Well that was 2012, not a bad year’s work.
We kicked it off in style with the release of Chris Devotion & The Expectations’ rocket-fuelled debut album, 'Amalgamation & Capital'. It’s no thrills, pedal-to-the-floor punk has been immensely well received scoring high on album-of-the-year polls, Jockrock (#22), The Herald (#10), Scottish BAMS (#9), A New Band A Day (#3), Elba Sessions (#3). Good work.
March saw the release of Conor Mason's, 'Standstill', his first offering for Armellodie and third album in total. Crowned album of the year by notable blogger and writer for State Magazine Barry Gruff. In his words;
"It is permeated by an air of richness, comforting tranquillity and shrouded in melancholy. Standstill is a slow burner and requires patience, understanding and repeated listens to be fully appreciated. Standstill is a beautiful, simplistic and assured album and sometimes that is quite enough."
We couldn’t put it better really.
Onto the summer and the entrance of The Pure Conjecture to the Armellodie fold with their lushly crafted oddity 'Courgettes'. We say “oddity” as the record appeared to baffle at times but in truth the songs are quite classic sounding, shimmering with melody and harmony and exquisite musicianship. Rocksucker named the album in their Top 100 of the year and singer-songwriter/good guy Chris T-T had the album in his top 10.
October saw the return of Cuddly Shark with their 'Body Mass Index' EP, whetting the appetite for the new album, 'The Road To Ugly' out at the end of next month. Keep an eye out for that, it’s a wee cracker.
With winter upon us we scarfed up and released the debut album from Edinburgh’s Trapped Mice, 'Winter Sun' which has also met with great acclaim from the muso brigade polls; Is This Music (#3), Tidal Wave of Indifference (#16), The Herald (#35), Jockrock (#4), 17 Seconds (#4) , God Is In The TV (#97) and in the Top 20 best sellers of the year from Avalanche too.
Having heard the band getting better and better over the past few years with their self-released EPs, it was nice to see the album leap and bound into a new sense of confidence and ultimately epic song-writing.
As the dark nights were well and truly in, we put out The Douglas Firs second record, 'The Furious Sound' earlier this month. With support from Gideon Coe on BBC6 and glowing write-ups from the likes of The Skinny and Scotland On Sunday the album is in our humble opinion, somewhat of a master work. Dark and grizzly but tantalising with it. Even though it was a very, very late release the album still managed to hit on some end of year polls, namely Tidal Wave of Indifference (#11), Jockrock (#15) and The Herald (#47).
So there you have it, 2013 is already shaping up nicely, we’ll spill all soon enough. In the meantime don’t forget to pick up our free label sampler if you haven’t already. Grab that from HERE.
Happy new year folks and aw the best!
ArmHq.
