WIDE Days returned on Friday for their annual music event, featuring a packed line-up of industry experts, tastemakers and a showcase of artists that demonstrated the golden crop of inspirational talent coming out of Scotland.
Hitting the gothic and grandiose Teviot House on Friday morning, Wide Days 2017 also spanned across some of the capital’s best live spots for the evening’s artist showcases including La Belle Angele and The Liquid Rooms. Delegates moved around sessions including festival insights, funding focuses and finally at the end of the afternoon, a TTV chaired musical critique, “A&R You Brave Enough.”
Featuring TTV, The Skinny, PIAS and Sony, the music panel listened and reviewed submissions from bands live on stage, uncovering some gems of the Scottish underground scene. Notable highlights from that session were Declan Welsh & The Decadent West who’s tune stood out head and shoulders above the rest and Lou Mclean; a female solo artist who’s quirky voice and vocals impressed the panel.
Highlights from the music showcases are hard to pick, with every band on the line-up really impressing the crowds. Kicking things off were the female-fronted band Emme Woods, who mixes a divine raspy vocal with character and personality meaning it’s really hard not to fall in love with the voice and the vixen that’s unleashed on-stage. TTV are looking forward to catching her turn it up at The Great Escape in a few weeks time (session coming to TTV soon). Jr Green proved once more that the accordion is cool again with their incredibly humble set.
Another massive highlight of the day was The Spook School’s set. Aside from the absolutely entrancing drumming performance, the band’s energy lit up the venue and after a long day of sessions, their electric essence was just the right injection to dive into the final performances.
The Vegan Leather smashed their way through a set that included a timely crowd jump and praise for Declan Welsh’s set as frontman Gianluca shouted: “How fucking good was Declan Welsh?” And he’s right. Welsh stole the show; the young poet has simply flourished into an enigma in the last two years. Declan Welsh and his talent-twinned-passion, makes us proud to be Scottish.
With huge support from the likes of Creative Scotland and Event Brite, Wide Days has well and truly nailed it this year. The quality of the event as a whole was golden, running extremely smoothly with incredibly engaged social channels to boot. All that remains is what’s sure to be an extremely strong year for Scottish music in 2017 and an even busier Wide Days in 2018.
Check out full photography from the event here. Listen to Declan Welsh’s recent track premiered by TTV below:
