Glass Ankle chosen to perform at EuroMusic Contest 2014 showcase in Paris!
Just over a month ago we entered an online competition which was open to musicians from 40 different countries across Europe. This competition is called EuroMusic Contest 2014 and is designed to unearth and celebrate emerging and independent European artists, encouraging artistic quality and diversity.
The competition was split into 3 rounds. Round one involved internet-savvy music lovers to vote for their favourite artists from each European country (Albania – Andorra – Austria – Belarus – Belgium – Bosnia-Herzegovina – Bulgaria – Croatia – Czech Republic – Denmark – Estonia – Finland – France – Germany – Greece – Hungary – Ireland – Iceland – Italy – Latvia – Lithuania – Luxembourg – Macedonia – Malta – Moldova – Monaco – Netherlands – Norway – Poland – Portugal – Romania – Russia – Serbia – Slovakia – Slovenia – Spain – Sweden – Switzerland – Ukraine – United Kingdom). Voters had 1 vote a day starting from the 10th April and ending on the 10th May. Only the #1 artists from each country would qualify for the second round. Out of the 117 bands that entered from the UK, Glass Ankle finished #1.
This win, it has to be said, was completely unexpected and we were thrilled that so many people turned out to vote for us, it was an amazing response and we cannot thank you enough! The last day of voting was pretty tense as Prog. Metallists, Ramage Inc. were catching us up thick and fast. To add to the drama, a band from the Irish category who had more votes than us jumped ships last minute in an attempt to cheat the system. Thankfully the co-ordinators at Div’Up were quick to snuff this out!
In Round 2, which took place from the 11th until the 25th May, judges from respected record labels, music publications and blogs conspired to choose 10 bands from the 40 pre-finalists to perform at a special show on Monday 30th June at the Le Divan du Monde, a beautiful Parisian converted theatre now functioning as a concert space. Late evening on Sunday 25th May the EuroMusic Contest judges announced that we were selected as one of the final 10!
“This year 3,248 artists entered the competition, generating over 340,000 votes and 2,000,000 pages views“…. It’s all a bit surreal really. At the same time we are really excited. We’ve been harbouring ambitions of playing outside of Britain for some time now, but had never anticipated that an opportunity such as this would provide us with our first experience of performing in another country. We also feel humbled and completely indebted to everyone who voted for helping us achieve the #1 UK spot. Thanks so much.
So now we must get ourselves ready to represent the home nations in what can be likened to an European Cup style competition for indie bands! Thankfully there will not be any penalties to take (dad joke!). Before that though we have plenty more exciting things to look forward to, including our free show at the Ruby Lounge in Manchester for the BBC Introducing on Friday (30th May), and Ravenstonedale Festival on the 21st June!
Wish us luck! And if anyone fancies coming over with us to Paris to enjoy the occasion let us know! Tickets can be purchased from http://bit.ly/EMC-tickets.
Glass Ankle 