Alcopop ist Wunderbar!

It’s lovely to get recognition from foreign shores, so ‘pop points’ galore for terminally super pal Dorte, who not only has spent the year delighting us with lovely Twitter and email messages, but even flying in from Germany to take in a Candle Thieves show…  She’s ace, and what’s more – she saw fit to include The Candle Thieves ‘Sunshine EP’, and Alcopopular 3 in her list of the best releases in 2009, even describing the former as wunderbar! Amazing…

Pop over to the article over here at Fast Forward magazine, or you can read the translation below (again kindly provided by the lovely author herself).

The Candle Thieves – The Sunshine EP

I love The Candle Thieves. The day can be as foozled and gray as it wants to be, “The Sunshine Song” will bring sunshine into it. I always thought songs like that doesn’t exist or exist very rarely until The Candle Thieves taught me wrong. Their mix of poppy playful melodies with their quite dark lyrics is just wonderful. My advice: listen and melt away. Those two charming guys make the most beautiful music I have heard in quite a while. And their lyrics reflect me so good in many ways that it almost leaves me anxious.

I am really looking forward to their album in 2010.

Alcopop – Alcopopular 3 (Compilation)

I must admit: At first I just bought this Compilation because of its packing. Alcopop is a small but mighty indie label from UK and they have the most charming ideas for the special something. You could just buy a boring mp3 download OR you can order treasure map in a bottle! Amazing!

And by the way you’ll also get the perfect Saturday morning soundtrack and a bunch of british band you should take a closer look at. To name those who fascinated me right from the beginning: Stagecoach, Tellsion, Apple, David Gibb and Pulled Apart by Horses.

Cheers Dorte!

I got this email… It was lovely

Sometimes emails are awful… Full of dread, demands for money or someone just generally being horrible. Other times though they’re inspiring, lovely and basically a real tonic – re-instilling the belief in what you’re doing, and reminding you that people really do care Yesterday I received such an email… It’s awesome, and fills m full of joy to know that somewhere in a little village in Spain – the kids are digging Alcopopular 3…. Rock on!

Pavilion and Alcopopular 3 on Tour

Sorry dear blog, I’ve rather let you down over the last few days… No updates which I can’t be forgiven for and even now I’m neglecting you to watch the England game. It’s terrible work from myself, but as I settle down for an evening of keeping half an eye on international glory and the other 1.5 on making maps for Alcopopular 3, I should mention that if anyone’s heading out to catch any of the shows on the Tellison (with Johnny Foreigner) or David Gibb tour – you can pick one up with them on the road, or they’re still available from our shop.

Meanwhile, a nice little blog post about Pavilion (who’s single we released way back about a year or so ago) from the lovely Saam at Faded Glory waxes lyrical about their song Clarity. “Although melodically uplifting, its lyrics examine relationship issues. Maybe it’s not all jolly good fun in Wakey? Regardless, this is a pop classic. Seeing as their first single sold out, I’m hoping ‘Clarity’ will be single number two for Pavilion on the brilliant Alcopop label. I’d buy about 3 copies myself.” Which is very nice of him to say…

So I got in touch with Stu from Pavilion today to see what they’re upto and the good news is that the gloriously melodic Wakefield beauties is that they’re planning all sorts of stuff for the end of this year/ beginning of next. Go have a listen on MySpace if you haven’t heard them before… Sadly the single we released ‘Spoils of War’ sold out on 7”, but you can still get it on iTunes if you like.

That’s good of me eh…

Alcopop instore @Pure Groove

It’s taken me a good few weeks to post this update about Alcopop’s recent Pure Groove jam (waiting for photos which have now arrived and are beautiful) – but I thought I’d relay the events of the eve, which were – in truth – bloody ace.

Somehow it was the first time I’d ever been to Pure Groove and it was lovely. Basically an opulent Faringdon bar with a record shop spread amongst shelves around the shop – it’s the ideal haunt for anyone with a penchant for the limited editions and niche formats.

Putting on a bill of Stagecoach *acoustic set* and Stars and Sons with Paul Steel providing a delectable melodic introduction, we all bonded over a small message in a bottle compilation – the bands entertained, and Kev and I (along with a few of the great and good from the indie music industry and plenty of happy poppers) assaulted the bar.

Highlight of the evening for me, for its unexpected appearance as much as highly polished form, was perhaps a delicate Stagecoach cover of The Lemonheads’ Drug Buddy. Awesome… What followed was an evening at the Ish Bar, a high octane Team Stagecoach Vs Team PoP pool match (we’ll get you next time Stagecoach), phantom tequilas (where do they always spring from) and plenty more hi-jinks…

The next one’s on October 7^th for Stagecoach and more… See you there yeah

NME rate Alcopopular 3 the ‘coolest compilation ever’

Nothing like a proud, grainy photo to cheer a Monday morning (Must remember to get a phone without a crappy camera) – and it is with great pleasure I can announce that the cheeky little bottle compilation ‘Alcopopular 3’ has been covered by music rag NME this week.

Nestled in next to some Adidas sneaks (that look a touch dull in truth), a nice King Blues T-Shirt and a waterproof video camera (?!) on page 64 – you won’t be able to read the text from the image below, but it goes a little something like this…

‘Proving that music can still be presented in interesting ways, labels like Alcopop are keeping homegrown UK music alive. This compilation comes in a bottle – the included treasure map ends with a code so you can download the likes of PABH, The Computers and Unicorn Kid. Which makes it the coolest compilation ever.’

Nice stuff NME and specifically pensman Ben Patashnik – cheers for that.

