Avalanche Album Club – What you get !
I’ve been getting asked a lot for more info on the album club so here briefly is a little more for those interested. The club is not monthly as such we just pick a release when we find something we think our members will be interested in. Most of our choices are Scottish artists but not exclusively. We have championed Withered Hand, Meursault, Broken Records, There Will Be Fireworks, Kid Canaveral, Conquering Animal Sound, Savings and Loan and many other Scottish bands. Our latest big success has been Star Wheel Press.
Having said that we have also chosen The Flowers of Hell from Canada and Farewell Poetry from Paris. Many of these bands provided extra EPs for their releases. We have included samplers from labels including Domino, Sub Pop, Fat Cat as well as local labels such as Song by Toad. The Saving and Loan album came with a copy of Martin Donnelly’s poems while the Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat album we chose came with a signed card. We don’t run the club to make a profit (probably a mistake !) but rather to showcase artists whose work we feel our members will appreciate. Our patron is Ian Rankin and it was his support along with Lauren Laverne that first brought Star Wheel Press to the public’s attention.
Our first choices of 2012 will be a bumper 3 packages all together. We did a similar thing at the end of 2010 that was very popular. While our main choices will still be artists we are hoping to bring to a wide audience there will be more “high profile” extras from those artists and labels we have supported over the years. These will be for album club members only and not available in the shop as they will only be able to be made available on a “promotional purposes only” basis. Many will be current but some will stretch back more than 30 years. I would love to say more but I can’t !
Finally there will be several Avalanche compilation CDs including one covering the history of Scottish music, one for current Avalanche favourites and one looking to the future. You can join by coming in the shop or online by scrolling down to the bottom of our shop page http://www.avalancherecords.co.uk/products-page/