Rollasoc's Top Ten albums of 2016

2016 has been a mixed year for me.  Musically we have lost many great artists, but there is still great music to be had out there.

In the age of streaming, I have listened to probably more new albums this year than the last few, but to make it into my top ten, I must have physically bought the CD or Vinyl or Download.

I have been listening to a lot of ambient stuff this year. But playing catch up and listening to some oldies.


So here is a much more sparse than normal (three post) look at my top ten albums this year.


Nearlys / disqualified.

Some great EPs this year from the likes of Paul Draper and Bryde.  Looking forward to albums from them in 2017.


Paul Draper- Friends make the worst enemies.

Bryde - Help Yourself



Nearly made the top ten:-

David Bowie - Blackstar
I will buy this at some point

Paul Simon - Stranger to Stranger.
Another album I have listen to quite a bit this year, which I will buy sometime.

Garbage - Strange Little Birds - Glad to see the return of Garbage, need to listen to this more really, nothing currently standing out as classic.

Nils Frahm - Tag Eins Tag Zwei
As with a lot of the ambient music I listen to, I probably won't end up purchasing it, since I am unlikely to listen to it at home, so streaming it, to help me concentrate at work is great.

Steven Wilson - 4 1/2 - disqualifed for being half an album.
Steven Wilson - Transience - disqualified for being released on vinyl in 2015 then CD in 2016.

Beth Prior - Little Acts of Kindness -  Acoustically I love Beth's music and her voice. As a band, this is more reggae that I normallt like.  There are some great moments on it (like Fallen Trees and Certain things), but I keep going back to her acoustic outings. Sorry.

My Vitrol - The secret sessions - After too many years waiting for this album, I'm not sure it could ever live up to the expectation.   I am liking this album, but need to listen to it more.

Madness - Can't touch us now.
I have listen to this a couple times on Spotify, but only bought it yesterday.  Too early to tell, if it should be in the top ten or not.

P J Harvey - The hope six demolition project - I really want to like this, but not liking it as much as her earlier work.  The last two albums have been heavy going and not a great listen, to be honest.They are both good, just not great.

Jean Michel Jarre - Electronic 2-
A continuation of JMJs collaborations project, this has been a nice collection of tunes, with some artists I knew of (Cyndi Lauper, Gary Numan, Julia Holter etc) and some I didn't know of (Siriusmo, Jeff Mills, Rone). 

Thinking I prefer volume 1 though.

So here goes, my 2016 top ten.

10 Bat For Lashes - The Bride

I don't think this is as good as the last couple of albums, not sure if it is the concept or not that has restricted my love for this.   Some great tunes, like Sunday love, but some forgettable ones (whose names escape me).

Bat For Lashes - Sunday Love


9 Blue Rose Code - .​.​.​And Lo! The Bird Is On The Wing

Another great album from Blue Rose Code. Beautiful lyrics and melodies.  Just wonderful.

The only one of the top ten, that I managed to catch on tour this year, which is a bit dissapointing.

Blue Rose Code - Grateful


8 Heidi Browne - Holiday For your heart

Local (to me) girl Heidi releases another, just lovely lovely album. From the title track, via the beautiful "Under the weather".  Great stuff.

Heidi Browne - Holiday For your heart



7 Radiohead - Moon shaped Pool

Radiohead are a starange band for me, I think I like them, I buy their CDs then rarely listen to them, (a bit like the Manic Street Preachers and Stereophonics).

This album is an exception then, I have listen to it a lot since it has been released.  It is a bit of a return to form in my eyes (ears).  Plus how can you not love the Burn the witch video!

Radiohead - Burn the witch



6 The Anchoress - Confessions of a Romance Novelist.

 Double dipped on the CD and have the vinyl version.  Not obsessive at all?

After a couple of great singles in 2015, expectation was high and the album doesn't disappoint.  From slow burning opening Long Year (which was a b-side) to the proggy title track an album of all potential singles. Not a massive fan of some of the swearing, but that might just be me getting old...  ha ha

And why oh why wasn't "Once upon a lie" not on the deluxe version?

