The Full Time Hobby label will have been on the go for ten years by the time October 2014 rolls around so needless to say celebratory activities are on the cards.

The following gigs will take place in London along with the release of the two disc compilation album What The Hell Are You Doing?, featuring cover art from David Shrigley (track listing at the bottom of this article).

14th Oct: Timber Timbre @ Shepherds Bush Empire

16th Oct: Tunng & Diagrams @ Purcell Room (Southbank Centre)

17th Oct: Erland & The Carnival @ Purcell Room (Southbank Centre) 

19th Oct: The Leisure Society perform The Sleeper & Smoke Fairies @ QEH (Southbank Centre)

All shows are dedicated to the memory of Benjamin Curtis (Sept 23, 1978 – Dec 29, 2013)

Inspired by such classic independents as Elektra, Sub Pop, Creation and Rough Trade, Full Time Hobby began in 2004 with the aim of releasing music it truly loved and that needed its support. Featuring songs from Tunng, The Hold Steady, Malcolm Middleton, The Leisure Society, White Denim, Erland & The Carnival, Smoke Fairies and many more plus that special David Shrigley artwork What The Hell Are You Doing?: A Full Time Hobby Tenth Anniversary Compilation is a true declaration of independence.

What The Hell Are You Doing? tracklisting:-

Disc 1

    Viva Voce – Alive With Pleasure                   
    Autolux – Turnstile Blues                               
    Tunng – Bullets                                                          
    Malcolm Middleton – We’re All Going To Die                       
    White Denim – Let’s Talk About It                 
    School of Seven Bells – Iamundernodisguise 
    The Hold Steady – Massive Nights                 
    Fujiya & Miyagi – Knickerbocker                  
    The Accidental – Wolves                                
    Micah P. Hinson – When We Embraced                      
    Erland & The Carnival – Trouble In Mind      
    The Leisure Society – Last of the Melting Snow          

Disc 2

    Timber Timbre – Demon Host                        
    Hooded Fang – Tosta Mista                            
    The Magnetic North – Rackwick                    
    Diagrams – Antelope                                      
    Cheek Mountain Thief – Cheek Mountain      
    Braids – Freund                                                          
    Seams – Punch                                                           
    Omega Male – Testosterone                            
    Pinkunoizu – Moped                                      
    Samantha Crain – For The Miner                    
    Smoke Fairies – Eclipse Them All                  
    The John Steel Singers – Common Thread     
    Dralms – Crushed Pleats        

Full Time Hobby also have albums from The John Steel Singers (July 28) and Erland & The Carnival (August 25) coming out.                          

A solid and weightier release from the girls of Smoke Fairies this time and ‘Three Of Us’ is a fantastic track, with its swooning vocals and simple but effective guitar solos. Whilst the video for that song looks to have been filmed by the sea either in East Anglia or along the south coast, it is the flat, near featureless landscapes passed through by train in a few sequences within it that the album as a whole seems to identify with. A sense of being in between one thing ending and another beginning pervades the work viz the line “There’s a version of the future hanging close above my head, but I can’t get to it” in track number nine, ‘Version Of The Future’.

It’s not often either that you hear falling in love being mentioned as something of a negative (unless maybe you’re reading some Michel Houellebecq) but, in ‘Take Me Down When You Go’, “something dies” when you do so. Not that that’s to say the tone of the work overall is negative. An almost childish curiosity about the world and what wonders one’s journey through it will hold seems to be the overarching theme of the album. The folkier elements of the duo’s sound are still very evident throughout but added to those is a heft of a darker hue, albeit one on a par with that found in a Grimm fairy tale.

This release then represents a significant step forward in the development of the talents behind it and should by rights raise the pair’s standing in the awareness of the wider music buying public in the coming months.