Play this in the background, AW friends – a 93-minute rollercoaster of musical superbity from mid-90s Belfast. Read the story below if you wish, but don’t feel obliged…

‘Alive in Belfast: The Warehouse Sessions’ (2CD) was recorded on a wing and a prayer over four nights in April 1995, and released locally in a run of 1,000 a couple of months later. CDs were new and the ability to self-release them was just catching on. It was, at that time, a much more expensive prospect than it is even now. I recall using a pressing place in Dublin, Trend, that seemed very swanky. It required hard cash (or a banker’s draft) up front. These days, you phone a broker up and they outsource it to somewhere in Eastern Europe and you’ll still get change out of a grand, which you’ll have paid by credit card, probably 30 days later.

The whole project cost over £8,000 – 16-track recording and mixing, photography, design, pressing. I wrote extensive booklet notes and had fun with Mark Case designing the booklet. I crossed my fingers that enough people might want to buy a double CD of unsigned local artists – ‘unsigned’ being a meaningful » Continue Reading.