The Anchoress - You and Only You feat. Paul Draper



5 Iamthemorning - Lighthouse

Simply just another beautiful album from our favourite Russian Progmeisters.  Though where are the intermissions? 

Iamthemorning - "Lighthouse" feat.Mariusz Duda


Iamthemorning - Chalk and Coal



4 New Model Army - Winter

Been a casual NMA fan since the mid '90s.  Seen them live a few times, though kind of lost touch with them over the last few years, so bought this on a whim, when I spotted it in HMV when I was browsing. 

Blown away, with the album to be honest, up there with some of their best. Made me go back and buy some more of their back catalog.

New Model Army - Die Trying



New Model Army - Winter




3 Agnes Obel - Citizen of Glass

Sparse backing and simple melodies, just make a beautiful album.  I'm a sucker for piano, strings and some electronica, so this albums ticks all the boxes and makes me very happy.

Agnes Obel - Familiar

Agnes Obel - Golden Green



2 - The Pineapple Thief - Your Wilderness

Initially, I didn't get this album, coming into their catlog late, with "All the Wars", the last two albums have both been departures from that more rocky style and have been slow growers. 

I think this is more like Bruce Soord's solo album, than The Pineapple Thief's early back catlog (which was more Radiohead crossed with The Smashing Pumpkins).

I have grown to love this album though.


The Pineapple Thief - In Exile

The Making of In Exhile

The Pineapple Thief - Tear You Up (Acoustic)

1 She Makes War - Direction of Travel

I discovered She Makes War on a podcast by Andy Mort, talking about songwriting.   So I checked out her music on Spotify and found I was listening to it everyday, so I have started buying her back catalog.

Allegedly, this is ‘gloom-pop'. Lyrically beautiful, sonically light, I really do love this album, and have pretty much listened to it (at least partially) almost everyday since I bought it. There isn't enough ukulele in modern pop.

Stargazing, is also my song of the year.  I even worked out how to play it.  (which is a rare thing for me to do).

She Makes War - Stargazing



She Makes War featuring Tanya Donelly - Paper Thin



So that was 2016.  See you in 2017.

Lies

The last few months have been a bit topsy turvy in the world of The Hair Thieves, due to some family and work commitments plus holidays.  So progress has been a bit slow.

EP8 has been recorded and is in the process of being mixed and mastered. 

This will be out in January 2017, though we will try and get the first track "The Distance" out around Christmas or New Year.

EP9 is currently being recorded.  A couple songs are close to completion or completed.  The first of these is the track "Lies" which has been released onto Bandcamp and a video has been made using the game Kerbal Space Program.

Lies has also been released as a single to Amazon / Spotify etc.

As you may notice, from the picture at the top, this release does not feature our usual manikin character.  We have decided to retire him (and her) after ten years of being on our covers.  (Nothing to do with Kate Bush using one on the cover of her live album).  We used to photograph physical manikins, before computer generating them for the last few covers.

As some of you may know, I (rollasoc) dabble in photography.   E suggested we use some of the smoke photography I did between 2007 and 2012.   So the "Lies" image is from that period.



I recently spent two evenings doing some new batches of smoke images.  So I now have about a thousand images to choose from for further covers.  The first has been edited.

This may very well be the cover for EP8.  

I doubt it will be the last we see of the manikin though.  We shall see.

As we may have mentioned proviously.  EP9 is likely to be all instrumental. 

Failing that, we might just gather the 8 instrumetals from the first 8 EPs, the four tracks written for EP9 and some really old Hair Thieves songs (Tilly, Fables and the Deconstruction, Cases of Conscience, Silverpit etc) and release a compilation of instrumentals as an album.

We are undecided at this point.

E has started writing for EP10.  We have a little buffer of songs we could use, so we will go through these and see what is worth salvaging.

Next blog will be about the song "The Distance" the lead song of EP8.

EP1 revisited.

2016 is the 10th anniversary of EP 1.   Earlier in the year I had some time to reflect upon its release and to actually dig out the recorded files and see what state the projects are in, given the advancments of software in the last 10 years

I tried this at the beginning of the year with, but our recording software (Cubase)  that has been updated many times, in the intervening years and some of the plugins would no longer run.

