- Music
- 28 Oct 09
The Belfast band (ASIWYFA for short) has been chosen as their main act for the annual festival, Europe's most important live music industry event.
This could mean big things for ASIWYFA - as a direct result of the Eurosonic Festival last year, Fight Like Apes, RTÉ 2fm's nomination, were booked to play at six major festivals including Glastonbury, Benicassim and T in the Park.
The festival, held in Groningen in North Holland, has collaborated with the Eurosonic Partnership radio stations for 11 years now to make what is now the live music mecca for bands on the rise.
ASIWYFA will play on Friday 15 January 2010 at VERA, truly one of Europe's legendary rock clubs, and Jenny Huston will introduce their show live from Holland on RTÉ 2fm.
To say ASIWYFA are a serious live act is a massive understatement, with 165 live shows from Derry to Kiev this year alone. Their self titled first album has received reviews like this from NME, “the sound of someone crashing an oil tanker through Sigur Ros's ice floe" or "if Mogwai had grown up in a conflict raped war-zone, they'd probably sound like ASIWYFA".
Guitarist Rory Friars commented: "It's a privilege to be involved with Eurosonic this year, we're looking forward to bringing our noise to the continent again."
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Eurosonic 2010 will host 160 bands in 28 plus venues playing to 18,000 fans in Groningen over 14 and 15 January. Dozens of booking agents, radio and TV stations and 2,600 music professionals will also be there to attend the shows and the100 or so panel discussions at the festival conference.
Listeners all over Europe can listen live on the web to all the shows as they happen and most of the shows will be on air within a few weeks all over Europe. Fans can also listen back to the performance online at 3fm, Dutch national radio, from Monday 17 January. Further details on how to listen live and listen back afterwards are on RTÉ 2fm's Eurosonic webpage.
Previous acts at Eurosonic have included Franz Ferdinand, White Lies, Soulwax, Hot Gossip, Peter, Björn & John, The View, Young Knives, Ting Tings, Alphabeat and Irish acts like Fight Like Apes, The Coronas, Cathy Davy, JJ 72, Bell X1, Duke Special, The Chalets.
Aside from this, the European Commission and The EBU host The European Border Breakers Awards, EBBAs, a full live TV show hosted by Jools Holland recognizing new acts achieving significant airplay and sales outside their own country. RTÉ 2fm listeners can vote online for the acts they want to see perform at the EBBA show and in doing so could win a trip to Eurosonic 2010.