Scottish Rock band Biffy Clyro took the opportunity of Joe Biden’s election victory yesterday to promote their latest album release ‘A Celebration of Endings,’ with a post on their Instagram profile. The wry comment leaves no doubt as to the band’s feeling towards the departure of Donald Trump from The White House while also giving fans a chance to check out their latest work who may have missed its release in August in the midst of Britain’s first coronavirus lockdown coming to an end.
The album features 11 new tracks from the Simon Neil fronted band who emerged in the early 2000s with an alternative sound informed equally by 90s Grunge, anthemic hardcore and time signature diverse progressive rock. Tracks on the album include ‘Tiny Indoor Fireworks,’ ‘Space,’ and ‘Instant History,’ and manages to impress throughout despite the circumstances overshadowing its release.
The album reached UK number one making it the third of theirs to receive such accolade. According to the Official Charts, writing in August this year, the album had clocked ‘26,000 chart sales (…) including 8,000 copies on vinyl.’ Placing the Scottish Alt-Rockers decidedly at the heart of Britain’s vinyl revival which has being growing for a number of years now.
The reasons for the revival of vinyl in Britain are complex and many but can largely be put down to a frustration with declining audio quality in recording mediums which comes with increasing levels of compression, with the harshest culprit being the super-compressed MP3 which is used for online streaming or downloads. Many music fans find that Vinyl produces a much more pleasing sound and can deliver the true dynamic range and subtitles that the artist really intended.
Furthermore, many are also frustrated with the raw deal dealt to artists, particularly those outside of the mainstream by streaming companies. According to Digital Music News ‘Spotify pays most artists between $.003 and $.005 (one-third of a penny to one-half of a penny) for each stream,’ which for an 11 track album would still only amount to around $0.033-$0.055 per person who streams the entire album once. Therefore, knowing this it is understandable that many fans are willing to opt to purchase a vinyl copy since, according to the American New York Post, vinyl sales generated ‘$416.2 million in royalty revenue,’ in the states.
Biffy Clyro are likely to be well aware of this fact, since vinyl copies of the album are available on their website amongst other physical formats like CD and Cassette. The value of Merch is clearly too a fact not lost on the folks at Biffy Clyro who have made a number of deluxe packages of the album available which include bonus extras like art prints, sheet music, extensive sleeve-notes and drawings plus more. In fact, Simon Neil even has his own signature guitar people up for sale on the website too.
Biffy Clyro are due to begin touring in support of the album in April next year, full UK dates are as follows:
11/04/2021 – University (Mountford Hall) – Liverpool
12/04 – O2 Forum Kentish Town – London
13/04 – Corn Exchange – Cambridge
15/04 – O2 Academy – Sheffield
16/04 – O2 Guildhall – Southampton
17/04 – O2 Academy – Bristol
05/06 – Download Festival – Derby
25/06 – Bellahouston Park – Glasgow
