was the track.
To be honest, I thought Manikin was totally bonkers. But it did spur me to purchase the album.
The album is quite eclectic. Some lovely slices of pop and rock, with a sharp wit and some beautiful emotional songs.
as
coming from growing up listening to Pet Shop Boys, Vivaldi and Marilyn
Manson - See more at:
http://louderthanwar.com/erica-nockalls-imminent-room-album-review/#sthash.bKmdYlQI.dpuf
as
coming from growing up listening to Pet Shop Boys, Vivaldi and Marilyn
Manson - See more at:
http://louderthanwar.com/erica-nockalls-imminent-room-album-review/#sthash.bKmdYlQI.dpuf
as
coming from growing up listening to Pet Shop Boys, Vivaldi and Marilyn
Manson - See more at:
http://louderthanwar.com/erica-nockalls-imminent-room-album-review/#sthash.bKmdYlQI.dpuf
as
coming from growing up listening to Pet Shop Boys, Vivaldi and Marilyn
Manson - See more at:
http://louderthanwar.com/erica-nockalls-imminent-room-album-review/#sthash.bKmdYlQI.dpuf
I did get the chance to see Erica and her band play live, supporting P.I.L. in Birmingham and was asked if I wanted to photograph it. Here are a couple of images from the gig!
Another recommendation from Andy Mort, when Stuart was the artist of the week on the Lost on Radio podcast.
It was an interesting podcast interview about the core concept of gender identity that runs through the album. Which isn't normally a topic that would spark my interest, but the track Andy played totally blew me away, so I ended up buying the album.
It is a dense, meaningful, funny and clever album, with lush vocals and melodies, pretty much an album that I listen to most days. Just a totally gorgeous album.
Bonus Tunes
Agnes Obel - plays Elliot Smith.
Love this song and this particular version.
Bonus 2 Special mention to and EP that I highly rate and listen to rather a lot! (not that I'm biased, since I did the photography on it). They need to release an album!!!!!
Chris
has asked me to write a review of my “10 Best Albums of ‘13”. I don’t
blog as a rule and I’m pretty sure I haven’t bought 10 new releases this
year so this might be a challenge! Instead what I will do is write a
few words about some of the albums that I have parted with hard earned
for this year, no matter when they were released. Here goes then, in no
particular order, my choices.
First
and foremost a special mention must go not to an album, but to a phone
app: Soundhound. Without its witchcraft I would have missed out on a lot
of great music. One of the gems it found me is:
Wash the Sins Not Only the Face - Esben and the Witch (2013)
The
inlay has “How long do you mean to be content” written across it, which
gives an idea of the emo claptrap involved. Don’t be fooled though,
lots of really strong guitar based tunes here and the singer has a cute
voice. If your band is looking for reverb, its too late, they have
stolen it all and used it on this album.
Holy Fire - Foals (2013)
Stumbled
across Foals when the BBC used them in a trailer for Outcasts. That
song, Spanish Sahara, was the outstanding track from the first album,
the rest of which was a bit meh. No single outstanding track here,
instead the whole album is good with not much in the way of fillers.
Rollasoc says they sound like an unsigned band - this is a good thing,
right?
Vehicles and Animals Live - Athlete (2013)
This
year marked the 10th anniversary of the debut album and to celebrate,
the band came out of semi-retirement to tour the album live. I was lucky
enough to see them in both Brighton and Birmingham, this is a recording
of the Birmingham gig. I also nicked the set list from the stage in
Brighton :). Buy this, because Athlete!
Clockwork Angels - Rush (2012)
Rush
have always been a guilty pleasure for me, the uncoolest band in rock.
Try and see them every time they tour and buy all the albums. If I’m
honest I prefer the stuff from 20 years ago but old habits die hard. If
you like them you will have this, if you don’t like them then you are
not likely to change your mind.
Black Reindeer 1 to X1 - Stephen Jones. (2013)
Black
Reindeer is the latest reincarnation of the huge songwriting talent of
Stephen Jones (xBabybird, DotN). Everyone has heard of You’re Gorgeous
yet the man remains a brilliant unknown. This year has seen him release
an instrumental album roughly once a month. The quality is variable and
the music sometimes challenging but always interesting. Do your ears a
favour and check him out on bandcamp.
An
interesting mix of dance, ambient, and jangly indie, I really like
this. They are French so it is all a bit odd, naturally. They have
become a bit of a favorite with TV producers and their music turns up on
all sorts of programmes and adverts.
All is Violent, All is Bright - God is an Astronaut (2004/2011 reissue)
Post rock outfit with awesome catchy hooks. If you like Explosions in the Sky then you like this.
The Hair Thieves are delighted to announce the release of the only slightly delayed EP5 today.
In the past we have spent many hours, cups of tea and Tesco's finest cookies in the writing and recording of this EP and for the most part, given the rarity of us playing live, very few people will get to hear it.
To this end, we are offering the whole EP as a free (as in no cost at all, zilch, nada etc) download from your Bandcamp site.
All we ask is that you have a listen.
For your free download, please use the contact form and we will email you a download code.
If you hate it please tell us, if you like it, please tell us and either make a small donation, so we can record another EP ,or preferably, make copies and give them to a friend or three.
If you are old fashioned, like us, and prefer a physical CD with original artwork, you can purchase one for the princely sum of £3 + p&p from Bandcamp. Which also includes a digital download of the EP.
All monies received will be put towards EP6, which we are currently writing.
The EP is also be available on ITunes / spotify / amazon etc if that is your preferred digital delivery medium. Due to the capitalist nature of our society, you will have to pay for these.
After an abortive blogger one in 2005 and the ongoing myspace one, we have started a new one, to integrate with the new site.
So what can you expect from this new blog?
Well, more of the same information on the hows and why we record songs.
Information on band marketing. We have no intention of getting famous, but we have every intention of trying out some of these, "get yourself famous" marketing tips just to see, what affect they have on us.
Links to other interesting blogs
Comments on the world of entertainment.
Ocassional details of where you can see us live.
Occasional reviews just in case you missed us live.
So, since this is just a test message. More information to follow!
