Record company aims to promote Ayrshire talent

Jul 24 2009 by Michael Pringle

A NEW independent record label is giving Ayrshire bands the chance to get their music out on a new CD release.

Wrecked Chord Records are in talks with around 20 bands at the moment and it's expected that around 15 of them will have tracks chosen for the CD to be released at the end of August. The label has already received £1000 in funding and is hoping for a similar figure from the Scottish Arts Council. Among those signed up to appear are Tragic O'Hara, Culann, The Ghosties and BlackberryJack.

Wrecked Chord's Jim Gibb has been taking advice from Douglas McIntyre, the man behind the record labels Electric Honey and Creeping Bent. Electric Honey was instrumental in launching the careers of Biffy Clyro, Snow Patrol and Belle and Sebastian. The company is part of a project based in the Caley Centre, Stevenston, promoting music across the whole of Ayrshire.

Jim said: "The idea for the project first came up last year and it's taken until now to actually get it up and running, it's turned into a large scale operation. We've been around for ten years and we realised that bands were all going to Glasgow to rehearse and play so we thought it was time to try and set something up to promote the local bands and try to build a local audience".

There will be an original pressing of a thousand copies of the CD and it will be given away free with a magazine containing interviews and articles about the artists. The aim of the first release is to promote the local scene in Ayrshire and the label.

To coincide with the launch of the CD there will be a weekend of gigs at Irvine's Harbour Arts Centre on 28 and 29 August.

The label's website is due to go live before the launch; you can check it out at www.wreckedchordrecords.co.uk.

Jim thinks this will help promote the artists further: "Each band on the recording will have its own page with information, audio and videos".

Information can currently be found at www.myspace.com/wreckedchordrecords.

SINGING THE BLUES: Tragic O'Hara will be one of the artists on the free compilation.