ALCOPOP! TURNS 50 with a jacket and compilation

So – even though it kinda seems like yesterday that Kev and I got home from watching Midget in Stamford and kicked off Alcopop! Records – bizarrely… We’ve been going a whole 49 releases (and 5 years to boot). This is, quite frankly, wonderful and truly humbling for us, and its with great thanks to all you awesome people who regularly support us and the stonking bands we’re putting out – that we’re about to hit the 50th milestone… Alcopop050 down, and plenty more to come!

It’s been a really nice time for us, sitting back and taking stock on what’s been before, going through all the old photos and generally recapping on everything we could remember in the last five years – but we’ve got a massive year ahead, so there will be a few moments of nostalgia before hammering on with details of ALCOPOP050 baby! Up for sale now!!!

First up – names and deets – basically this badboy is coming out on CD and Jacket (yeah, physical wear it out summer jacket) and is called ‘We grew up on a diet of Jurassic Park and Sensible Soccer (and all we have left is this lousy record label)’, It contains 17 tracks from just some of our awesome bands from the very beginning (Emily by Encyclopedia) to the present day (including the as yet unreleased A Casting Call by LightGuides). Full track listing here. All up in the shop now and artwork features (as you’d expect I guess) dinosaurs, Streetfighter II and Sensible Soccer – and also has loads of photos on the inside of well – Team PoP! Bands, Kev and I, you lot – and one of Lomana Lua Lua for reasons that will become clear ☺

CDs are cool and all, but because we bloody love exciting stuff too – we’ve taken a nod from our (well, Jack PoP anyways) fabourite label ever Fierce Panda, and created our very own Alcopop050 jacket. They’re being produced as we speak so excuse the crap artist rendering in the shop (that was mine – ahem) but they’re made by Dickies, hand embroidered with the Alcopop logo, as well as featuring a New York Cosmos style Alcopop Records patch. They’re very limited to 50 and available in S, M, L or XL.

They will be fairly pricey (£30 with comp CD) but these are real expensive to make, and are ace quality… However, because we love you guys we’re also offering a ‘I’m a bit skint’ version too – where we’ll be offering the jackets + CD pack for exactly cost price. It’s not a limited discount, just to make sure that whether you’re skint or rich – if you want a PoP jacket + comp CD, you can damn well have it ☺.

Other than that can we just say, thanks for sticking by us for 50 releases – and here’s to 50 more!

Alcopopular review in Artrocker – 4/5!

It’s a cracker and all! I do love the handsome folk at Artrocker – great bunch… The menu is still available (with burger sleeve) from the shop. Read below… ‘Most forward thinking of record companies’ eh… Well thank you very much Emily Kendrick!

Some words of wisdom about Alcopopular 4: ‘A Feast of Pop’

Ah it’s always lovely to get a nice bit of feedback from handsome heroes – and the compilation seems to be getting some good stuff from my very favourite folk. People have been enjoying picking their preferred tracks from the menu (Kev Devine, Freelance Whales and Stagecoach very popular so far) and the All You Can Eat selection is going down pretty rad too. Yup.

But enough of me – I’m bound to like it right. What’s way more important is folk at the likes of This is Fake DIY “spent a good few minutes gawping at the amazingness of the idea” – whilst Soundblab rate the beast 8/10 and suggest “Alcopop have set the bar in compilation mixes offering something truly unique and fresh for the listener.” Awww – thanks a lot chaps!

Alter the Press meanwhile really dig it – a 4/5/5 review and totally catching the raison d etre as it were… “Alcopop have managed to get a huge range of quality artists, ranging from rising, reasonably unknown talent to bigger tracks that many fans will recognise. The styles vary throughout, so it provides for some enjoyable listening. This compilation is sure to make you want to discover more from each and every one of these artists.”

Thanks all – You can get more info here…

Alter the Press Jan compilation featuring Screaming Maldini…

Alter The Press are generous souls alright. Pure of heart some may call them, others benevolent of spirit. So when they announce ‘oh you know, we’ve just released a carefully put together 16 track compilation featuring the likes of Tiger Please, Flood of Red and The Wonder Years’ one may not be surprised, but sure as hell grateful to download it forthwith. What’s even better is that PoP new boys (and girls) Screaming Maldini are bloody on it too. Which is awesome.

So to hear The Extraordinary by the magnificent Maldini, and 15 other super songs… Pop on over by clicking here – and revel in an evening of something for nothing. Kaboom!

Oh – and just in case anyone’s interested, I noticed on twitter today that Wichita Records are looking for a London-based intern… This would be an awesome thing to do. Drop em’ an email if you want in!

Tis the season of [their] awesome compilation

We heart Alter the Press – because not only are they a great music blog, bringing *SO* up to the minute news on bands and labels you actually care about, but also because they create compilations that are not unlike exploding planets – in that they’re very big, and very fuckin’ loud!

