Paul Botterell

Yes I missed out the first time around but happened to be online when the second batch dropped. Pure luck.

I went for the vinyl and a cd on the day it started. Then went a bit nuts and got my daughter one of Johanna's knitted hats. She's 10, also called Joanna and has been telling her friends she's getting a hat made by a 'rock princess' as she calls her. ❤️

Looking forward to it. Loved the previous work.

That looks awesome. I liked both singles so I'm looking forward to getting this when it comes out.

While reading an article on Darkwoods My Betrothed I read that the band, 'Furthest Shore' was a kind of spin off focusing on the 'Viking Metal' side of music they were creating. Not sure if this is true or not but some of the members are in both bands. I'm not a massive fan of the growling style used by Darkwoods but do like the cleaner vocals in Furthest Shores music so I tracked down and ordered their only full album 'Chronicles of Hethenesse, Book 1: The Shadow Descends'. €1.77 plus €5 postage from Russia 😀 Good old 'Discogs', always a fun source of harder to find CDs. As Tuomas is on this album I thought I would give it a try.

I was listening to several of her tracks on YouTube last night. Her Metallica cover is beautifully done.

My daughter used to get scratches on her xbox disks to the point they would no longer play. Our local gaming chain store, imaginatively called 'Game', had a polishing machine. They used to charge a pound per disc and the process took around 20 minutes but it usually worked. It ground away a thin layer of the plastic top surface of the disc. This could only be done once or twice before the top surface would be entirely ground away but seemed to work. Unfortunately, now most games are digital downloads, they seem to have removed the machines. I know there are hand versions of the same thing but can't say how effective they are. Toothpaste is a very fine abrasive. In the UK we have a car polish called 'T-Cut'. This is also a fine abrasive that removes surface oxidisation from car paint and can polish out fine scratches. Again, I'm not sure how effective this is on CD's but I have heard of people using it.

Thats just awesome to hear. I love the way Nightwish promoted them, several other fan pages for other bands were mentioning this album also.

@FugaziTuomas and Troy spoke about wanting Auri to play in 'Castles and Cathedrals' in the UK. If that ever happened I'd probably follow them round the country. 😁

Yeah I really feel for these guys and girls. I'm a draughtsman so my job just moved from my office to my house for the last 2 years. The crew have had nothing. I would be really interested in a second album. I was genuinely impressed with the first one. I think I heard it charted quite high in Finland also. (I may be wrong here). It wouldn't surprise me though, in a 'metal country' 🤘

As I understand it 'jigs' and also 'reels' are traditional folk music standards and form the basis of many tunes. The repeating part of Elvenjig, once they all get going, is certainly a jig. Iona, and just about every other traditional folk band, would have some form of jig in their music.

I love Johanna's voice in everything I have heard her do. From her solo stuff, Auri, The Eye of Melian and she was also great on Tuomas's Scrooge Mc Duck album. Even my car loved that album. The CD player refused to eject it for weeks. 🤣

@Ocean SoulI have heard similar figures quoted for streaming revenue. It is a very secretive business model and they are reluctant to tell people how much they pay artists. This also leads me to believe they do not pay very much. I still use spotify as my car CD player has a mind of it's own and at best, stops playinga CD or endlessley jumps. At worst it refuses to eject the disk. I have my phone connected by wire instead. What I have stopped doing though is using spotify instead of buying physical copies. I like receiving random packages through the post, occasionally I forget something I had on pre-order which makes a nice surprise. I would love to be able to go to a local record store and search the racks but we just don't have one. We have 'HMV' which is a national chain that I support when I can but their stock is centred around the charts. This is where your store and others like it come into their own. Last night I decided to search your store for quite obscure, local, English artists. Plus a couple that are not so obscure and I was quite shocked at the stock you have. Seth Lakeman. A folk music singer songwriter from my actual city, Plymouth. You have 10 results! Greenslade. A really obscure English prog rock band that stopped recording 20 years ago. 9 Results. The Ozric Tentacles. Instrumental Space Rock band based approx 70km from my house. 22 results. Hawkwind. Not so obscure. Based approx 50km from my house. 74 results. With the exception of a couple of Hawkwind albums none of this is available to me locally. This is why I get a little over enthusiastic when I find such well stocked stores like yours. There are some really good ones in the UK I can, and do, mail order from as well, but they don't carry much Scandinavian and Finnish music so I shop around.

Love this album, they have done an awesome job. I wanted a tee-shirt but they only had smaller sizes left and a pie enthusiast like me would not fit in one of them. 🤣 Got one for my daughter though and she loves it. It was good to be able to support the crew, even if it was only in this small way. Without them we have no shows at all.

@Ocean SoulHi, I'm new here and didn't realise you worked there. It makes no difference to my feedback though, always had great service. Feel free to share my comments with your supervisor. If they would like a more formal review written for your store website let me know and I will be happy to write something. I always try to let people in the UK know I have had good service from sites around the world because some people here are worried about getting hit with import duty etc. I've never had a problem with this from the Finland stores as they all seem to add on the correct UK taxes at checkout. Some of what Marko said in his retirement letter regarding the music industry hit me hard. I had been very reliant on Spotify and other streaming services. Last year I started buying a lot more physical releases of music I liked on CD and especially vinyl. Also supporting real record stores and band merch sites as opposed to Amazon. This led me to the Nightwish part of Backstage Rockshop and then your store. I also bought second hand music from several sellers in Finland through the 'Discogs' website. Everyone I have dealt with in Finland over the last 12 months have been awesome. Efficient, friendly and a pleasure to talk to. What a goldmine Record Shop X is though. I know the stock is spread over several shops but I could happily spend hours going through the racks. That used to be a Saturday morning ritual in the UK in the 1990s for me. We had 5 or 6 independent stores in my city alone. I only have a national chain store near me and they only sell UK chart music and a few Metallica albums etc. I'm rambling now 🤣 If your supervisor would like a review let me know.