Yet another meaningless religious holiday with no bearing on contemporary existence beyond sweets and alcohol. I’ll be burnt on a pyre for this but…bloody Halloween. My PC’s so unfuriatingly slow I’m threatening to let the neighbourhood kids go bobbing for apples in it. Good gigs though…

Le Galaxie - DEADBOTS – Crawdaddy

Dublin Duck Dispensary – Lower Deck

Story Of Hair - So Cow – Hoovers&Sledgehammers – Upstairs Whelans

Crayonsmith – Talulah Does The Hula – Whelans

The Urges DJ Set – No Disko @ The Academy

BATS – I’ll Eat Your Face – The Quad, Cork *FREE GIG*

Future Kings of Spain – Robotnik – The Lantern Bar, Meath

Walter Mitty and the Realists – Bakers Place – Limerick

DISCOnnect4 – DeBurgos – Galway

Productive little pumpkins that they are, Hi-Fi Popcorn has a spooktacular song mix while Egoeccentric has a monster mash of YouTubes. Get ur freaky costume on…

I am never uttering “spooktacular” again. Bah, humbug.

Russian Girls – The first video proper from The Amazing Few, Ireland’s closest relation to of Montreal.

The Amazing Few play the Button Factory on 15 November.

Messiah J and the Expert‘s Megaphone Man taken from new album From The Word Go. Video directed by Davey ‘Ragged Snaps’ Sexton. You can also check it out on Muzu.tv

messiahjandtheexpert.wordpress.com

GiveAManAKick have returned from the CMJ Music Marathon in New York where they played alongside The Blizzards, Fighting With Wire, Heathers and Hooray For Humans. That’s a comprehensive summary of the state of new music from these shores!
The bands played at the Bowery Poetry Club and judging by the look of the GAMAK vid, saw some real brownstone houses. and SteveAManAKick looks like he wouldn’t mind a 40oz…

I’m still having trouble inputting videos here: not sure what happened in the blog-cogs recently. However, click these links to see the YouTube vids and write-ups from nice personages at East Village Podcasts…

The Blizzards – YouTube – EVP
Fighting With Wire – YouTube – EVP
Heathers – YouTube – EVP
Hooray For Humans – YouTube – EVP
GiveAManAKick – YouTube – EVP

Happy days, sort of…desktop PCs have too many wires and old, old music on iTunes. But as I said to Cloud Castle Lake, equine orthodontics was never my forte.

So while I acclimatise to working in the home environment – percolating coffee, room to dance – let’s just chat…

How do you feel about Irish music? Has this been a strong year in terms of releases? A friend texted the other week to say a journalist reviewing Halfset on TodayFM said something like ‘thousands of Irish albums are released every year and only a handful are worth listening to’. Would you agree?

In terms of media coverage, is enough done for our own bands? Do they deserve more attention or healthy competition with popular international acts? Are journalists and presenters getting lazy? What role do outside influences like radio, TV, print and web have on your musical discoveries? Mostly everything I’ve listened to in recent months has been a stumble or friendly recommendation.
As a musician, what do you consider the most important method of promoting your music?
Small sites struggle to keep abreast of a rapidly sprawling array of new music and face burial in the face of sterile competition. Support these independents. Download the podcasts and mixtapes, link to them, tell your friends.
I think our radio is stilted and repressed. It’s too easy put a sponge on air by day and hide the oysters in graveyard shifts. MGMT at 10am is not adventurous. Are we stuck with this model of communication? Is there a point in petitioning broadcasters to expand their playlists or is it futile to expect a change from accessible trite?
Record labels do fuck all beyond setting up MySpace. Where are the daring signings, the knicker-wetting collaborations? I don’t mean to generalise, some brilliant work is being done by Richter, Out On A Limb, YesBoyIceCream and Skinny Wolves but it’s not enough. A movement is needed, spearheaded by the industry free radicals, to reclaim Irish music scene from indifferent masses. 
And yes, I know it’s time-consuming and expensive but that’s what makes it a vocation.

I haven’t finished yet, either. Why is there no solidarity? Bands are insular bastards, sticking to the same grotty garages and rehearsal rooms, listening to the same British Sea Power CD. You ain’t gonna get 700 at your remix launch album that way. Get some fresh air! Go to more gigs, parties, meetings, WTF-ever, just mingle. Explore. Develop. Be more than a handfull. Fill the void.

Normal service resumes tomorrow.

The Kybosh – Until We Are Lost mini-album launch- Upstairs Whelans – 23/10/08

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…Maybe you’ve already seen this. Tough, here it is again: vid and flyer for You Feel The Fire!, new single from astrofunkists Le Galaxie. Preparing to launch on 31 October in Crawdaddy, definitely Crawdaddy, LG will be joined by Deadbots and Antics DJs. Not a smudge of greasepaint or pumpkins in sight…

Medieval influences come thick and fast on The Kybosh‘s new mini-album, Until We Are Lost, released tomorrow with a launch show Upstairs in Whelans. Inspired by Gustav Dore‘s bleak landscapes of imagination and Dante’s nine circles of Hell in the Inferno, this latest foray from the Dublin quartet, following on from 2007′s debut Rubicon EP aims to trespass happyclappy boundaries imposed by usual ‘The…’ bands, using this creation to delve into darker recesses of scarytales. With Halloween around the corner, you can’t beat their timing….

Check out Rob Cumiskey‘s SoundTrack interview over on Drop-D….

www.myspace.com/thekybosh

I took these in July when Disconnect4 came over from Galway to support BATS at Pogo. I love Pogo, we need more super-late gigs. We’d already seen three bands before getting there and were ready to dance

There are actually four members in D4 but the lights were woeful, so apologies to Keith and Yvonne!

Disconnect4 – Crawdaddy – 20/07/08

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R.S.A.G. – Whelans – 19 October 2008

Attention twists like trees when Rarely Seen Above Ground plays, whipped into resistance by a lone storm of noise unfamiliar to these shores. Pre-recorded instrumental accompaniment is nothing new and has been used to great effect in Irish music recently but with strong solo musicians like Si Schroeder and Jape already dominating guitar electronica, new contenders face strong pressure to produce music that stands up in an undeniably talented, competitive stream.
R.S.A.G lays down guitars in studio so as to concentrate on live vocals and percussion and as a physically impacting impression it surpasses mere rhythm. Timing dominates the songs, erratically rolling through a choppy, organic ocean of soundwaves digital tracks simply couldn’t navigate. They need to be seen to be believed.

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