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.
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!!!
We are getting close to shutting down the recording progress for the summer, due to house moves. Finally after almost ten years together, we will be living in the same town.
Hopefully, this might mean the return of us playing live, even if only at a few local open mics. What this will mean is no more 36 mile round trips to recording sessions. So less time driving, more time writing and recording.
EP7 is almost three quarters there. Two songs ("Love is Overdrive" & "Epic Song") are ready for mixing, (other than possibility of adding additional backing vocals to one if we need it).
The third tune (as seen in the images) is making good progress and in a first for us, uses some royalty free samples. In addition, there isn't a guitar in sight either.
Hopefully this will be ready for mixing in the week.
On every EP there is a difficult track. This appears to be track 2. This is currently called "Drowning in Air".
It started as an electronic track. Which wasn't working, it is currently turning more orchestral, which in turn doesn't work at the tempo of the electronic track, (at which the vocals were recorded).
So a complete re-recording will be in order during the band downtime by me(given he has to sing it).
So there we have it. Close but no cigar. We have possibly one more recording session, before we take a break. Hopefully, we will reconvene in the Autumn and get EP7 out of the door, shortly there after or at least before the end of the year.
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.
Demo of a tune written for Fawm 2015. Basically we set ourselves a very short period of time to write and demo (as simply as possible) a song. So this was written in about 3 hours on a Sunday afternoon and then played with for a couple of hours two days later. Vocals are a composite of some vocals recorded on one day and others on another day. It is demo.... It was written using EZKeys as a tool to come up with the chord sequence. We aim to re-record this from scratch / replace / amend / change the r&b piano ballad. So it might end up similar or totally different. We shall see over time.
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.
