As all you Original Penguin fans know we’ve been bringing you some of the best new bands with our New Blood downloads in association with Artrocker. So this year of course we were sponsors of the Best New Band – New Blood Award at the inaugural Artrocker Awards last Friday. The nominees included Ringo Deathstarr, Teeth, The Chevin,DZ Deathrays, The Neat and our winners Mojo Fury!

The awards were held in one of East London’s best music venue’s XOYO, so of course we went on down to have a chat with some of the bands and give away some special Original Penguin goodies. Needless to say there were many great bands in attendance and luckily we managed to grab a few minutes with New Blood Award nominees The Neat and winners Mojo Fury.

We had a nice little chat with our well deserving winners Mojo Fury. The 4 band members met and formed in 2004 at music college in Belfast and recorded their debut album Visiting hours of a traveling circus last year. Talking to frontman Mike Mormecha at the awards, who describes the bands music as “Heavy, energetic and Saucy” he tells us this year has been a big year for the band after a lot of touring and new single El. released in November. With musical influences ranging from The Beatles to Nine Inch Nails and Elliott Smith, we also asked Mike if he could work with any artist in the world who would it be? “Prince” he tells us. Highlights of the bands career so far have been “touring with Biffy Clyro!”. Mojo Fury’s UK tour with Amplifier kicks off in Nottingham on December 4th and ends December 12th in Bristol. Check out their Facebook for tour dates. After beating bands such as Teeth and The Chevin to our Best New Band award on Friday, they are well on their way to even bigger success in 2012!

New Blood award Nominees The Neat formed three years ago, meeting at Hull University. After much gigging around the UK they consequently signed to the Kaiser Chiefs record label, Chewing Gum records. With releases such as In youth is pleasure and Good in Bed drawing a lot of positive attention, the band were serious contenders for the New Blood Award.

As the New Blood Award confirms recognition from the music scene of the bands success so far, we wanted to know a bit about who the boys saw as their musical influencers. Frontman Merrick Saunders told us ” It’s different for every member, maybe my Bloody Valentine, but it changes all the time. At the moment I listen to a lot of the Rapture.” and of course Original Penguin wanted to know who’s style they were fans of to which we got a range of different answers from each member from Leonard Cohen, Serge Gainsbourg and quite oddly Mary Poppins! With a tour planned for February 2012, the boys told us that the Best New band nomination just about wraps up the year for them! they may not have won but they were a good bunch of lads to chat with! keep an eye on the bands Facebook page for news on upcoming shows.

We’d like to thank Artrocker for a Fantastic evening at the awards and of course for introducing us to all these awesome new bands, and also Zoe Jade for being our wonderful photographer very excited to see how Mojo Fury get on in 2012!