I knew the latest Cubase wouldn't open the project file from 2006 directly, since that format in no longer supported.  I did have a converted copy, but wanted to go back to the actual last used version that we created the wav files to mastered from.


So I had to go and find the version of Cubase we were using back in 2006.    This was a little troublesome and meant I spent several hours in the loft looking for the original disks.

This initally failed to install, due to the copy protection mechanism being updated.  Luckily Steinberg (makers of Cubase) provide a new installer that bypasses the old copy protection on installation.

 We were also missing some virtual instruments and synths and some effects, or (and this is the frustrating one), the latest version of the virtual instrument had changed filename, so would not open nor tell me which patches it used.

So I have spent quite a few hours over the last two months (and on and off for the last two years), trying to track down all the old versions of virtual instruments and effects I used back in 2006 / 2007 when we recorded the first couple of EPs.

I think I am pretty much there now.  I have managed to open all four tracks from EP1.   I am still missing one effect, but think I can get by with out it.

It has been an interesting exercise for me.  Looking at the original files and seeing how it was recorded and mixed.    It is interesting to see how naive we were putting it together and how far we have come in both our production  techniques as well as how we organise songs.

So the idea now is to render out the individual tracks for each song, to preserve them in a non proprietry format, just in case we ever decide to remix them.

Then work through all the other EPs.

2, 4 , 8, 9

Finally, we have re-released EP2 (via Ninja Kitten Records) into the streaming media world.

As well as Bandcamp, it is now available at Amazon,Spotify (see below), iTunes, Napster, Deezer etc.





Here is a very rare live outing of the lead track "Shorewards".

So that just leaves EP4 that isn't available everywhere.  The plan is to re-release it soon.

The summer, is usually a bit of downtime for us.   Holidays, festivals, the odd day of sun and other complications, means we generally don't record much in August.  This year was no exception.

We are reconvening this coming week, to drink tea and take stock of the current state of EP8 and EP9.

EP8 has been 99.9% recorded (just needs something adding to one of the middle 8's) then it will be ready for mixing.   I think we will be looking for an early November release for this.

EP9 we have three instumentals in various states of completion.  At them moment, it looks like we will break with tradition and release an all instrumental EP.

We shall see when and how the final track progresses.

More soon....

Summer time

Seems to have been a very long time since we blogged.  Shame on us.

We have been busy.   We have far too many songs on the go for a single EP.  I think it is sixteen songs at the last count.  So as well as EP8, we are working on EP9 also.

The final lyrics were written last week for EP8.   So that song is now in the process of being recorded. 

As can be seen from the above image, we now have a makeshift vocal booth to play with.

The rest of the EP has been recorded and is ready for mixing.

We haven't decided a song order yet.  But titles are probably.

The Distance
Hometown
Hometown Heart
Ludworth

Two songs about hometown's I hear you ask.  Yep.   We both did a songwriting course earlier in the year, the task was to write a song about your hometown.   So we thought we would put both on the EP and see what people think.

So EP8 will be the forst EP, where we haven't re-recorded an old song.

We are thinking of revisiting the way we do CD covers also.  The previous seven EPs all used artists manikins on them.  We are unsure if we are going to continue this or try something different.

E has suggested we could use some of the smoke photography I used to do.

I suggested I do more images, given it has been far too long since I last did them.

We shall decide over the next few weeks, which way we are going.

EP9 is currently being written, whilst we finish up EP8.   So it is all go.

Later

Rollasoc

2015 Summary, birthdays and the future

Now firstly, apologies for the image above, taken at our first Christmas outing.  To me Ian's camera seems to have badly smoothed our skin. His camera needs to dial back the Gaussian blur in future.

Love is Overdrive

So here was are at the end of 2015.   

The Hair Thieves started and the band name registered in December 2000 as an outlet for tunes that I had been writing whilst teaching myself Cubase.

It started with the release in 2001 of Baited Breath a song I had written back in 1994 whilst at University, (later re-recorded on EP2) before the first proper Hair Thieves tune "Girl With Two Names".

So happy 15th birthday to The Hair Thieves.   I'm not convinced I thought I would still be doing this fifteen years later, but I'm very happy that I am still doing this.

