New Single. Firstly we’re ‘releasing’ Salt In Your Eye as a single, a video is being prepared as I type and we’ll be doing our best to have the whole world hear it over the coming weeks. Visit the wee mini-site we made for it using ‘viinyl.com’ and please tell yer friends they can download the song and more at music.escapeact.com.

The film of the album. This is something we’ve been working on over the last month or so. Our good friend Tim Newell has prepared a short film about the making-of ‘Balance’ during 2009 and its shaping up nicely. Its a nice culmination of this period of Escape Act’s existence, charting what was an interesting, challenging and emotional experience. The film will get it’s first showing at the Open Music Media Meetup in Belfast [facebook link] on January 30th, before being available on more traditional channels such as Youtube and Vimeo. Esteemed purchasers of our superb ‘Balance’ digipak will receive a limited edition DVD containing the film and various interesting extras.

A wee gig. We’re getting involved at the Oh Yeah Music Centre’s ‘Scratch My Demo’ series of gigs. We’ll be performing several songs including some newbies on Tuesday 15th February. Doors at 7pm and its free!

Happy New Year!

Rich, Chris and Ross

VENUE/DATE Change: We’re playing Sweeney’s, Dame Street on Thursday 7th, onstage at 10.15pm! We’re playing The Grand Social venue on Friday 8th, onstage at 10.10pm. See the full line-up and get your tickets for each night, or the entire weekend at http://www.hwch.net/

Listen and download more songs at http://music.escapeact.com

Belfast – Out Of Place – daytime Saturday 17th & Sunday 18th July
Out Of Place, Castle Lane, Opposite Starbucks, Belfast City Centre.
Saturday – Workshop – 12 – 2pm!
Join in our workshop and be part of the performance. We’re recruiting volunteers to join our band and help us make sound in the city. Bring something to beat, rattle or blow a tune on, and we’ll teach you to play a version of our song ‘Single Thought‘. We’ll make our way around the City Centre, and return to Out Of Place where we’ll perform a full set. RSVP here or call 028 9023 2524.

If you don’t want to perform, come along and follow the procession. We also need folks to bring a video camera, to capture footage for our album documentary.

Sunday – Performances
Meanwhile, on Sunday 18th July at 2pm, Escape Act & friends play an exclusive and intimate free gig at out of PLACE! Do come along.

Belfast – McHughs – Sunday 18th July [facebook event]
Part of the awesome Trans festival, our Belfast launch show features three mini-sets from ourselves, showcasing different aspects of our new album ‘Balance’ as well as special performances by You Kiss By The Book and Tom McShane. Come along early to catch the first ‘Act act and be part of the final performance.

Doors are at 9 and tickets will be strictly limited at £4. Albums and other goodies will also be available.

Watching us performing Tired Of Being Pushed Around in the window of Out of Place:

We’ve 3 interesting activities planned to celebrate the launch.

Dublin – Whelan’s Upstairs – Saturday 10th July [facebook event]
Come and help us celebrate the release of our new album ‘Balance’. We’ll be ably supported by You Kiss By The Book. Doors at 8pm and its only 5 euro, tho we’ll have some nice new albums for you to purchase too! We’ll also be doing some busking on Grafton Street to earn our dinner money during the afternoon, so feel free to come find us. If you fancy joining in, bring something to shake or rattle!

Belfast – Out Of Place – daytime Saturday 17th & Sunday 18th July
Castle Lane, Opposite Starbucks, Belfast City Centre.
We’re delighted to be part of the Out of Place initiative which sees a disused City Centre shop unit being transformed into an epicentre of activity. Its designed to bring a bit of life back into the space, instead of another charity shop or pound store.

The shop will be our base for two days of workshops, outdoor performances and loads of interaction with the public. If you’d like to take part, please get in touch, or stay tuned for a more detailed announcement shortly.

Belfast – McHughs – Sunday 18th July [facebook event]
Part of the awesome Trans festival, our Belfast launch show features three mini-sets from ourselves, showcasing different aspects of our new album ‘Balance’ as well as special performances by You Kiss By The Book and Tom McShane. Come along early to catch the first ‘Act act!

Doors are at 9 and tickets will be strictly limited at £4. Albums and other goodies will also be available.

Look out for postcards appearing around Belfast with a ‘yer mate gets in for half price’ offer.

Pre-order your album now – available as
- digital download
- CD Digipak
- Limited CD and Art Print package

RSVP on facebook!

Just a quick note to highlight a couple of acoustic shows coming up in the next week.

Menagerie – Saturday 20th March – Afternoon Show
First up we’re playing the annual Black Box Bacchanal festival this saturday, on stage around 3pm. The full afternoon line-up includes Amy McGarrigle, Dirty Blues Band, Tom Portman, and Isobel Anderson with Semaphore, The Yeuts and Cat Malojian in the evening.

John Hewitt – Wednesday 24th March
Another acoustic show at the Liblab fundraising raffle extravaganza featuring Acoustic Dan, Scorpion Jack, Augustus Allen, The Wee Weirdies, Sarah Lynn and an amazing opportunity to win some interesting raffle prizes!

Sunday April 18th – Dublin
We’ll be in Dublin for a BalconyTV session so we’ll be playing an acoustic set or two in some interesting places. More details soon

Don’t forget to check out some new songs here, or on the player to your right! —>

The dates are:

Friday 12th Feb – The Backroom, Navan
Saturday 13th Feb – Whelans, Dublin
Sunday 14th Feb – Cuba, Galway
Saturday 20th Feb – Sandino’s, Derry (also with The Wonder Villains)
Saturday 6th Mar – The Stables, Mullingar
Wednesday 25th Mar – John Hewitt, Belfast (Full band, acoustic)

Hope to see you along the way.

Rich

This will also be a bit of a celebration, cos if everything goes to plan, we’ll be more or less finished the bulk of our studio sessions by the time we play this gig! We’ve also been adding dates for our February tour with John Shelly and the Creatures, including Galway, Derry, Navan, Mullingar and Dublin. Full details to follow!

Don’t forget, if you wanna join into the Escape Act google wave… email me your username

rich

Firstly, we’re proud to be playing the Hard Working Class Heroes Festival in Dublin. We’re playing the ’4 Dame Lane’ venue (map) at 8pm on Saturday 17th. Check www.hwch.net for full details and ticketing. Over 100 bands play throughout the weekend, so its worth every penny!

Next up is an excellent line-up for Radar at Queen’s Speakeasy on Thursday October 22nd. Headlining are our favourite melody merchants Cutaways, with Dublin’s Robotnik bringing some electro-tunefulness to the mix.

Lastly and by no means least is an exciting 17 Seconds Records line-up at Glasgow’s 13th Note venue, on Friday 30th October. We’re be playing alongside Aberfeldy’s Chris Bradley, X Lion Tamer and The Dirty Cuts.

Hope y’all can make it to some of these shows!

Rich