Rollasoc's Top Ten Albums of the year 2013 Part 2

Part 2 of my list of favourite albums from 2013.

I'm not planning on saying much about each album, just give a link a few snippets. Not a full on review.

10 The Needle Poppets - Fame To The Nation.
https://www.facebook.com/needlepoppets

Local duo The Needle Poppets, recently released their debut album.  I'm loving it.  Top people too, hopefully, I'll get to see them more often in 2014!

The album opens slowly in vintage style, before building into a rocky track.  There are hints of punk, cabaret and  prog in here.  Though the tunes are somewhat upbeat, they hide a dark lyrical content.

An interesting debut!

Here is a photo of the lovely duo from this years Farmer Phil's Festival.

9 Atlum Schema - One World Less
 http://www.atlumschema.com/

Andy from Atlum Schema has been  a major influence on my musical tastes over the last twelve months, since he presents two podcasts, that I listen to. Sheep Dressed Like Wolves and the Right Chord Music Lost on Radio podcast.  The latter, gets sent to my Ipod weekly, one of the only reasons I still keep my Ipod, is for the podcasts.

Another artist I discovered by accident on Bandcamp, then discovered the podcast.  Initially, I didn't like this album as much as the previous self titled album, but has grown on me over the months.  

My only real gripe on the album, is the length at 80 minutes, the 16 tracks rarely fall below four minutes.  It isn't that the album is full of filler, it is more, finding 80 minutes of uninterrupted listening time rarely happens, so I rarely get to listen to it in it's entirely.

Luckily the album is kind of split into four seasons, so I do tend to listen to it in two halves.

'Moon City' though, is adorable!

He has a new album out in March 2014, so looking forward to that!

8 Goldfrapp - Tales of Us.
http://goldfrapp.com/ 

Ok, I admit, I discovered Godlfrapp, when they supported Duran Duran many years ago!

After the mixed bag that was Head First, I wasn't expecting much.

This is a beautiful album though. Simple and uncomplicated.  Alison has never sounded so vulnerable or beautiful.

Annabel is probably my favourite tune of 2013.
 

7. Steven Wilson - The Raven that refused to sing.
http://stevenwilsonhq.com/

An album with Nick Beggs on is instantly cool, especially when he is playing a Chapman stick!.

This should probably be higher on the list.  I was thinking the other week, I rarely listen to the previous album Grace for Drowning.

The raven that refused to sing, to me is a more coherent album than Grace for Drowning.  (it is probably the 23 minute Raider II that puts me off Grace for Drowning.  I much prefer the 15 minute version they did on the last tour).

The six songs are more constrained in length, 'Luminol' being the longest at just over twelve minutes. Each song tells a ghost story!.

This is my current album of choice, when no one else is in the house.  Put the bluray version on and listen loud in surround sound.  Truly stunning. Not sure the neighbours would agree!

I like the fact Steve Wilson releases nice versions of his albums.  This album came with a book, CD, bluray and disk of demos.   The book gives you something to look at whilst listening to the album.

Something I miss from my days of buying vinyl, when we used to sit down and listen to music, not just have it on in the background.

There isn't enough flute in modern music either, in my opinion.

5 Bruce Soord with Jonas Renkse - Wisdom of crowds
http://www.kscopemusic.com/wisdomofcrowds/

Ok more prog rock.  I'm  a huge Pineapple Thief fan, having discovered them in 2012. Slowing buying their back catalog.

"All the Wars" is probably my favourite album of 2012, (though it might be The Haunted man by Bat for Lashes).

I can't say I've ever heard Katatonia so, I wasn't that excited by the collaboration.  I would have preferred a new Pineapple Thief album, to be honest.

How wrong I was. 

From the rumbling bottom end of 'Pleasure', through the commercial edge of  'Wisdom of crowds' to the near industrial closer "Flows through you" there is a wide spectrum of musical lovliness on offer here. This is a fairly eclectic album fusing rock, electronic, ambient and dare I say it pop?

Frozen North is possibly my least favourite track on the album.

BONUS

Since I didn't do a list in 2012.  My two favourite albums of 2012.

Pineapple thief - All the wars

Bat for Lashes - Laura (from The Haunted Man).

Rollasoc's Top Ten Albums of the year 2013 Part 1.

I used to publish end of year lists many years ago on the old Telford Rocks site.

Thought I might start them again.

So here is part one of my countdown to my favourite albums this year. I'm trying to limit this to albums I have actually paid hard cash for and not ones, I've streamed and liked.

Honourable mentions: (i.e. on another day, they may have made the top ten). In no particular order.  And not much blurb.  Just go and listen and make your own mind up.

