DECEMBER 2011
We are making good progress with the new album now and are gearing up late January / early February 2012 release...we'll keep you all posted in the new year. Time to finish wrapping the pressies...laters. In the meantime, new single, 'Shell Island' is available to download on Bandcamp now.
NOVEMBER 2011
New single 'This Town' was released on Monday 19th September and is available to download here. The new album 'Memory Lake' is due to be released this Winter. This track provides just a small flavour of what's on the new album. It's very different to Satellites and we think it's a lot better, too! We will be releasing the next single mid-November on Soundcloud. Watch this space...
APRIL 2011
We've just received another nice review for not one, but TWO of our albums...this time on 'Totally Fuzzy' blog, by a guy who's based in Perth, Australia. Nice to see our music gets around. A few years ago, it went no further than the West Midlands.
http://totallyfuzzy.blogspot.com/2011/04/spot-on-shards-of-reason-album-streams.html
MARCH 2011
'SHARDS OF REASON' CONTRIBUTE TRACK TO JAPANESE TSUNAMI FUND CHARITY PROJECT....
OUR TRACK 'MEGA-TSUNAMI' HAS BEEN CONTRIBUTED TO 'RISING JAPAN' - A COMPILATION ALBUM WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM SOUNDCLOUD.COM ARTISTS ALL OVER THE WORLD - ALL PROCEEDS WILL GO TO SHELTERBOX:
http://gnomeattic1.bandcamp.com/album/rising-japan
FEBRUARY 2011
Cracking on with the new album...some very different flavours...but some classic Shards vibes thrown in there, too. We want to make sure every synth, every tom, every plucked string is bang on, so might be a while before anything's up. It's sounding beastly already, though.
We haven't even got a title for this one, yet.
JANUARY 2011
'Isolation' which was recorded in 2008, is now available to download via Bandcamp. Click on the link below to listen.
www.soundcloud.com/shards-of-reason/always-darkest-before-the-dawn
Some free downloads are also available via our Soundcloud page - a BIG THANK YOU for all your support in 2010
DECEMBER 2010
'Satellites' gets 7.5/10 on SIC magazine review - 24/12/2010
CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO CHECK US OUT:
NOVEMBER 2010
Thanks to Beth’s tireless pushing and enthusiasm, ‘Satellites’ is now available to download on iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby, Lastfm and most other music-download sites across the planet. She is responsible for what was in my head now being in yours (and on your hard-drive, if you’ve been kind enough to purchase any or all of it) and I wouldn’t have been inspired to write what’s on the album in the first place without her. This is undoubtedly the fastest completion of any Shards album, although, in fairness, the previous two were recorded slowly purely because of time and logistical problems.
As the new studio is set up where I live, access is available to me morning, noon and night. We’re trying to get review copies out to as many places as we can and Bethels is looking at plugging us with radio stations.
In every area of my life, I don’t know what I’d do without her. And, in my usual way of working, I already have four or five (or maybe six) ideas at varying stages of development for the next album. We will, of course, keep you updated. Thanks for reading, thanks for listening and thanks for buying.
OCTOBER 2010
Hello Folks! Phil here...
If you've been listening to Shards' music over the last few years, you'll know that the band's profile has been lower than the hygiene standards of a goat for 2 years or so. This has been due to a multiplicity of causes, most of them personal, some of them musical, some of them a heady cocktail of the two.
The sharper-eyed among you might notice that the line-up has changed; Brian McCarthy is no longer part of the Shards set up, having decided that he didn't see himself making a wholehearted or worthwhile contribution to our output beyond "Isolation". For my money, the stuff he did on the first two Shards albums are the best things he's ever played anywhere with anybody.
Brian, if you're reading this, then this is a public "thank you" for everything, not least for being my friend for so long.New kid on the block is Beth Freeman; as well as adding some of her vocals and percussion programming to some of the new project, Beth's also responsible for working on the re-design of this main site and, most importantly, for hustling/kicking/slapping me into getting into action and recording again.
The studio is now in my new abode, allowing access to it at any time (and for as long as) I like and, as a result, the new album, "Satellites", has steadily fallen together track by track - it's an idea I've had in mind since way, way before we finished the recording of "Isolation".
Being the astronomy geek that I am, I wanted to do an album inspired by the moons of our solar system (sort of an answer to Holst's "Planet Suite"). They're endlessly fascinating - much more so than the planets they orbit, because these natural satellites have the potential to harbour some form of life, even if that life is at a microbial level (or, as is possibly/theoretically the case under the ice of both Enceladus and Europa, a more complex form of marine life).
And they're still being discovered - the Cassini probe recently found Saturn's 61st moon, which is the subject of the recently uploaded track "New Moon Hidden In The Rings". It has yet to be named.
I hope you enjoy our new material and, if this is your first venture into Shards territory, I hope you enjoy the older music, too.
Phil
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