The Candle Thieves EP up for pre-order now w/ Pre order freebies!

Ah August, look at you so gloomy out there… Refusing to make any of us smile with your cloudy face. Well f**k you you bleak old bi**h, because great news is afoot for those of you who may be missing sun on your face, but enjoy it in your heart.

Woop – one of Alcopop’s latest signings The Candle Thieves have released The Sunshine EP (limited to 1,000 copies) so delicious it will literally leave you grinning for weeks… It’s up for pre-order right now from our shop (out on the 10th September – we’ll make sure you get it early), for the sum of just £5 of your English pounds, or £2.50 for the MP3s. This site is liable to be the only place where it’s available digitally, although iTunes would be another quid more expensive, so you’re better off getting it from us anyway…

But wait! There’s more! As you may know, the boys have recently been traversing the gardens of England playing a lovely tour outside in folk’s houses, and we were keen for people to take a little bit of the Candle Thieves magic back to their own gardens… Therefore, the first 20 people to order the EP (on CD) will get a promo TCT seed bag to plant or keep, all branded up with TCT/Alcopop stickers and badge – and limited (strictly) to just 100. Plus the first 10 we ship out are fully signed by the lovely Scott and Glock.

Awesome…

Love you poppers

Alter the Press Lead the Way in streaming albums

Try before you buy, take a good long ‘listen’ at the merchandise and give your ears a treat is what we all say (actually we don’t, it would probably make us sound like c**ts).

Nonetheless, that’s exactly what you can do at Alter the Press right now with Wolf Am I’s new album ‘Lead the Way’… Yup, the best music blog this side of Nottingham has decided to stream the entire album track by track. It’ll only be up till Monday though! To hear it, pop on over to their lovely site and, if you like it, you can come back and buy it from our shop, iTunes – or all those boring e-tailers who won’t send you a badge or sticker or two with your purchases…

Also, for a little more WAI goodness, why not check out their review over on the Music Magazine, and a super piece that our pals at Come Pick Me Up blog have lovingly put together (they’re SO ace). The sun is shining, summer booze is flowing – it’s time for WAI!

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…

Wolf Am I’s Lead the Way out today…

Alter the Press said it is a superb record, with a deep, personal lyrical style that is pulled off incredibly well. The 405 suggested that it is “an impressively powerful affair” whilst Rock Sound gushed that the record “is delicious as it mimics Brand New. Impressive.”

But enough of this magazine-based love… For what is more important is that Lead the Way is, as of today, available for all of you types who love digital. Bang. iTunes. Bang. Emusic. Bang – all the other places you might fancy dashing too to pick up this record online…

Or you can get it with thick, lush cardboard gatefold from us, and rock out to one hell of a handsome record… You’ve seen the Glasgow Seven video right? Well if not, watch it here….

Download the free 40+odd track Punktastic Unscene 5 compilation featuring WAI…

…But remember to donate a sheet or two… A fabnificent gentleman named Tom, and everyone’s favourite general of Punktastic Paul – have put together an awesome compilation – oh yes… it’s the fifth instalment of Unscene – and it looks fuckin’ glorious.

Not only does this badboy include the absolutely marvellous Lex Talionis by Alcopop’s very own Wolf Am I (they’re SO good) but with the likes of The Tupolev Ghost, Mutiny on the Bounty, Bayonets and Portman (amongst so many others) it’s definitely worth a hearty listen. I’ll let the handsome Tom take up the story from here….

“For the fifth installment we are supporting the work of Everyman cancer campaign who aim to stamp out prostate and testicular cancer. While this release is free to download for all, we would love it if you could visit our Just Giving page and contribute towards our fundraising for this worthy cause. More than 34,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year in the UK, and more than one person an hour will die from the disease. Add this to the fact that testicular cancer is the most common form of cancer among young men – and you’ll see where we’re going with this one.

Thank you to every single band who have donated their music to this release, to Pete Duffield for his awesome artwork, to Neil at The Ranch Production House for tidying up the audio and to Paul McManus for this awesome website.”

So head over, download – and if you‘re plush do donate a quid or two as well… It’s only been out half a day and Tom has already pulled in nearly a hundred quid, so anything else you can add would be brilliant… After all, who can begrudge helping out a charity when you have such compilation to listen to while you’re doing it!

Ace stuff

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

My First Tooth 8/10 with Noize Makes Enemies

Ow what a weekend. Glorious it has been, and with karaoke booth highlights last night, some magnificent Alcopop saleswork in Videosyncratic, it is with delight I can tell you that we have a swathe of Twitter reviewers up for delivering their compilation opinions, and Noize Makes Enemies have been good enough to review My First Tooth and The Rubies EP – giving it 8/10.

Referencing Sleet and Snow as a track befitting discussion about the “interplay of Witt’s and Galpin’s vocals, which go together like milk and honey” reviewer Mattias Scherer goes on… “Add some handclaps and a lovely little mandolin riff, and you’re as close to a folk “hit” as you will get.”