Blue Rose Code - North Ten
http://www.bluerosecode.com/

Beautiful album.  Discovered when I caught a video someone posted on Facebook.  Listened to a few tunes online then bought the album.

Lights & Motion - Save Your Heart
http://www.deepelm.com/lightsandmotion/

Discovered by accident on Bandcamp.  Loved the first album.  This is more of the same really. 

Very Sigur Ros like, he even wrote a tune called Victory Rose.

Nine Inch Nails - Hesitation Marks
 http://www.nin.com/

I was apprehensive about them coming back and this album has its moments. Not really classic NIN, more NIN by the numbers.   It is growing on me though with each listen.


Toypop! - Come What May
 http://toypop.co.uk/

An album that never fails to make me smile.  One of my favourite gigs of 2012 was seeing Toypop! play in Bridgnorth. A great evening's entertainment.

Sarah from Toypop! even wrote the Hair Thieves our own little tune.  Which I really should let people hear!!!!


Various - The Exquisite Corpse Game
 http://www.thegenepool.co.uk/items/1108.htm

I will admit, I bought this purely since British Theatre are on it, but was surprised by how much, as an album I really enjoyed it.   Only slightly let down by one track I really don't like, but can't skip else it would break the fold.

Visit the link above all will be explained.  Very interesting concept.

EP5 - Free Download

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.

EP5 Cover and sneaky listen.

Above is the cover image for EP5.    Making some reference to one of the songs on the new EP.

We've also put up a sneak preview of one of the new songs.

It is called Assimilation. This is likely to be close to the final version.  Some of the mastering of the other tracks have thrown up a couple of issues that need addressing in the mixing stage.  So mastering is taking longer than usual.

   

Low Hanging Fruit

We seem to have discovered Vine.

Vine being the latest annoying social media craze, that lets you record 7 seconds of video and tweet it..

Now I thought it might be useful to show a few quick snippets, occasionally, of progress. 

Here is a video of E playing with some effects prior to recording.






So expect more videos from the recording of EP6.   Though Facebook have just done a new video thingy that lets you take 15 second clips

Masters of our own destiny!!!!

 

We believe we are now happy with the mixes.  To be honest, they didn't need much tweaking from what we had at the end of February, but some small things have been fixed.

The next step is to prepare the tracks for mastering.

This involved removing some effects off our mix master bus and then rendering the tracks out as wave files instead of our normal MP3s.

These wave files have now been  placed in a new project that we will use to master the EP.

I'm still waiting to photograph the artwork for the EP.

I did go and get my light box out of the loft, but found that it is very broken. So will need to go and find another back drop soon.

So given holidays coming up in the next few weeks. It is likely that we will master the EP next month, and release it to the world sometime in July.

In the meantime, we have been working on EP6.

We have started writing a punk like song.  That is mostly written, though no real recording has been done.   At the moment, this has a working title of  "Leaving".

We are going to record one very old Hair Thieves tune, called "Strange Familiar World", though we are hoping to keep some parts from the original and just tart up some other bits of it.

There will be another instrumental.  At the moment, this looks to be called "Reverie Part1".  Reverie Part 2 was on EP4.

And we have some snippets of lyrics and several bits of music to make up the final tune.

So it all is looking good in the land of the Hair Thieves at the moment.

Later

Rollasoc

Its a funny ol' game.

I've been looking through a load of my old notebooks and directories of lyrics and finding things I have long forgotten about.

I found my original notes for the song Assimilation, off the forthcoming EP.   According to the notes, I wrote the lyrics on the 22nd September 2003. So it is nearly ten years old.  The music was written on 10th September 2005.

We've had the demo sitting around for pretty much the end of 2005.

The song has even been played a few times over the years at open mic nights.

So we have finally gotten around to actually recording it, though it has changed a little since the original demo.

Originally, the form of the song was into, chorus (sung over verse), chorus, verse, chorus, verse chorus, middle8, chorus chorus.

 The new form is chous (over verse), chorus, verse, chorus, middle 8, Chorus, verse.

When E suggested the reworking I though he was mad.   Starting the song with the chorus over a verse was non standard enough, to then finish with a verse, sounded mad.

But as with the nature of the song, not resolving the final verse to the chorus makes for a better ending (and knocks about a minute out of the song, by having two less choruses).

Anyway, you will be able to hear the tune very soon.  We believe we have finished mixing the EP.  We will master it in the coming weeks and release it sometime in the next couple of months.

Right, back to finding inspiration for EP6.

Onwards and upwards!

Rollasoc

PS the tab is wrong anyway!