Greg and Burtt request the pleasure of your company from 10am – 12pm this Sunday, on Amazing Radio.

We know what you’re thinking. But dear listeners, if we told you why then we’d surely spoil the surprise! What we will say is expect to cry with more than riotous laughter this weekend, as the show recieves an impromtue visit from a special guest with an extra special message.

If music be the food of love… rock on.

Dont just hear the soundtrack to your weekend – see it too!

The fourth annual NARC. Fest brings a huge swathe of aural loveliness to the Ouseburn Valley, Newcastle on Saturday 17th July. Featuring some superb out of town talent, alongside the best of the region’s bands, this year’s festival really does have something for everyone, and best of all, the gigs are free entry!

Amazing Radio‘s Tom Cotton has taken on the task of putting together a roster of fabulous indie pop artists, the likes of which have appeared on both Amazing Radio and the Our Beat is Correct Podcast.

Playing at Newcastle Upon Tyne’s Cluny 2 from 7pm will be…

Manchester’s The Heartbreaks, cribbing from the sheets of Orange Juice and Elvis Costello will be topping the night off with unmistakeable Mancunian style.

Love Bites And Bruises will bring their spiky, Springsteen-indebted anthems to the party, and are guaranteed to be loud, fast and euphoric.

Fresh from the John Peel Stage at Glastonbury 2010, Let’s Buy Happiness, perhaps Newcastle’s most exciting emerging act, will mesmerise with their mix of ethereal guitar noise and goosebump-inducing vocals.

Sunderland’s Coal Train will add a dash of density to proceedings. Fresh out of the practice room, they’re certain to fulfil the promise of their early demos in the live arena.

Finally, Kate Edwards of Brilliant Mind will open the show with a special stripped back performance of songs from her Agerskow project. Expect chilling romantic tales and thrillingly tender vocals.

Are you a promoter who loves to showcase unsigned artists? Email us your gigs with a mini blurb about what makes them so great and if we like ‘em, we’ll give them a shoutout on the blog.

Today on The Amazing Afternoon Show we introduce to you Spotisfaction! Co founder Dave tells us a bit more about it in his guest blog, exclusively for Amazing Radio

“Out of a desire to do something other than sit around and rot, the men known as David Prowse and Thom Lavelle decided to sit around and rot whilst swapping Spotify playlists and blogging about them…”

Spotisfaction is, at its heart, a community-driven playlist sharing site. Our aim is to recreate the passion and love that went into crafting the perfect mixtape for your friends and loved ones, in the days when the cassette reigned king. We encourage people to create Spotify playlists, write a little about their standout tracks or the reason for including them, and submit them to us. We then share these playlists with the rest of our viewers, giving people a platform to get their lovingly-crafted playlists the visibility they deserve.

We formed in February of this year, and since then have posted more than 80 individual playlists. The original intention for the site was to create a place where us and our friends could store our playlists – a repository for great music, so to speak. However, when we started getting more and more readers, we decided to expand on that original idea.

The site has been really well received, we have our own Facebook and Twitter pages, and we’ve really enjoyed setting up a small community. Spotify has been so fantastically executed as a piece of technology that it lends itself well to blogging, so in addition to our user-generated playlists, we have recruited a team of editors and contributors from across the UK who regularly post news, reviews and blogs all tied into Spotify. We’re even covering the festivals this summer, and our Glastonbury review is online right now.

The growth of Spotify has really been phenomenal. When Facebook was tied into the latest version, and the social, collaborative nature of Spotify went through the roof, we could see where this could go: there was the potential to be one of the first sites to provide music news, reviews and blogs, where all it’s content was linked to instantly listenable, legal material. We think that this could be one of the first independent internet blogs that ties all of it’s content to an entirely free, entirely legal and legitimate music streaming service.

Digital technology has been a massive boon to new artists. A new band can now upload their tunes to a miriad of sites. These sites give them the chance to get their music heard quickly and easily and for very little cost, and there is no understating the importance of this digital revolution. Musicians are, like never before, in control of their own exposure. It means that new bands can dare to experiment with their sound and come up with new ideas, instead of sticking to the tried and true in order to gain a record deal. Creativity, unabridged.

While the recording industry has been reticent at best to embrace digital technology, it’s clear that this is the way consumption en-masse is heading. There is, of course, a large audience and consumer base for hard products – vinyl, for example, will remain a constant seller for years to come – but technology has moved far enough now that instant access is the way people want to consume culture in the modern era. It’s up the the entrepreneurs and innovators in the record industry to work out how to continue to run a profitable model through changes in their consumers listening habits.

We want to help push this new way of listening, and so Spotisfaction exists to share our love of music through the most successful platform for it at the moment – Spotify.

Hear Dave Prowse and Thom Lavelle chatting to The Afternoon Show presenter Kyle Wilkinson between 3 and 4pm today, on Amazing Radio.

Kyle Wilkinson and Producer Frankie are getting a tad excited about today’s show…

No, it’s not because they’ve been delivered a complimentary bumper box of chocolate treats (although that would be nice! Hint, hint!) It’s because the studio has been thrown open and their first guest has been welcomed in, in the shape of Generator‘s Al Smith.