And it’s not just the opener receiving great praise, “On ‘Honesty, Honestly’ Witt sings “If I could be more like him/Would it change a thing?” and, honestly, (sorry) if that song doesn’t make you swallow that little bit harder, then a doctor’s appointment might be in order – your heartlessness will have reached potentially lethal levels.” Agreed.

Incidentally, I just thought – in case you haven’t heard My First Tooth before – do pop over to our pals at Cougar Microbes and you can download said track from the EP for free. Capiche? Let me know if you need a quack?

Stars and Sons In the Ocean 7″ out today! – read what the net says…

Boom!

Tis the 17^th, and with it cometh the new single from the Alcopop stable. This time, the majestic steeds whinnying with impatience to get going in their inaugural race are Stars and Sons (pictured here at Shepherds Bush Empire). Brainchild of Mike Lord, and featuring Paul Steel – you should definitely buy this vinyl (ltd. to just 500 copies)… But why? Well, I thought I’d let the blogosphere explain that for me. Partly because I’m lazy… But also because they are princes of semantics, fine purveyors of taste – and knowers of musical knowledge!

Firstly, Sweeping the Nation, who said “lovely lovely Alcopop Records, previously responsible for singles we’ve openly admired by 4 Or 5 Magicians and This City, are putting out a limited edition 7″ from an outfit that we had a homemade EP from ages ago and have since had quite a bit of specialist radio play and even praise off evil Jonathan Ross. We talk up so many new bands that by the law of averages eventually one of them had to take off. Stars And Sons are Mike Lord, once of the aforementioned 4 Or 5 Magicians and now making delicious hand-crafted optimistic indiepop nuggets. In The Ocean is one of those songs that’s at once naggingly familiar and freshly minted. Good work all round.”

Dirty Sexy Music too seem to love ‘em, stating “Their lyrics are both sweet and tremendously humorous. After a few listens you begin to feel you’ve known these songs your entire life, so quickly and insidiously they permeate your consciousness. Touches of Belle and Sebastian, The Beach Boys and The Beatles lace their music. The sound is multilayered, to the point that each song at some point could be described as a cacophony, yet it works perfectly.”

Puregroove Records have got involved too, saying “This sounds like a band that are shaping up to become pop stars in 2009. Not the cool kind that appear in fashionable mags and get blogged but sell seven records. The proper kind, that write songs that thousands celebrate life and love with at huge events in the country. We love em.” And if anyone’s gonna’ know what’s hot… They should!

… We’ll leave the final word to Music under Fire though… “Pop this rock ’til your limbs fall off. Enjoy.”

Stars and Sons ‘In the Ocean’ 7″ available to preorder! Tasty rare MP3 with every copy

I was told by so-called ‘reliable’ chum Crunkfish that today was International Caps Lock day… Therefore, I saved this post ready to cram full of capitals. Loads of them. I was going to start at the beginning and literally thrash it so full of big ol’ letters that the majority of people would stop reading almost immediately.

Somewhat luckily he was wrong. It was yesterday! So therefore I’ll keep the caps to a minimum, and leave the news to tell itself – namely that the very limited 7″ copies of Stars and Son’s ‘In the Ocean’ are available NOW to pre-order, which is pretty awesome news.

You can order it from our shop, along with a whole heap of oher exciting releases (and it will cost you no more than 50p for postage however many you go for) – and whatsmore… Everyone who orders will receive a free MP3 piano version of the A-side via email, which is not only gorgoeus, but won’t be available on the vinyl or from any of your favourite digital music stores, giving you 3 tracks for the price of one, and something to enjoy while you’re waiting for the vinyl to drop on the release date (17th November).

Huw Stephens has said of S&S that they are “Big brash intelligent indie pop” – and he’s not bloody wrong. Check them out here, and then (when you’ve fallen in love) buy the single here…

We Move out today – This City single available!

Coming to the end of a pretty bangin’ UK tour – with a show at London Barfly tomorrow (congratulations to Niall and Thomas who won pairs of tickets by the way) – it’s good news for us at Alcopop Records, as today sees Brighton rockers This City release limited edition 7” (to 500) single ‘We Move’… Today!

Full of the kind of heavy disco-based rhythms that have made the boys such a favourite with the likes of Kerrang, NME, Radio 1, XFM and all the other hip places that have taken them to heart – we’re lucky enough to be working with them now before they hit unimaginable heights!

You can get the vinyl from the band when they play live (best), direct from us (awesome), or from any good record shop or your favourite digital music retailer (still bloody ace – you have magnificent taste), and add something a bit sexy to your record (or MP3) collection…

Meanwhile, any internet savvy types may have noticed that Sam Isaac has been somewhat dominating the blogosphere this week, with a whole heap of blogs getting involved with the awesome remixes crafted by James Yuell and Rod Thomas. MP3 Hugger, Zombie Attack, Alter the Press, indierocker.net are just some of the gents in the know.

Also, exciting news to come in the next few days as Alcopop have signed one of THE hottest properties right now, to release his [a gender-based clue there] debut single before the end of the year… Oh, and I’m currently in some form of musical infatuation (as if I wasn’t already) with Andrew WK – whose gig on Saturday was magnificent, and saw me pop backstage to talk to great man himself, and be gifted with a number of his beers. What a gent…