Hit The North

In some of the more interesting record shops throughout these lands – and further afield, in bubbling hubs like New York, Madrid and Rome – if you flick through certain racks, chances are that you’ll come across a handful of singles bearing the No Dancing imprint.

Since launching in 2000 with Kidd Dynamo’s (still) magnificent ‘I Am A Landslide’, Jimmy Devlin and Terry Laverty’s label has fought a brave, if at times lonely, battle, attempting to provide a life outside the local gig circuit for tunes that deserve a less depressingly mortal fate.
To date, the pair have been responsible for releasing such classy fare as Guided’s ‘Pistols Drawn For Heartbreak At Dawn’, ‘Ocean’ by Desert Hearts and Robyn G. Shiels’ ‘2 Nights In June’. Songs with the kind of galactico ambition that stretches way beyond the water-carrying reach of most of their peers.
Laverty and Devlin’s mixture of natural enthusiasm and canny nous (they run a Sunday night club in Katy Daly’s, promote gigs, and, in Terry’s case, play in a band; in Jimmy’s, produce Across The Line) has seen No Dancing make inroads where other labels have met cul-de-sacs.
“It started off when I was in London working for Radio One,” explains Jimmy. “I love Belfast so much but being in London was just so intense. Every night you were seeing two or three new bands who were all proper contenders, and you were meeting the likes of Geoff Travis, Simon Williams from Fierce Panda and they were all involved, all passionate. There didn’t seem to be any mystery to it and I thought why not try to do the same thing with acts back home. No A&R come over here. There are one or two based here but if they don’t like the act – what’s a band to do? You can hit a glass ceiling pretty quickly – headline The Empire, get on Across The Line – but what next? We can get your record out – get it to radio stations all over the place, get it into shops and that’s a huge thing.”
So far, No Dancing has managed to release eight singles. None of these have added any lining to their pockets, but, taken together, they have established foundations that, with singles due soon from Corrigan and Robyn G. Shiels, are now beginning to pay off.
“Sometimes you sit in the office surrounded by all your unsold records and it’s pretty fucking bleak,” Jimmy admits. “But then you get an order in from Philadelphia or somewhere and it boosts your spirit. It’s starting to feel like we’ve a body of work gathering behind us now, we have really good people doing our press, and we’ve regular fans from all over the place. I was at Reading last year wearing a No Dancing T-shirt and people we’re coming up to me, telling me how much they love the records we’d been putting out. Finally people seem to be realising that although we don’t put that much out, what we do release tends to be quality. There’s a momentum building.”
One of the most valuable (and unexpected) functions provided by the label has been its ability to help with the rehabilitation of acts that had been backed into a creative cul de sac. Desert Hearts and Corrigan are both bands who had found themselves without a deal after releasing promising debut albums. Given Belfast’s lack of infrastructure, this could have proven to be a fatal development in regard to their future prospects. Both, however, have used No Dancing to show that they remain in fine creative fettle.
“Getting a single out reminds people that they’re still about,” says Jimmy, “and more importantly it sometimes even reminds the band themselves that they’ve still got it. Sometimes their confidence can be a bit battered. We’re very lucky to have records by people like that in our locker.”
And there is a strong promise of far more to come. A cursory glance through the No Dancing cast-list shows the involvement of some of the most interesting characters in Belfast music. So long as Jimmy and Terry keep hanging with desperadoes, their label will remain intriguing.
“Someone like Robyn has got more than one level,” smiles Jimmy. “He looks like he should be in a band, acts like he should be in a band, but he spends his days selling people sweets and fags. I’m looking forward to introducing him to people because he’ll not change. He’ll not be staring at his shoes, mumbling - he’ll be straight over, grabbing them by the balls.
“We like people who have a clear idea of what they’re doing; who are passionate and obsessive about music and the way music should be put across. Robyn’s like that, Charlie’s (Mooney) like that; I think Eamonn McNamee is like that. They’ll give you plenty of jip, and you might think they’re overly aggressive at times, but they believe very strongly in what they’re doing and that’s the kind of person you want to work with.”