we have plenty going on right now. you'd expect us to, i guess, what with a new album coming out. we thought it'd be a good idea to let you know about it all.
plus we have some more great pictures from our album launch that we didn't put up last time.
(that's steven finn rocking the blues, for example).
firstly, there's the re-release of 'honeysuckle' to consider. this this the album that was nominated for a BBC radio 2 folk award in 2002, and that we have re-packaged and are about to offer for free download alongside the rest of the catalogue in the hoboshop. this is, in part, to mark the re-recording of 'bliss' on no.5 and celebrate the way the listeners and reviewers have all enjoyed discovering or re-discovering this older material. the two recordings are quite different, the new (live) version featuring the wonderful christopher cundy on saxello.
for the launch we were lucky enough to have mr will lenton of the caulbearers to provide some velvety tenor sax.
the album is a little shorter than its first release, but does feature a bonus track that's not on the original version. this is a recently 'discovered' rendition of the title track from the lost album 'little things', recorded for ugly man records in 2000 and never released. it makes for surprisingly good listening, we think.
the new artwork is related to this track. we went back to our good friend peter seal, who designed the original cover for 'little things', and he showed us some of his early sketches for the project, which we thought were just fabulous. a quick bit of editing on his part (he's a biro wizard) and we had the new 'honeysuckle' cover to sit in the window of your chosen media player.
our other activity of interest around release-time is the fact that we have been invited to edit the spiral earth music website for a week starting on march 15th. this is a site we've contributed blogs and articles to before, and who have run some great features, interviews and profiles on us and on other hobopop bands, so we're really excited about the project.
we don't want to say too much right now, but we can guarantee that there will be plenty of varied, interesting and eccentric things to wrap your eyes and brains around. the other thing we promise right away is that the guding principle of our editorship is that all content will be artist-generated, so expect articles from us, from k c mckanzie, myshkin, kreg viesselman, caulbearers, the little red rabbit collective, quiet loner etc, etc... all artists with an interesting and thought provoking take on their worlds, a sense of humour and a connection to what we do at hobopop.
if you don't already subscribe to the spiral earth RSS feed we'd recommend it, and not just for what we'll be putting up there in a week or so. theirs is a site with many hidden treasures.
will and rob turner (a drummer shared by the hobopop collective and caulbearers these days) having some down-time during the no.5 album launch soundchecks.
so as usual we're very busy, but of course that's a good thing to be. we're just getting into the first shows of the tour, too, and really enjoying ourselves. the sets and songs are feeling great right now.
we'll leave you with the final installment of our 'wall of 5' competiton. we're quite pleased with the way it turned out in the end, and by the sheer number of 5s in the world... we've got a modest 120 here. note that that's number divisible by 5, seems a good place to stop.
so the winners of the 'best 5' competition? they are hilly of hebden bridge for her scarf 5 in the snow, and susan esway, the dutch cat for her hand-painted effort. they each receive a copy of the new album.