Alcopopular 3 on Popjustice –

I’ve always had PopJustic down as more pop than Alco – Girls Aloud, Britney, Calvin Harris – but during a recent foray to a Unicorn Kid concert (as any sane popper is liable to do on occasion – I myself took one in last week at The Borderline) they happened upon a copy of Alcopopular 3 on his merch table – and promptly snapped it up.

What followed is this rather hilarious, if tongue in cheek, write up of our hard labours – questioning the value they got for their five pound purchase. 14 tracks popjustice! – on iTunes that’d cost you bloody eleven quid, never mind the hand-burnt/ tea-bagged map and bottle.

Still – their irreverent words including “The piece of paper will be instantly familiar to anyone who has studied history at Year 7 or above as ‘a teabag job’” and “Don’t ever give us your cow to sell at the market – we’ll come back with magic beans” did delight us so. Cheers for featuring chaps! Take a look over here.

Alcopopular 3 officially ‘launched’ (into the sea)

Wow – sorry about the lack of blogpost yesterday either thanking the many Twitter reviewers who are continuing to smash home awesome tweets about Alcopopular 3, tell you about all the lovely folk who have mentioned it online – or even to suggest that godamn… That message in a bottle is out, launched – Alcopopular 3 is officially available!

Sure mail-orders are a nightmare, my hands are singed from burning maps – and Pop HQ currently resembles some kind of bubble wrap laden warehouse – but this is all good! And to celebrate this state of affairs, do let me share with you the video carefully crafted by expert Hollywood director type, Kev, to celebrate the release of Alcopopular 3 into the wild.

Picture the scene – a treacherous Sunday morning 9am at Brighton beach – winds raging, ocean crashing tumultuously against the rocks – and two hungover, bedraggled husks of men emerge from post Great Escape carnage… Their mission – to spread the word of Alcopopular 3, the world’s only message in a bottle compilation, to far off foreign shores through the only possible means… Casting it into the waves!

Soundtrack courtesy of Stars & Sons and Town Bike….

Twitter reviews: Update 2

Firstly let me apologise.. I realise everything I’ve written about over the last few days on the blog has been very compilation focussed. The message in a bottle has kinda gotten hold of me, and I’m no doubt boring everyone I talk to about it about now… But with such awesome feedback, and most notably – heroic Twitter reviews producing such great reviews – ah, I just can’t help it. So after having bits and bobs about the release featured on Die Shellsuit Die, TLOBF, Free the Press, Punktastic – ah well… Tis very pleasent.

Anywhoo – just a quick update on the muy awesome reviews that have come in from our Twitter folk over the last couple of days. Search the band names in Twitter Search to read all the well chosen words… But I just had to share these two, about Apples and David Gibb respectively. Firstly – from the resplendant @Minorityof1…

and secondly this… From the rather excitable @colinmercer, clearly pleased his county is getting a mention – and hungry for campfires and a tinny or twain!

More over the weekend…

Alcopop full page feature in Loud and Quiet magazine

It’s always lovely when people mention Alcopop in print, so excuse this slightly self-indulgent post, but in case you missed it, this month’s Loud and Quiet has got a ‘reet big’ full page spread in it, all about the label and the Alcopopular 3 compilation. You can read it online here.

I would take a photo of the full article, but I’ve tried that before and you can never read a word, so I’ve just snapped this, the rather magnificent graphical image created by Eleanor Dunk of elbowdesigns.co.uk, which I really like.

Ace. I’m not going to quote myself, but if you happen to pick up a copy of the paper, then read it heartily – especially page 10.

“Maybe it’s now that we need labels like Alcopop who’ll offer us something a little out of the ordinary. There’s no character in a bunch of mega bites, but there’s a hell of a lot in a bottle containing a modern day pirate treasure map that leads you to audio booty.”

Cheers chaps! You can buy it here…

Alcopopular 3 – message in a bottle compilation for pre-order!

Hurrah! As featured in Loud and Quiet (full page) – it is with great pleasure I can announce that our newest compilation Alcopopular 3 is up for pre-order… And coming out next week

Priced up at just a fiver, and featuring delicious tracks from the likes of Pulled Apart by Horses, Apples, Paul Steel, Unicorn Kid and Stagecoach (along with many more) your downloadable comp comes in bottle with hand-browned treasure map tracklisting and is pretty much a must for any record collection.  After all, you can pretend to be a pirate and listen to some cracking tracks… Can’t beat that eh!

It’s – in a word – amazing! But you don’t even have to take my word for it as we have a number of crack Twitter reviewers, picking it apart track by track in 140 characters or less over the next couple of weeks… So I’ll be letting you know some of the highlights of what they say about each track.

Bottle – Buy now / MP3s only – Buy now

Full tracklisting is…

1. Tellison – Wasp’s Nest
2. Apples – Theo
3. David Gibb – The Oxfordshire Brigade
4. Stars and Sons – In The Ocen (piano version)
5. Town Bike – Cock Muff Bum Hole
6. Pulled Apart By Horses – E=MC Hammer
7. Stagecoach – We Got Tazers
8. Paul Steel – Psychedelia Smith
9. Unicorn Kid – Nuts n Milk
10. Arrows Of Love – Prescriptions
11. Ice King of California – I Wouldn’t Want To Do That All
12. The October Game – Cast These Waves
13. The Computers – Track Four

Purchase, and fill that bottle shaped hole in your record collection, because – as Loud and Quiet say…

“but maybe it’s now that we need labels like Alcopop to offer us something a little out of the ordinary. There’s no character in a bunch of mega bites but there’s a hell of a lot in a bottle containing a modern day pirate treasure map that leads you to some audio booty.”

Awwww