Through the magic of the studio phoneline, Al Smith will be joining Kyle and Frankie to chat about the Plugged In Live musical events that will be taking place across Newcastle tonight. He’ll also be explaining his fantastic Four Tops playlist.

Plugged In Live is a unique event created by Generator that supports both up and coming acts and promoters by giving the latter the opportunity to curate gigs in and around Newcastle. With five different events to choose from, the public is truly given a choice. And the best thing of all? By attending you’ll not only be supporting independent and emerging talent, but donating to charity, with 10% of the total profits donated directly to the Teenage Cancer Trust.

Entry costs a mere £4 and details on the acts, including amazingtunes.com talents Epsionage of the Loc, We Are Knuckle Dragger, Baskin’s Wish and The Vaudeville Class can be found here.

The Afternoon Show wants to find you your musical match made in heaven…

Music. It’s one of those things in live that you cannot live without, a lot, some might say, like love.

Well here at Amazing Radio, we believe the two go hand in hand which is why we want to find you your perfect musical match – and it couldn’t be simpler! All you need to do is email your top three favourite acts (signed or unsigned) to afternoons@amazingradio.co.uk so we can put together a tailor made playlist of music from amazingtunes.com artists just for you! And what’s more, we’ll even dedicate them to you on air.

Well here’s your chance courtesy of the Amazing Afternoon Show!

Amazing Afternoon Show presenter Kyle Wilkinson wants to know why your musical habitat is the place to find the best new and groundbreaking talent.

Have you talentspotted any acts before they were famous? Held a band night yourself? Hit the scene with your own original material?

If your answer is yes to any of the above then we want to hear from you!

All you need to do is email us with your details, the area you want to shout about and why!

There’s also plenty more chances to get involved, with our Four Tops and Are You More Rock and Roll than Kevin Read? Plus, if there’s anything you feel we should be doing/shouting/playing then you know what to do!

Every Monday, The Afternoon Show on Amazing Radio will be saluting one of the world wide web’s wonderful music bloggers. After all the work they do to uncover emerging talent, it’s only right that we reverse the spotlight onto them for once!

This week’s blogging wonder is Katie Wilkinson.

Katie Wilkinson, music blogger extraordinare!

My blog started off as a simple music blog run by myself; I didn’t write for anyone apart from myself. Over the last two years, I have seen it [my blog] completely develop from being a place where I occasionally wrote a few words about bands I liked/bands I’d seen to being a very active place where I post all of the work that I’ve done for Faux Magazine, With Drums and Colour, Hive Magazine and posts I’ve done on behalf of Vice Magazine ( I am part of the Vice blogging network). I never set it [my blog] up to become a professional writer but it seems I have nearly become one.

My blog now covers a range of arts, though the majority of posts still being music orientated, there are now the occasional posts on photography, literature and upcoming events. Thus, making it different to many other blogs on the net, I like to keep things, varied, interesting and share my personal views and experiences of the topic at hand, rather than just regurgitating the words of other journalists.

The music found on my blog covers a vast range of genres, though most of the music shared on my blog is new (what’s the point in covering old ground?). The aim of my blog is to inform people of all things new and excitingand to review events that I’ve attended.

I am very proud of my blog and what I’ve achieved with it so far and I hope to find my blog being viewed by more and more people.

If you’d like your blog featured on The Afternoon Show and see your work posted here get in touch!

‘Scotland’s answer to John Peel’ introduces himself in this exclusive guest blog…

I’m the new boy at Amazing Radio, so I thought I’d hijack the blog to introduce myself!

I already love what happens at Amazing Towers, so didn’t even need to think about it when I was asked if I’d be interested in doing a show. As a fan of New Music, I’ve already discovered a heap of new acts simply by Amazing Radio, and now with my own show I’m able to trawl the whole of the amazingtunes.com website and uncover the tracks I’d like to hear on the rather (never mind about you… it’s all Me Me Me!).

I must admit I was a lapsed amazingtunes.com user. I didn’t realise this until a few months back, when I tried to register, only to be told the jimgellatly user name was already taken! I was offered jimgellatly1 then remembered that actually the other Jim Gellatly was me!

For the past few years I’ve hosted the unsigned band stage at the Rockness Festival in the highlands of Scotland… and the winners of amazingtunes.com’s Sound 08 secured a slot on that stage courtesy of the competition. That band were Spokes, who are now set to release their debut album through Ninja Tune offshoot Counter Records… but I’d like to think I’ve played my part in their story with them playing that stage on the banks of Loch Ness. Truth is of course that amazingtunes.com made that happen, and I’m sure if we fast forward 10 years a whole host of acts will have found their way thanks to one of the most exciting platforms for unsigned music that there is.

So why am I a lapsed amazingtunes.com user? Well… truth is, with the growth of social networks and other aggregators for sampling new music, I sort of just moved on. And then I discovered Amazing Radio!

