We seem like the boys who cry wolf. Every year is 'the best', every time you ask we'll claim the scene is 'as healthy as it's ever been'. Truth is, or at least our theory is - things have been gradually getting better over the last ten years. While we still await some kind of conclusive scene explosion that, in our head at least, would make Belfast some kind of genuine musical capital – 2012 has been, you’ve guessed it, the best.
Whether you agree or not, it's certainly been an adventerous twelve months for us at ATL. We've always said our show can only be as good as the music we're playing and the bands we chat to - and this year we've been spoilt rotten in that regard. To illustrate - a month by month guide to music in Northern Ireland. Or at least how we've represented it with our weekly music and musings on BBC Radio Ulster.
JANUARY
We eased ourself into the year as we always do, making the most of a relatively quiet month for gigs and incident by getting to know a few bands a little better.
EatenByBears,
Mojo Gogo,
David C Clements and
Katharine Phillipa were all relative new to the ATL playist, each of them going on to be key acts in 2012.
While ATL got in a lather about what was to come, we did brielfy look to the past with Donna Legge joining Rigsy at the end of the month to celebrate ten years since the two presented the first show of a new look ATL back in 2002! What a treat it was to play Torgas Valley Reds, Oppenheimer, The Thrills and a whole host of unforgotten gems from our recent history!
FEBRUARY
Things began to heat up a little. ATL watched
A Plastic Rose open for
Snow Patrol at The O2 Arena in London (which is, to be fair, quite a big venue) and celebrated the release of two notable albums - the second from
The Jane Bradfords and the thirteenth from
Therapy?.
The (all too brief) return of In Case of Fire was marked with multiple plays of 'The Cleansing' while Axis Of revealed early details of their debut album which is, we're frustrated to say, still waiting to see the light of day. Two Glass Eyes increased the level of volume on the ATL playlist while Captain Kennedy gave us 'Paper Cuts', one of our tracks of the year. Meanwhile, for The Big List, we raved about the 'maiden city', bigging up the likes of Droids, Ryan Vail, Furlo and Conor Mason.
MARCH
March kicked off with our build up to
The Choice Music Prize - a kind of Irish take on The Mercurys. We were delighted to find three of the ten nominated albums were from northern acts -
ASIWYFA,
The Japanese Popstars and (bookies favourite)
Cashier no9. But despite Rigsy being one of ten judges and no doubt fighting the corner of all three, the spoils went to
Jape. To be fair, 'It's Shadow Won't Make Noise' from the winning album really is a bit special.
Rigsy as drawn by Katharine Philippa.
While
Little Bear got their first play on ATL in March, the entire month was won by Portadown's Katharine Phillipa. Her session on March 26th remains one of ATL's finest as the one woman band gave us a trio of gorgeous and heartbreaking moments. Her mash up of Labrinth, Lana Del Ray and Gotye will forever be among the most jawdropping moments in our show's entire history. Even her drawing of our Rigsy, done so she could 'see him' during the interview segments despite being at the piano in studio 8D, was a little bit….different.
