Synth Eastwood are back with a fifth audiovisual treat and it’s lucky Friday 13 for Temple Bar. After a year’s graft, four shows and a voyage to Berlin, an advance on the home front with a theme of Flags & Anthems sees a schedule split between two shows, both packed with art and music.
Kicking off the night in Filmbase is a free SE starter featuring a print exhibition of work on the Flags & Anthems brief from dozens of international artists along with a performance from Somadrone and installations from Dublin artists Hugh Cooney and Digital Semifore.
Later the show moves next door to the Button Factory where new club NightFlight will be waiting for the baton and what a topping line-up in store! NightFlight’s highlight comes in the form of the eagerly-anticipated Synth Eastwood band: Simon Cullen of Le Bien, Philth, Jape Simon Hayes of Stasis Collective and DJ Tu-Ki will form a live interpretation of loops submitted to Synth Eastwood site. Preceded by Le Galaxie and John Donnelly, also on the night are DJ sets from Jon Averill & Matagouri.
Seri-o, that’s a whole range of art and music encapsulated in a single night’s festivities and I for one think it stands to be a corker. Tickets for the Button Factory gig are a measly €10 so really, that’s your Friday sorted, all you have to do now is look forward to it…
I really dig that blue man with maracas…I might print this poster and cut him out for my wall!
Continuing their domination of the night, Raidió na Life take over Traffic on 30 May to raise some cash for new decks…the old ones will be donated to a youth project PCP teaches at the YMCA. Cranking up the Academy for a Friday night Tropical Heat Wave, RNL residents PCP and DJ Halfdutch are joined by Worries Outernational, Richie !Kaboogie and A-Force of alphabetset.net. Promises of bass-heavy hip hop and reggae dancehall style are sworn to blow the roof off as Dublin’s club talents converge.
The Academy, 30 May, 10 - Late, €8,
Did you vote their win at the Meteors or feel your feathers ruffled when Sean Michaels slagged their name? Do you consider yourself a fan, nay! a dedicated Hambassador, to the Kells cause?
Then go forth and do your bit in getting the SambosKeepsake on to Steve Lamacq’s Radio6 playlist.
Simply email lamacq.6music[@]bbc.co.uk with ‘Track 1′ as the subject title.
You won’t be spammed but Hammed instead…
Q: What is the real underground scene in Ireland right now?
A: There isn’t one.
No real scene, that is, no one, genre-bound seam of gold snaking through the country, uniting long-lost solidarities and laying previous crimes in music to rest. Where there was once a North against South, rock vs rave demand to choose your field and stick to it, Ireland has cast aside another weight of expectation. We’re disparate now, eclectic and exhilarated with it, flooded with choice and preferences.
An Egyptian magazine approached me for a piece defining the country’s underground music climate. How do you explain the buzz preceding a much-anticipated album or great gigs to people who’ve never been at Radiator and have no basis for judgement? What defines ‘underground’? Is it a lifestyle, a fashion, regime, attitude? Is it post-rock, punk or psychedelica? A promise on a flyer? Does underground extend above and beyond pogoing bruisers, stage-diving, moshing? Is it the frisson that comes with breathing the same air as three hundred other frenzied be-boppers at the Saturday night hop?
I think it’s the creeping sensation of secretive smugness when a band command every fibre of my being via soundwaves and I screw up eyes, wishing they never make it big, stay wonderful, obscure and untainted forever. But that’s no defining angle to write from: that’s just me.
Instead I decided to take a unromanticised stance on ‘underground’: the antithesis of corporate Irish music industry, these are The Domestics, Mildreds of Irish music who come out at night when the reps and execs have left, tidy desks and empty wastepaper baskets. They do the hard work. They are unsung, name-known by few and it is they who power rumbling machines in underground chambers.
If you played Dead Start Program to death and are anxious for a new fix of Dark Room Notes, they’ve posted four songs from their 2fm session with Dan Hegarty in September last year. One or two of these tracks may be reworked to feature in their debut “lovely vintage analogue synths” album, scheduled to be recorded this summer. Catch DRN this weekend for the Dublin wing of Akoustik Anarkhy when they support Eyebrowy faves UK-based It’s A Buffalo and LAPals
Although these flyers mention the BoomBoomRoom as the venue, gigs have been moved to Murrays (formerly Fraziers) of O’Connell Street so any purchased tickets will be made good on the night.
No, it really rocks…this year’s fundraiser has a startling line-up featuring Cathy Davey, Clampdown, The Coronas, Future Kings Of Spain, Ham Sandwich, Super Extra Bonus Party and Soul Riot DJs on The Star Stage while Dry County, Jape, Les Bien and Rarely Seen Above Ground take the Phantom 105.2 Stage accompanied by resident DJs and a Bodytonic crew.
Not sure if I’m animal enough for a seven-hour marathon but the show at the new Academy caters for absolutely everyone so drag your mates away from Dancing On Ice in the name of a good cause…
January’s getting off to a good start: my favourite wiseguy, The Sopranos‘ Silvio Dante AKA Steve Van Zant of the E Street Band nominated The Urges‘ song I Gotta Wait as ‘Coolest on the Planet’ on his Underground Garage digital radio show. Having taken a shine to their debut, Psyche Ward, Steve’s been giving it a regular spin on his Sunday night slot on mega-station Sirius where his DJ groove and slick taste in classic rock draws over a million listeners each week.
If you’d like to see The Urges do one even better, log on to http://www.primitive-festival.nl/ to give them a chance to be the only band ever to return to Primitive festival. They’ll thank you in person at Eamonn Dorans’ on February 16th.
Hot Sprockets drummer Adrian ‘Age’ Kelly was involved in a serious accident shortly before Christmas and spent the holidays in hospital. Things looked aptly hairy for a bit but thankfully he’s now on the mend in Beaumont.
Goodwill may now be seasonally unfashionable but it’s unlikely plaid-clad Sprockets will hold it against their friends, who’ve banded together in the shape of a fundraiser for Age at The Hub tonight. Steel-strings and swagger from The Hot Sprockets themselves, The Zealots and Hassle Merchants, acoustic sets from Mainline and Sweet Jane promise chaos taken to new heights courtesy of DJs from Antics, Chemistry and Trashed. If your plan for bands in 2008 is to start as you mean to go on, this gig should be a speedball…and for a good cause, too!
With a glut of gigs lined up to really chuck us into the swing of Christmas season proper, this’d be a fine place to start as your money goes towards Crumlin and Temple Street Children’s Hospitals. Relax! Your collection of Jem dolls is safe: this Thursday’s Bodytonic/Thumped gig is asking admission of €10 or a new, non-plush toy (unwrapped) and in return you’ll get be treated to divine rock vs rave DJ sets from the likes of Large Mound, Jim Carroll, Richie Jape and Johnny Moy. And with a line-up like that, it’s safe to say Shakin’ Stevens won’t get a look-in….
