This was the 10th SAMAs event, and fair play to Richy Muirhead and his team that this has grown and grown – now at a pretty St Lukes (ideal venue as it is big enough to let people meet up and chat, but the PA system is loud enough to drown them out when awards are presented and bands play).
Hosted by Jim Gellatly and Leila Josephine, with appearances by others such as Vic Galloway and Chris McQueer, it really is an excellent night out, whatever genre of music you are into.
You can read about who won what on the SAMAs’ own website (and BM is especially chuffed for Steg G, who won best hiphop, partly on the strength of this year’s amazing ‘The Air in Between’ album but also the production work he has done over many years, well people voted for him anyway! – yass!)
In terms of live action the first act up was Franky’s Evil Party, who unleashed an inferno of noise, rage, about as full-on an assault that BM has seen from any opening act, especially at an awards bash, but this is the SAMAs and they do things a bit differently. This combo hail from Dumfries and information is a wee bit sparse, let’s just say they sounded a bit like RATM with some electronica thrown in (wasn’t that Kyle from Gravelle on guitar/keyboards as well, or was BM mistaken?). They played several tracks from this year’s ‘Leader’ EP and things got a bit heated when the singer, already tap aff, disagreed with the idea of them coming offstage after the allocated four songs – but BM is sure he is a nice boy really! With no previous experience of this lot BM would definitely seek them out again…immense!
In between more awards (BM had not heard of any of the metai bands nominated but the winners bigged all the other nominees up, all seemed very jolly in fact!), we got One Nine, an electropop two-piece who won over this pretty mixed audience (the thing with awards stuff is only a minority of people are that interested in who is playing) and had the advantage of being REALLY LOUD, courtesy of the excellent St Lukes soundsystem and very good tech guys. This Scottish act have a couple of tracks out so we got ‘Lost Satellite’ and a few others – with the right handling this pair could hit it quite big, they have the big tunes and the Chvrches path been shown to make it possible….
After more awards we got the final band, Scotland’s The Cosmic Dead. BM saw this lot in the summer at Doune and was highly impressed. Tonight they played as a four piece with no lead vocalist (although there was some shouting from the others!). They recently released ‘The Scottish Space Race’ on Riot Season Records and several of tonight’s tracks were from this. The sounds were dark, doomy and completely mental. The soundsystem struggled but just about coped. A fair few people just fled, but those who stayed witnessed a good half hour of sonic alchemy, psych-rock experimentalism or something! Oblique, angry, uncompromising about sums it up – and we went into the night with ears ringing.
All in all an excellent night and roll on the 2020 SAMAs – though this will be hard to top!