Just a brief missive to send holiday wishes and to thank you all for your emails, cards, and letters asking after Andrew. I apologise for not posting an update much sooner, but the news is good. Andrew continues to recover well.

We expect to have Camel's next DVD "Opening Farewell" available in the near future. We still can't say when, but Andrew and Denis are working on it daily now, and progress is steady.

We get to close the year on an exciting and high note. Recently, Camel were invited to appear as special guests at the High Voltage Festival in London this coming July, and we are seriously considering it. He would want to do a small string of shows, not just the one, so before we can say definitively, we have to work out the logistics and be sure Andrew is fit for the demands of a live show. The decision must be made by early spring, so it won't be long before we say 'yay' or 'nay' .

For now, we send our very best wishes for health and contentment. This year-ending, we'll light our Hour Candle for this good life we have. There is no greater gift than health. It is the pot of gold at Rainbow's End.

Shortly before the end of the year we don’t want to miss thanking you after this eventful year and wishing you wonderful Christmas holidays. Because all of you have been presenting us with very special moments like the unforgettable DVD- production of “The RPWL LIVE experience” in Katowice / Poland, or the phenomenal “Animals”- Tour through Europe, where we had the chance to share the best Songs of Pink Floyd’s history with you. This is the reason, why we want to provide you with some exclusive Insider- Info for the upcoming year. Because we’ve planned a lot for the 10th anniversary of RPWL:

In March we will be releasing our Jubilee- Album, which serves as a review and a preview at the same time with a double- CD: Whilst one CD contains a mix of the best RPWL- Songs of the last 10 years, the other CD will present a new side of RPWL- the acoustic one. Many old songs, but also new ones will be interpreted in an acoustic way. Therefore we will have renowned guest musicians on our side, which have to be kept very secret right now. But also the ones who think, that RPWL will only bask in memories in the next year, will be surprised.

In the second part of the year we will be releasing a brand new RPWL- Album, which is already in the songwriting phase. But this will be more precise after the finish of the Anniversary- Tour in March / April. Enclosed you will find all the details about the tour.

On this note we once again want to wish you a peaceful and silent Christmas 2009 with all your beloved and are looking forward to all the things that will be coming in 2010.

Things may seem quiet on your side, but believe us, things are pretty frantic on ours. The new album will be released on April 5th on Kscope (USA will follow shortly afterwards). The album is complete apart from the final mixing and mastering session booked in over the Christmas period. The first pressing will be a limited run featuring bonus tracks. The album which originally sparked Kscope's interest - Little Man - is finally being re-issued and is available now to pre-order. The release features a new cover design and has been completely re-mixed and re-mastered by Bruce and Steve. In other news we have setup a special remix page on our website. Here you can audition tracks and download stems. If we get enough mixes back that cut the mustard it is likely these will be released in some shape for form in the near future. We will definitely feature the best ones on our website. We welcome any genre and nothing is too radical for us. There is no specific deadline at the moment. The Thief will be making their final visit to their spiritual home, the Half Moon in London on Saturday January 23rd 2010. It's looking like the venue will be forced to close shortly afterwards so it's probably the last time to catch the band up close in their favourite place. The band have also been booked to play Nearfest (USA) in June with a European tour planned later in 2010. To get the latest info and tickeks please click HERE. On behalf of the band, we'd like to thank you all for support during 2009. See you in 2010!
The Pineapple Thief Team

A new YouTube video has been uploaded (shown below) - it's a new live version of 'John Deth' which is one of the older Karda Estra tunes and was originally released on the album 'Thirteen From The Twenty First.' You can hear the original studio recording HERE. The piece was originally inspired by the painting 'John Deth' by Edward Burra which can be viewed HERE.


Musicians are: Richard Wileman - classical guitar and composer, Jemima Palfreyman - piano, Amy Hedges - clarinet. Recorded at Jemima's house on 29th December 2009.

ROABP (Residents Of A Blank Planet) Service would like to apologise for any confusion caused by the announcement of tickets for the Porcupine Tree concert at the Royal Albert Hall. The band’s management were initially informed that the concert would be announced in January and that tickets would go on sale early in 2010 (between mid January- mid February).

For reasons entirely beyond the band’s control, this special concert was publicised much earlier than expected and ticket sales were subsequently scheduled to be sold from the 29th of December onwards. This meant that ROABP and the band were forced to announce the sale of their allocation of tickets much sooner than intended. In doing so it was discovered that the ‘Arena’ tickets were being sold as ‘Seated’ when the band had asked for them to be ‘Standing’. It also meant that there was no time to work out VIP packages as originally had been planned. Consequently, the idea of a VIP package was dropped.

While we attempt to clarify the situation, we have removed the remaining tickets from sale, though the Royal Albert Hall and other ticket agencies have continued to sell their share of tickets. If you joined the Residents of a Blank Planet service over the last few days in anticipation of a VIP package, please contact support at burningshed dot com to ask for a refund.

Apologies again for the confusion – we will update you as soon as we have more information.

Headphone Dust will soon release the newly recorded Cover Version VI single (but please don’t write in trying to order it yet). This will be the last in the series of CD singles featuring a cover version and an original. In the meantime you can listen to the second track from the single on MySpace page now – of course as always the cover version itself will remain a secret until the CD single is actually released. The plan is for there to be a limited edition box which will house not just CV6 but all of the previous singles too, complete with a picture sleeve for each one. ToneFloat will also release CV5 and CV6 on 7 inch vinyl. More news soon...