PHEW. What a month it’s been. As 2012 unceremoniously hurtles towards us at a rate of knots, let’s take a moment to reflect on what’s been going on in the last month of the year.
If you’re a regular listener to Amazing Breakfast - you’ll have heard us peppering all our shows throughout December with some aural treats in our Audio Advent Calendar. If you missed out, firstly – shame on you, secondly, you can still get it all right here uploaded into easily digestible portions for you to consume at your leisure. This humble blog would be miles long if I (Producer DC) were to go into detail about each little thing, but I’ll do an overview, just to tempt your fancy, of course.
Obviously we feature an awesome Artist of the Week on the show every week, but after their week in the spotlight has been and gone, it doesn’t mean Team Amazing Breakfast are turning our backs on them – so for the Calendar we thought we’d get a few favourites on the blower to talk all things Christmas, what the best bits of their year have been (apart from being featured as Artist of the Week on Amazing Breakfast, obviously) and what we can look forward to from them in 2012 all budled together with some jazzy music underneath to make it all a bit festive.
Artists we spoke to include: Hooray For Earth, PRIS, Matt Norris & the Moon, Theme Park, Blackchords, Wye Oak, Plant Plants, Cadmean Veterans Club, Beat Radio, Daughter, Channel Swimmer, Dimbleby & Capper, Spokes, 1914s, Dutch Uncles, the Travelling Band, Ice Black Birds and the Maccabees!
A pretty good looking bunch, I’m sure you’ll agree. As if that wasn’t enough for you, we also got our TV Guru Patrick Smith to turn away from the tellybox momentarily to talk all things cinematic – and give us some suggestions for festive viewing through out December. Maybe there were some classics you’ve forgotten? Patrick chatted about all things Die Hard, the Nightmare Before Christmas, Bad Santa, Gremlins, the Muppet Christmas Carol, Miracle on 34th Street, Home Alone, and, of course, It’s A Wonderful Life. Listen to what he had to say, and maybe give some favourites a re-watch before the festive season is gone for good!
We’ve also been running our Track of the Year poll – each week we offered up a selection of our favourite songs which Georgie chose as Track of the Week from across the year, and from there your votes whittled it down to just three – ‘Frequency’ by unouomedude, ‘Tessellate’ by Alt-J, and ‘This Ain’t No Hymn’ by Saint Saviour – three very worthy finalists indeed, but there can only be one winner. Which was….‘Tessellate’ by Alt-J! Listen to the utterly brilliant winning track over and over again at your leisure:
We also delved deep into the Amazing Breakfast archives to pull out some of the fun bits and bobs we’ve had on the show across the year, giving you another opportunity to catch them if you missed them first time round. Remember our Audio Consequences from Brighton’s Great Escape Festival? Or perhaps Georgie’s surreal game of Would You Rather and Either/Or with Peggy Sue? How about Team Amazing Breakfast getting talking about BEARDS with William Fitzsimmons and Dutch Uncles? How about an interview with awesome new pop-goddess Jess Mills?
Georgie brought some of her excellent features from The Other Job to the party as well – we heard from Field Music, Beth Jeans Houghton, and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs – remind me to ask Georgie if Orlando was wearing his Stegosaurus costume when she caught up with him.
Wait! There’s more! More?! That’s right, MORE. Sometimes we just let awesome music speak for itself with replays of some favourite session tracks from William Fitzsimmons, Daughter, Clock Opera, Lanterns on the Lake, Cloud Control and Ex-Libras, we gave you the chance to hear Georgie take a turn on vocals on her pal MJZ’s track You Feed My Sleep (this was 100% my idea!) and we devoted a whole hour of one show to launch Amazing Radio‘s 12 x 12 – our list of 12 artists we think you need in your life in a big way next year. Some former Artist of the Week artists like Lianne La Havas and Daughter among a whole host of other fantastic artists – give your ears a late Christmas present and peruse the whole list!
That ought to have been enough, surely. Well, like a doting grandparent, we have spoiled you lucky lot rotten this festive season. In addition to all that aural bounty, we also continued to feature some really incredible songs as Track of the Week and really incredible artists as Artist of the Week!
First out of the gates were Hooray For Earth – after wooing us with their awesome song True Loves earlier this year, we wanted to catch the guys while they were over in the country doing some promo work ahead of the UK release of their record next year. Hear their interview in full:
The following Week we had the pleasure of finally being able to give appropriate airtime to one of our favourite new artists from this year – Saturday Night Gym Club! We got lost in the woozy glitches of I Know and then glided on the epic synths they supplied with the Ballroom Scene – so upon hearing their EP was finished being mastered, we badgered and badgered until they uploaded all their tracks so we could feature them as Artist of the Week. Georgie spoke to Conor all about how they came together, the EP and what they’re up to in the near future – listen to their interview in full:
Following on from Saturday Night Gym Club, our last Artist of the Week for 2011 was wonky-pop pioneers, La Shark. We couldn’t get enough of recent single Magazine Cover and wanted an excuse to showcase more of their music to you! Georgie spoke to Samuel from the band, all about their sound and how things are going in Camp Shark at the moment:
Though we thought we’d give Artist of the Week a rest for a bit so as we don’t cheat anyone out of their full 5 days, we’ve also been selecting some pretty special Track of the Week tunes throughout as well, and they’re all corkers. Gone by Paper Crows, Let the Carousel Display You and I by Paul Thomas Saunders, Macaw by Get People and finally Endless Summer by Still Corners to keep your ears well and truly spoiled rotten throughout this festive period.
Phew. I need a lie down after all that. I think I’ll do so with the music of next week’s Track of the Week drifting through my sleep via my headphones – as the brilliant label Something In Construction saw fit to upload all of Loney Dear‘s incredible album Hall Music for purchase and streaming, we couldn’t resist picking a track from it. Get your ears around Largo:
