Everyone at Chemikal Underground were delighted when Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat’s ‘Everything’s Getting Older’ was announced as the winner of the inaugural Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Award on Tuesday 19th June. With the Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs, Fiona Hyslop, doing the honours with the sealed envelope, it was pretty nail-biting stuff and a real pleasure to hear their names being read out.
Bill & Aidan picked up the grand cash prize of £20,000 as well as a unique, bound flip-book created by Glasgow School of Art graduate Fraser Clark for each of the ten shortlisted finalists. Aidan and Bill were quoted as being, rather inevitably, ‘delighted’ with the award while Award ‘Director’ and Chemikal founder Stewart Henderson duly retired to bed with a cold compress on his head to try and decompress from a five-month period best described as ‘taxing’.
The award itself represents an important, valuable arrival for Scotland’s music industry and will hopefully be the first of a great many.