Amazing Radio really does take the whole concept of amazingtunes.com one step higher. Not that unsigned music should need it, but it sort of legitimises what’s on offer on the site. These tracks are actually getting played on proper radio, not just streaming on another unsigned portal just listened to by the bands themselves.

I compare Amazing Radio to stepping out of the TARDIS in a year’s time and switching on Radio 1. It’s likely that you won’t recognise the current tunes being playing, but you not think they’re out of place… and they’ll no doubt be of a certain quality. I listen to unsigned bands all the time, and I have been genuinely impressed by the standard of tracks featured on Amazing Radio. It’s a radio station that’s playing exciting and interesting music, without being elitist. Most of what you hear would quite easily fit on higher profile outlets.

I’ve been attempting to present and produce leftfield radio shows for over 20 years now, including stints at Xfm Scotland and BBC Radio Scotland. The radio landscape has changed dramatically in that time with more stations appearing, then less choice with the introduction of networking, and I do wonder why anyone would tune into certain radio stations when their iPod might serve exactly the same purpose (but with the advantage to skip tracks). Amazing Radio is different… it is a real doorway to sounds you might not necessarily know, but may well like. Perhaps I’m living in a fantasy land if I think people might want to hear only tracks they know on the radio? I do hope not, and If like me, you discover your next favourite new band through Amazing Radio… it’s anything but a fantasy.

While I’m currently also holding down the Saturday afternoon slot on Scotland’s biggest local radio station, Glasgow’s Clyde 1, my passion is for New Music, reflected in the weekly podcast that I publish….

Now with Amazing Radio added to my portfolio, I look forward to sharing even more wonderful new music. Don’t be shy to get in touch!

Check out Jim’s show on Amazing Radio at 3pm Sunday and 6pm on Tuesday. You can also find out more about Jim at www.jimgellatly.com

…A brand new schedule and with it, a host of new talent.

To celebrate Amazing Radio’s first year on the airwaves of DAB digital radio, we decided to enhance the Amazing Radio schedule with more shows, more voices and most importantly more music than ever before.

As before, Mark Ryan starts your weekend off with a bang on Friday nights from 7pm with Amazing Beats. He’ll be spinning hardcore dance athems from the cream of the unsigned dance scene plus exclusive mixes and awesome guests.

Kicking off Saturday mornings at 9am, it’s The Saturday Show presented by Colin and Matt. Expect top banter, hilarious chat and the best of the Amazing Radio music schedule.

Saturday afternoon sees former Amazing Acoustic presenter Frankie Ward return with the feature packed, musical loveliness of the Amazing Folk Roots Show at 4pm, followed by Charlie Ashcroft at 5pm with Audition – the show that lets you decide which amazingtunes.com track deserves a spot on the Amazing Radio schedule. Also coming soon to the station is the brand spankin’ new Rock Show with Aaron Phillips. Catch the first edition on Saturday 10th July at 6pm.

Sunday sees Greg & Burtt and return to their usual slot of 10am with endearing “light and fluffy banter” (Burtt) and “heavyweight musical debate” (Greg). ‘Scottish John Peel’ Jim Gellatly takes over from 3pm with his top amazingtunes.com tracks whilstTrevor Dann and co debate the best amazingtunes.com has to offer at 4pm in the afternoon.

The weekend is wrapped up rather neatly by the brand new Amazing Chart Show at 5pm, where Charlie Ashcroft will be exclusively revealing the movers and shakers of amazingtunes.com and Amazing Radio. Will your favourite act be in there? You’ll just have to tune in to find out.

Also new this week is The Afternoon Show. Every weekday between 3pm and 6pm, Kyle Wilkinson will be presenting our favourite tracks from amazingtunes.com alongside great features and fun chat.

Think that sounds like a major overhaul? Well you ain’t heard nothing yet, so keep your ears tuned in and your eyes fixed here for some rather exciting news coming soon, to Amazing Radio.

Our Amazing Beats presenter Mark Ryan is on a mission.

He’s packed his ruckkie, removed his glittery disco flares and begrudgingly borrowed a pair of hideous walking shoes and hotfooted it to Switzerland to climb up a mile high mountain (Shiltzhorn for the geographically aware out there.)

Of course, he wouldn’t be leaving us without good reason, (playing you the best in underground D’n'B, dance, trance and house is like a constant holiday for Mr Ryan!) And that good reason is for charidee… and not just any old charity.

Don’t let it drop

Mark’s mission to ‘mish’ it up a mountain is for international charity Water Aid. I myself arrived back from Glasto fest the other day full of enthusiam for the organisation and thus it seems like fate that I’m writing this right here, right now.

Water Aid’s current campaign is ‘Don’t Let It Drop’ and is supported by a host of musicians such as Kate Nash and Foals. The objective of the campaign is to secure clean sanitation and water for all. You can find out more about these aims, the organisation itself and why it exists on the Water Aid website For example did you know that 40% of the world’s population currently do not have access to a toilet and 1 in 8 people have no access to safe water? Shocking I know.

So what are you waiting for? Donate to Mark’s Just Giving page now.

Don’t just see the change – be the change.