The Granite Shore - Flood of fortune 7" - advance orders

We are now taking advance orders for RHEA7DA006, the new Granite Shore single, Flood of fortune. We expect to have the records in stock within the next fortnight (hopefully next week actually...) As with our previous 7", we will have a limited number of promo CDs available to purchase with the vinyl version at a special price.

There are three basic options for buying the single. You can order the 7" on its own, order it together with a promo CD or purchase it together with one or more of our previous singles.

1) vinyl only
2) vinyl + promo CD
3) as a package with previous Occultation releases

Our new Shop system appears to be working and all links are sent out by e-mail automatically pretty much immediately. If you do run into any problems just drop us a line and we'll sort them out as quickly as we can, but so far we've had no trouble at all.

Introducing... Mr Jonathan Beckett

Occultation Recordings are proud to announce that Jonathan Beckett's She's A Vampire EP will be released worldwide as a digital download on 30th June 2010. The EP is available from the Occultation Shop now and we are also accepting advance orders for the very limited promo CD version.

If you pre-order the promo CD you'll receive the MP3 version immediately either as a link in your browser, in an e-mail or both, via our spanking brand-new automated delivery system and then your CD will be posted out as soon as we get them, which we expect to be early June. Please don't buy both the download AND the promo as there's no need, all physical sales come with free MP3s.

We have tested the new automated delivery but it's early days, so if you come across any problems with it please drop us a line. At present payment via PayPal appears to be working perfectly and links are shown both in your browser (you should see a link saying "IMPORTANT: please click here to download your files" or something similar on the page that appears after you've paid) and in an e-mail sent to you as soon as the payment goes through. Payment via Nochex IS working, but at present only the e-mail seems to be going out, we haven't got the link in browsers working yet. If you don't receive your e-mail please check your spam folders first and then e-mail us if you still can't find it.

Jonathan will be interviewed on BBC Radio Nottingham's The Beat programme tonight. The programme airs between 6 and 10 p.m. although we don't know exactly what time Mr Beckett will be appearing.

I think that's everything. There are plenty more Occultation releases on the way: we'll be taking orders for the new Granite Shore single in a week or two.

Opening the bonnet...

We will shortly be going live with the new version of the Occultation shop. It looks fairly similar but there are some big changes under the bonnet. For a start, you should now receive links to MP3s of the tracks you've purchased (whether you've bought them as MP3s or whether they're free with your vinyl purchase) pretty much immediately, as we've now set up an automatic delivery system.

Hopefully this'll all work like a dream, but if it doesn't please bear with us. We will be monitoring it closely so if you have any problems just drop us a line.

We have found some issues when people pay with Nochex - for some reason the links may not be immediately displayed in your browser. Even so, you should receive these links by e-mail fairly shortly after paying, and we'll be trying to iron this little difficulty out over the next few days.

The first new Occultation release with the new system will be IO7DA005D, which is Jonathan Beckett's She's A Vampire EP, we hope to go live with that later this evening, or if not then by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.

Thanks for your patience, but once this is all set up and properly tested it should improve things for all of us... No more sending out individual links manually for me and no more waiting for you... As a very wise man (Errol Brown actually) once almost put it "Everyone's a winner baby". And that's no lie.

Under the bonnet at the Occultation Shop

Just a word of warning... As we've got a number of new releases coming up and the Occultation is growing rapidly, we're trying to set up a new Shop system so that links to MP3s (for both MP3 and physical purchases) can be sent out immediately and automatically. We started off doing this manually and that was fine to start with but it's starting to get a bit complicated and taking up a lot of time, so we felt we should invest in setting something up to do the work for us. We've purchased a system that should help with this and give you your MP3s within minutes even if it's 3 a.m. in the UK when you purchase but please bear with us over the next few days as we set all this up and test it. I'll post more info on this as we go.

Thanks for bearing with us and rest assured that whatever happens if you pay for something you will get it. If you have any problems just drop us a line.

Interview with Paul Simpson

The excellent Swedish website Throw Me Away has just published an interview with Wild Swans leader Paul Simpson. It's in Swedish but you can always use Google or another automated translation service to get a flavour - not to mention some rather amusing pieces of computerese; though we must stress that this is down to the shortcomings of automatic translation software not the quality of the writing which looks to be top class and shines through some of the rather gnomic utterances spat out by the software - I'm particularly fond of the last paragraph about No Bleeding, which reveals that: "In "No bleeding" is heard only the echo of the champagne glass bowl that was during the party. The piano player for those who have never been awarded any promises, just because they never had any - not even a single - to give in return. For those who are stuck where they were born. It is for them - not for me - like The Wild Swans there." I've written at length about The Wild Swans but I don't think I've ever managed anything as insightful as that. Again, I really, really must stress that this is what you get when machines attempt to translate human language, and especially when that language is well-written and on the poetic side; machines are much better at translating texts about machines...

Anyway, the website itself is highly recommended, they did a piece on the label late last year which you can still read here (again, in Swedish or with comedy software translation).

Wild Swans on Janice Long show on BBC Radio 2

Last night (13/5/10) The Wild Swans performed a live acoustic session on Janice Long's radio show on BBC Radio 2. Janice is a long-time supporter of the band and her enthusiasm was palpable.

Those of you in the UK can still hear the show (for a week) on the BBC iPlayer. A stripped-down band performed acoustic versions of the recent single Liquid Mercury, a track from the forthcoming album called My Town and the title track of their first Sire album Bringing Home The Ashes and Janice chatted with Paul - the two are old friends, of course as the DJ is a native of Liverpool herself.

Janice has also recently been playing Underwater, another track from The Coldest Winter For A Hundred Years.