Birds of Tokyo, Mitch Tambo and Illy to Perform at ACRAs

Birds of Tokyo
Photo credit: Kane Hibberd

The music acts for the Australian Commercial Radio Awards (ACRAs) have been announced.

Birds of Tokyo, Mitch Tambo and Illy will all take to the stage as part of the celebrations and ceremony on Saturday, Oct. 29 in Sydney.

Birds of Tokyo are an ARIA-Award winning Perth rock band who have amassed 200,000 plays on radio across 35 songs over the past five years. They will tour with Keith Urban later this year.

The band said: “We’re looking forward to performing at the ACRAs for our radio friends. It’s great we can finally do this in the same room together.”

Singer songwriter Mitch Tambo, meanwhile, blends traditional Aboriginal sounds and language with contemporary beats and production. He competed on “Australia’s Got Talent” in 2019.

And Illy has released six studio albums and enjoyed multi-Platinum success with singles including “Tightrope’, “Papercuts ft. Vera Blue” and “Catch 22 ft. Anne-Marie”.

Ford Ennals, the CEO of the ACRAs’ organising body Commercial Radio and Audio, said: “We’re thrilled to have such a creative and diverse lineup of Australian music talent on stage to help us celebrate the return of the ACRAs, the industry is ready for a huge night.”

The 33rd annual awards will be hosted by WSFM breakfast hosts Amanda Keller and Brendan ‘Jonesy’ Jones.

The last ACRAs event to go ahead was in 2019 in Brisbane.

The 2020 event was then canned due to uncertainty around interstate travel and the COVID-19 situation.

The ACRAs promised to be back bigger and better in 2021, however by August of that year, the viability of that promise was being reviewed.

By September, CRA had decided to call off the event for the year, instead pushing it to February, 2022.

The event was then rebranded as the 2020/21 ACRAs to reflect the larger scope of the work being recognised.

The finalists for the 2020/21 event were released in late October, but not long after, the event was scrapped again.

The winners for the 20/21 ACRAs were instead released online.

The 2022 event, however, is set to go ahead, and Ennals said the nominees highlight Australia’s vibrant radio and audio industry, recognising outstanding talent across 39 categories including news, talk, sport, music and entertainment.

“Congratulations to all the finalists,” he said. “We look forward to celebrating the return of the ACRAs and making the night bigger and better than ever. Radio is thriving thanks to the efforts and creativity of staff on air and off who strive to provide listeners with the best in audio entertainment and information.”

The full list of nominees can be found here.