We've also released this compact little sampler which is available as a free or name your price download, and features one song from each of the first twelve label releases which will no doubt whet your appetite enough to make you want to go out and buy the lot of them.
Respected New Zealand music journalist Graham Reid has developed a bit of an Active Listener habit and has reviewed a number of our releases as well as running this lengthy interview with me on his popular "Elsewhere" website. Worth a read for those who want a bit of background on the label and the Active Listener blog.
We can also offer you this sneak preview of the cover art in progress for one of the next releases in the "Active Listener Introduces" series from Chicago's fabulous psychedelic rockers The Luck of Eden Hall. The band's own Gregory Curvey furnishes their sleeves in lovingly ornate fashion and we look forward immensely to seeing what the finished article will look like. We've already heard what it sounds like, and it's a killer.
"Plenty of activity afoot in the active listener camp not least with the appearance of a handful of digital releases the first of which by White Candles had us bedevilled by the occasional swoon through repeat listens. A five track affair entitled ‘flowers for delia’ is awash in psychedelic carousels (‘astral projections’ – think Jarre meets John Baker) and hallucinogenic fairground fayre, steeped in yesterdays sound of 60’s psych pop children tomorrow albeit as though embarked upon progian odysseys of supersister proportions (‘tire-moi des mes reves’) and dimpled in the woozy TV spy themed dream dinked kookiness of Grainger and Astley as on the neo futuristic Broadcast lite ‘behold! the abstract eye’, we were occasioned to recall the surreal flights of fancy of giant paw and the murmurs of Irma of old but scratched upon repeat listens beneath the lysergic surface layers the mercurial haze of the ooberman swirls to the fore especially on the lysergic dream coat enchantment visited upon by the summer sighing ‘monolith’. for us though best of the quintet is by some distance ‘altar hexes’ given it arrives seasoned in loopy kooky Hammond serenades and smoked with a weird ear Floyd / Barrett hazy vibe."
We'll have the digital release of the debut album from Edinburgh's Green Tambourine Band very soon too. If you're a fan of "Revolver" or the early Love albums (who isn't?) then you're going to love it.
Here's a tour poster by Martin Butler for their support slots with Ample Play's Sudden Death of Stars on March 1st and 2nd. Space monkey.
And while we're going to give you a few weeks at least to catch your breath and soak up what we've released so far, you can rest assured that in the very near future we have releases lined up for you from the U.S, the U.K, Australia, Norway, Switzerland and who knows where else? So stay tuned..............
