We have t-shirts and you should buy one!

Also, coming in March is the Gala Band UK tour. So far we have confirmed Thursday 13th (Buffalo Bar, Cardiff), Friday 14th (George the 2nd, Luton), Saturday 15th (The Social, Nottingham), Monday 17th (Electro Acoustic Club, London). Details and further dates to follow.

Happy new year!

Dreamboat Records will be hosting our very first Christmas Party at Bristol’s The Croft on Thursday December 20.

The back room is the noise/psych/kraut/math room. There will be a headlining set from Geisha, with support from Yellow6 and the triumphant return of Azalea City Penis Club for one night only — their first gig since 2004!

The front room and bar is the party room, with DJ sets from The Rollercoaster Project and Dreamboat DJs Maximum Fun and Maximum Energy playing tunes from Fleetwood Mac, Slayer, Jackson Browne, Jesu, Ike and Tina Turner, Creedence, En Vogue, and lots of Italo.

There will be a merch desk with copies of the entire Dreamboat catalogue (except Hatefield) and the first ever Dreamboat t-shirt, which will be available in a limited edition of 50.

Entry is £5. We’re still organizing tickets, but we figured you’d want to know the date so you can mark it in your filofax. This event will get raw like sushi, so haters to the left.

Dreamboat Records 2008 is the second annual sampler from Dreamboat Records, featuring new material from Dreamboat artists, collaborators and friends. This full-length album is available to buy on CD for £6 from our shop, or as DRM-free MP3s from Bleep.

From our own acts, we have the increasingly wonderful Rollercoaster Project, Robin Allender’s new full band sound, the lovely new Gala Band, and a solo track from Simon Grant (ex-Azalea City Penis Club). We’ve also included Dreamboat collaborations (Yellow6, Kiska) and new stuff we just think is rad (Tom Wilson).

The first three tracks are available as free MP3 downloads here, and you can stream the entire album at Bleep.

Watch out for news of the launch/Christmas party for this record, which will take place on Thursday 20th December and will blow your mind. Details to follow.

Several websites have been kind enough to write about Robin Allender’s debut album The Bird and the Word:

• Stylus have pubished a thoughtful review of The Bird and the Word and Azalea City Penis Club’s The Coffin Years
• Said the Gramophone wrote beautifully about the album
• Shake Your Fist gave it a very favourable mention
• Amelia’s Magazine published a lovely review
• Update: And so did Subba Cultcha

If you know of any more mentions of Robin in the press then please do let us know.

The upshot of all this embarrassingly effusive praise is: the album is great and you should buy it in our shop (or from HMV, Picadilly, Norman Records, Bleep or iTunes).

Don’t forget you can see Robin and his new band play live in London (10 August), Oxford (14 August) or Bristol (18 August and album launch on 7 September).

Azalea City Penis Club’s long-awaited debut and final album, The Coffin Years, is out today.

The Coffin Years is a download-only release, and is available on Bleep.com as CD-quality, DRM-free MP3s with embedded artwork. You can also get it from iTunes if you prefer. (Those are direct links which will take you straight to pages where you can stream the whole album.)

You can read reviews at Subba Cultcha, The White Noise Revisited and Rotten Meats. There are two free MP3s on our website. Tell your friends.

As you’ll know if you subscribe to our mailing list, after a long hiatus, Azalea City Penis Club will be making a very brief, noisy return for the release of their debut and final album The Coffin Years.

The Coffin Years is 45 minutes of noise-metal-kraut-prog-rock recorded in the summer of 2006, best enjoyed without the encumbrance of trousers. The album will be available only as a download from Bleep.com and iTunes. It will be released on May 21st, 2007. In the meantime, you can download MP3s of two of the tracks from our website, stream two more on ACPC’s MySpace, and read the lyrics.

If you like what you hear, don’t forget to sign up to the mailing list to get a reminder and links to Bleep and iTunes when it is released.

Robin Allender has joined Gravenhurst (Warp Records). Allender will be playing bass guitar. Azalea City Penis Club’s Dave Collingwood, is already a member of the Bristol three-piece. Gravenhurst are touring all over the place this year, so keep an eye out for them.

If you can read French, then you may find Le Cargo’s review of their first gig with Allender interesting.

A near-final mix of Allender’s “A Case Of Leaves” also appears on Le Cargo’s Escale #2 free download compilation, along with two Dave Collingwood compositions. “A Case of Leaves” will appear on The Bird and the Word, the forthcoming debut album from Allender, whose release date we expect to announce shortly.

We’ve found a handful more copies of our extremely successful Summer 2006 sampler CD so it’s back in the shop at just £1.50, and — while stocks last — we’re also throwing a free copy in with all purchases of Drone 1.

We sell Drone 1 for £4, but we’re now being undercut by five pence by our friends at Norman Records, who have lovely things to say about the record (“injecting soul into the circuits on the title track with staggering results…”). Of course Norman won’t give you a free summer sampler. The choice is yours!

And finally, Venue, Bristol’s Time Out has published a full page interview with Robin Allender. We’ve put a copy on our website for you to read if you’re not in Bristol. Allender (and band) are playing a headline set this Friday at Bristol’s Folk House. See the live page for more details.

Dreamboat Records’s Summer 2006 is an introduction to the two Dreamboat Records acts who will be releasing their debut records in Autumn 2006: Robin Allender and Azalea City Penis Club. It also features exclusive, brand new solo material from all three members of Azalea City Penis Club.

We all know how much fun it is to get crap in the mail, so we’d be happy to send you a copy of this promotional sampler (for just £1.50 in the UK and £2.50 elsewhere). The artwork is taken from Owen Jones’s The Grammar of Ornament. The CD itself is plain black on both sides, which is completely stupid as it’s almost impossible to tell which side is up. Good times.

For more information see Summer 2006. To pre-order make your way to the shop.

Azalea City Penis Club drummer Dave Collingwood leads a double life. By night he plays in ACPC, but by day he plays in Gravenhurst (Warp Records).

It is in this latter capacity that Dave and Gravenhurst bandmates Nick Talbot and Huw Cooksley are off on tour supporting Belle & Sebastian. Gravenhurst will open from 5th May to 12th May inclusive (France, Germany, the Netherlands) and on 21st, 22nd and 23rd May (Germany). See the Belle & Sebastian website for details.

Needless to say, you should go and see them if you get the chance. In other news, Robin Allender‘s gig at the Louisiana in Bristol this Monday, 8th May, has been rescheduled to Thursday, 11th May with Sebastian Tellier and Amelia Tucker. The headliner for his 19th May gig at Bristol’s Folk House has been confirmed as David Thomas Broughton.