Of course the plan in 2000 was to release an album.  Something we have not yet done. I doubt we ever will (unless it is a best of compilation). Seven EPs is obviously more than an albums worth of material.

EP1 was recorded 10 years ago in November 2005, when I took a week off work to write and record it.  It was nearing completion, when I asked Ian to join the band. 

So happy 10th anniversay to Ian for being in the band.

2015 saw us release EP7 into the world.  We are very happy with it.

You can purchase it (including physical copies) from our Bandcamp store, or Amazon, iTunes, or stream it in Spotify, Deezer etc.


2016 will be the 10th Anniversary of EP1 being released. 

So what else do we have planned for 2016.

Personally, now we live in the same town, I'd like to start playing live again.. It has been a while.

EP8 is starting to shape up.  We have run out of old songs that we want to re-record (one has been on the other seven EPs).  So this will be the first EP with 100% new material.

At the moment, we have five or six songs on the go, at various states of completion, including an interesting song where we don't actually play anything on it.  More on that gem in an upcoming blog piece.

I'm optimistic EP8 will have five songs on it.

I'm going to be doing FAWM again in February, where I attempt to write fourteen songs in twenty eight days.   In 2015, I managed nine songs, including "Love is Overdrive" off EP7 and "The Distance" off EP8, both in collaboration with Ian.

So we shall see if any of those make it as Hair Thieves tunes.

So hopefully, you will all have a great Christmas and a wonderful 2016.


Later




Rollasoc

Rollasoc's Top Ten albums 2015 - Part 3

So I lied, it is the same length as last year, just in a different order.

Back to the list

5 - Bruce Soord - 

The Pineapple Thief front man has released an album of lighter tunes, from the recent TPT and Wisdom of Crowds albums.   Slightly reminiscent of the acoustic bonus TPT albums with hints of The smashing pumpkins in places.  It hasn't been out long, else it might have been higher on my list.

Starting to worry the Bruce and his various bands keep getting higher on my recent lists than the prpg god that is Steven Wilson.



4. Heidi Browne - White Rabbits

Local Shropshire musician and winner of the UKs 2014's open mic competition, Heidicame back with her third album.   Autocannibal is one of my favourite tunes of the year.  The title track is also great. 

3. Of Monsters & Men - Beneath the skin..

E got me into those after writing a bit of tune with a tom groove.   He said he'd been listening to Of monsters and men and felt inspired. So he played me Crystals.

I have probably listened to this once a day since I got the album (other than weekends).

We also went to see them last month.  

Plus one of their tunes was used in the trailer for the excellent Jessica Jones series.   Rumour has it, they have a part in the next season of Game of Thrones.

2 Vennart -The Demon Joke.

Anyone who knows me, should know, I am a massive Oceansize fan.   It was a sad day in the Rollasoc household when they split. 

But Mike Vennart is back after his stint as touring guitarist for Biffy Clyro with a new album, with two ex Oceansize members, Gambler and Mr Durose. 

"Operate" is probably my favourite tune of 2015.   E wasn't impressed when I took his Of Monsters and Men verse tom groove songs and bolted in the drums from "Operate" for the chorus.  Trust me it was epic.

Now "Don't forget the joker" when it was previewed before the album was released, did worry me.  It wasn't until it was heard in context with the rest of the album, that I started liking it.

So the album is part beauty, part filth.  Which was exactly what was expected and it didn't disapoint.


1. Paper Aeroplanes - Joy

Now along with Vennart, I seem to have signed copies of both these albums.

It was really hard to pick between Vennart and Paper Aeroplanes, given I listen to each of them most days.

But I think Paper Aeroplanes just inch it, possibly since I managed to catch them live in Shrewsbury earlier in the year, possibly since it has been out a little longer and has managed to stay in my consciousness for longer, possibly due to the beauty and quality of songs like Emily, race you home and Guessing game.  

It is a beautiful album.

So there is my list of top ten albums for 2015.   

Got one last top tip for 2016

Beth Prior -  Debut album out in January 2015.  Little Acts of Kindness

Have a happy Christmas and see you in the new Year.  (or tommorrow if you read the blog, for the year's round up).