The compilation ‘Autumn/Winter 2009’ (alright – so it’s not very imaginatively titled but one can forgive that) includes tracks from first and foremost Alcopop’s very own Wolf Am I and Stagecoach – but also Epitaph Records’ Set Your Goals and Every Time I Die, breakthrough UK pop-punk band, You Me At Six, Welsh rockers Attack! Attack! and Brooklyn’s Kevin Devine.

On top of that, the compilation has tracks from many up and coming bands such as O’Brother, Kill Casino, Francesqa, Kyoto Drive and many more. And is well worth downloading – for listening to on the bus perhaps, or maybe on a dull cruise with your gran. What I’m saying is, it’s very versatile.

Download chaps, download…

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 – 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

Compilations – a conundrum…

Alcopop love compilations! It’s always nice to get some obscure format (be it tape, 3″ CD or er… CD), ram it full of delightful songs from all sorts of different artists we enjoy, and smash it out to the baying public. But we (or rather Kev at BSM who wrote this charming blogpost here) would like to know what you want in your compilation… We’ve splashed paint on tapes and released them on the stroke of the New Year, made cheeky little cardboard cases, and put another one up for free download on the blog.

But what do you like most of all? I leave Kev to take up the story…

“For the next 5 minutes you’re all employees of Big Scary Monsters Recording Company. Your job title is ‘Marketing Assistant’, which is fairly self-explanatory I think, but just to confirm: you’re assisting with marketing. Sound good? Good. You’re not getting paid.

The problem with compilations is that nobody buys them anymore. Shops very rarely stock any and unless the content of the disc is nearly all new and exclusive (which is a difficult thing to achieve), people likely already own/can easily find the tracks elsewhere. As Marketing Assistant, here’s your first task:

Tell me what we can do to make compilation CDs exciting again.”

Already garnering some interesting comments over on punktastic, his blog and DiS, I promised him I’d put it to the poppers to see if they had any input on this taxing question. Obviously, it’s something that would be unbelievably useful, so we’d really appreciate any input you have right there in the comment box below. Thanks chaps!! 

Is this record label communism – yeh, probably… Cheers all! 

Get on up!

Wooh! It’s the 6 Machine

I like stupid names, even though nobody else seems to share my sense of humour or passion. I’m starting to think I’m the only sane person around here. The excellent BSM Christmas tour of 2006, ‘Santa Tours’, the BSM blog, ‘Blog Scary Monsters‘ and the future autobiography, ‘Book Scary Monsters’, the label sampler CD from last summer, ‘Record Label Shmecord Label’, the list really is endless. And here’s the latest…

In April BSM will release a 6 band split 10″ compilation entitled ’6 Machine’. Unlike other compilations we’re leaving this one to the fans to choose the tracklisting, so I’m looking for a little bit of input please, dear reader.

Right now we’re asking bands to submit MP3s for possible inclusion on the record. The deadline for this is 24th February, after which date we will be listening through them all and picking out our favourite 12. This shortlist will then be posted up online when we’ll be asking you to vote on your favourite band. The 6 bands with the most votes at the end of that period will have their music committed to history through the wonderful medium of vinyl. Along the way we’ll be running profiles on all of the bands, putting out a special episode of our podcast and loads more.

If you’re in a band and fancy sending a track in, check out www.bsmrocks.com/the6machine to read how to go about it. Everyone else, sit tight and prepare for the voting green light at the end of this month.

Exceptional Poppers #1

It’s always been a heartfelt Alcopop tradition to love and cherish each one of our customers/friends and associates who release records/ pop by the gigs, buy a CD or send us lovely comments – and as such I’ve decided to launch a small feature on the blog about some of the greatest Alcopop associates… Whether it’s passion, commitment, fame or just a brilliant name, every few weeks we’ll be featuring a particular Alcopop favourite.

This week, Richard Gombault – Midget front man, responsible for arguably the best indie pop mini album of the 90s (and thus the inspiration of our label name), headline performer of the inaugural club night – and purchaser of several copies of Alcopopular compilation Vol 1. (available now from our shop featuring Midget’s My Infatuation) – here he undertakes a brief interview especially for our blog.

Speak on good sir…

Your favourite Alcopop?
A ferocious concoction called “Strobe”. I don’t think they make it anymore which is probably just as well as I’ve lost entire days as a result of suckling at its toxic teat.

Most cherished vice?
It would have been smoking but I gave up about 3 years ago so I am now espousing virtue rather than vice.

Any news on what Midget are up to – is the long awaited new album ever to see the light of day?
In a word, hopefully! As always, we have the greatest of intentions and our plans do include recording a new album at some point so watch this space…not literally, obviously, that would be foolish.

Your best ever mid-90s indie anthem (Self appreciation more than allowed )?
On and On – The Longpigs. What a tune.

Who do you think is more handsome – Jack or Kev?
An amalgam would be the ideal here

Any other words of wisdom?
Yes, “milt”.

And incidentally, all pictures were taken from Richard’s facebook page with absolutely no permission granted. Cheers pal – Alcopop salutes you (oh and Lee who’s superace too!)