Music-mecha And So I Watch You From Afar yesterday revealed details to release their debut album on Smalltown America Records in March 2009. The London/Derry label are directly responsible for some of the most exciting releases of recent years: cuties in this cradle include local heroes along with 65 Days of Static, The Go! Team and Lovvers. The eponymous eleven-track album features their new double-single Set Guitars To Kill/A Little Solidarity and a slew of new material ( Start A Band /Tip Of The Hat, Punch In The Face / If It Ain’t Broke, Break it / Don’t Waste Time Doing Things You Hate / Eat The City, Eat It Whole).

This latest news of signing to Smalltown America adds another layer to a cloud of 2008 activity: moonwalking into orbit with a distinctly soaring brand of urban instrumental rock (someone set a street-fight to I Capture Castles!), mini-albumThis Is Our Machine And Nothing Will Stop It launched from Belfast and strafed the rock press with incredulity. Venturing south before long for gigs in Dublin with ClubAC30 and Galway’s Stress!! in the first half of the year, the ASIWYFA brothers in arms returned to not only record an album but commandeer airwaves - download the new ATL podcast - , festivals, and tour the UK and still found time for madness with mates…and a spot of agriculture. Mhm, rumour has it that Portrussian guitarist Rory and younger bro, Axis Of’s Ewan Friers, have a sprawling old farm they’ve been renovating with friends. Heave-ho!
As a plain ole fan, what makes this band special as opposed to their big friends in the healthy NI pond is their originality. Don’t ask about the war, just listen and hear, it continues all around. No one here is writing songs about Darndale but And So I Watch You From afar made Belfast’s notorious estate Holylands 4am. I heart The Voiceless and want to flee bareback from faery folk with that song ringing in my ears.
They are not conformative, not creating anyone else’s music but their own, not sounding like Cobain or hearing Coheed & Cambria, thinking “I could do that”. It’s genuine.

As an extremely a positive NIMIC conference - even Jim Carroll had a ball - proclaimed a wrap in Mandela Hall last Thursday, this weekend sees ASIWYFA and RADAR present their “fuckload of amazing music” A Little Solidarity festival to Belfast: We Are Knives, Fighting With Wire, LaFaro, Panama Kings and Mojo Fury band together with a host of others to reclaim five venues as the heart of Northern Irish rock. Anyone reading this blog regularly will recognise those names as billboard usual suspects, which is exactly the point, essense, ultimate ethic of A Little Solidarity: these guys work together, a constantly-evolving army.

This is derring-do: independent bands who hear their own sound, work hard at it, present its unapologetic form to the world, let it run free, chase it round the country and over water, stopping for a chat with everyone they meet. People who love their cities and the faces in the crowd, and being a face in a crowd. They rehearse, replay, record, reach out. Sign. It makes you proud. Not only to see the hard work pay off in recognition but in the environment of music itself as more people dance and surge to the front. ASWIYFA prove Irish music is a machine and nothing can stop it.

A Little Solidarity runs from 13-15 November.

And So I Watch You From Afar return to Stress!!in Galway on 21 November and ClubAC30 Dublin on 23. Fuck earplugs!

www.smalltownamerica.co.uk

www.myspace.com/andsoiwatchyoufromafar

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 2:32 pm and is filed under Hurry Up And Release The Damn Album!!, Record Labels, Solidarity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.