Coca-Cola Blastbeat reaches its climax this Saturday (April 26) as seven young bands play The Limelight in Belfast. The bands will be battling it out to follow in the footsteps of Belfast pop-punkers Steer Clear (left) by becoming 2008 champions and winning a deal with Blastbeat Records.
The competition is run in schools as a music biz version of Young Enterprise - music and media students aged 15-18 form their own music companies and organise local ‘Battle of the Bands’ competitions. Each company is formed to replicate a real label with the equivalent men (and women) in suits as well as PR and web teams, talent scouts, journalists, A&R staff and video crew. As well as the exposure and experience, participants get to become social entrepreneurs, with at least 25% of their profits being donated to charity.
The companies compete to win an all-expenses-paid trip to the final in Dublin on the May 17. As well as the winning band landing the record deal, the triumphant music company will win £4,000.
Belfast pop-punkers Steer Clear (left) won last year’s competition and have since gone from strength to strength, recently playing at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, where they received excellent reviews. Vocalist Pádraig McAlister said, “Blastbeat is a first class project for people with a passion for music or the world of business. It helped catapult us onto the music scene, giving us our first record deal and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ‘make it’. This isn’t just another school competition but a serious opportunity for people who want music to be part of their future.”
Blastbeat founder Robert Stephenson said, “This project is all about empowering students to set up their own music and multimedia music companies to learn about business while having fun finding, promoting and marketing young bands and artists in their schools and local Blastbeat communities - which now spans three continents.”
This year’s competing bands and music companies are:
Frau Sandy (Disco Robots) - St Columb’s College, Derry
Seven Story Weather (Whitenoise Records) - Campbell College, Belfast
6 Days Later (Saturn Records) - St Malachy’s College, Belfast
Illict (Joker Records) – De La Salle, Andersonstown, Belfast
Atlas (VII Day Weekend) - St. Colmcilles College, Crossgar
Jargon (Saturn Records) - St Malachy’s College, Belfast
The Audiables (Joker Records) – De La Salle, Andersonstown, Belfast
For more information on the project and the bands, check out www.blastbeat.org
