INTRO
Due in June, a lavish eight-disc ‘book set’ will chart the early days of Bruce Soord’s melancholic progressive rock group, with plenty of bonus material fleshing out their story.
IF IT’S OUT THERE, IT’S IN HERE
The Pineapple Thief are releasing what’s being billed as the first in a series of lavish, limited-edition book sets cataloguing the band’s 24-year career to date.
Out on Kscope on June 23, the eight-disc set How Did We Find Our Way – 1999-2006 begins with Bruce Soord’s debut, one-man work under that name, 1999’s Abducting The Unicorn, and culminates with fifth album Little Man. Soord has also unearthed over 80 minutes of rare bonus material for the release, and unseen photos for the accompanying booklet.
“[Kscope co-founder] Tony Harris first put the idea to me,” Soord tells Prog,“and because they’re really, really good at doing these lavish, collectible box set things I said,‘Great, let’s do it!’We went right back to the start when I was with [prog label] Cyclops.”
Back then, Cyclops’ leading artist was prog band Vulgar Unicorn. Label owner Malcolm Parker offered to release a TPT album, but Soord recalls there was a condition:“He wanted the album title to refer to Vulgar Unicorn, so I ended up calling it Abducting The Unicorn, which is the most progtastic name you could think of! [It was reissued as Abducted At Birth in 2017.] But it was either that or he wasn’t going to put it out. In 1999 it was amazing to have a CD that was actually going to be distributed. It was a big deal for me.”
The book set continues with second album One Three Seven, 2003’s Variations On A Dream and 8 Days, a record Soord wrote and recorded in that time span that same year. With The Pineapple Thief getting requests to play live (including at the Marillion Weekend) he brought together bassist Jon Sykes, guitarist Wayne Higgins, drummer Keith Harrison and keyboardist Matt O’Leary. They contributed to 2004’s 12 Stories Down.“But I didn’t like it,” recalls Soord,“so I re-did it as 10 Stories Down in 2005, and that’s the one that’s on this set.”
After the other eight-day writing proj
