What Would Jade Do?

Crush / Certificate of Destruction

2010-02-03T04:00:00.000-08:00

Images of rural Ireland are often false, whether they be constructed images as seen in mainstream media or just ignored images, by which I mean elements of the rural landscape and lifestyle that are overlooked or invisible not just in media terms but also in the contemporary collective consciousness. Not only is what we see often skewed, but also what we imagine and what we imagine we see or have seen in our construction of how we regard rural Ireland in our mind’s eye.

In a recent Channel 4 news piece in the week running up to the Lisbon Treaty the programme featured footage of Brian Cowen being interviewed at the Irish Ploughing Championships.

Along with this members of the Channel 4 news team interviewed a number of the championship’s attendees and asked for their views on the treaty.

So far, so standard; lots of news coverage that week was of Cowen at the ploughing championships, mainly being heckled in a most entertaining non-specified rural accent “You’re a muppet Cowen, you’re a joker! Muppet!” This was all very amusing not to mention vital and informative to everyone’s understanding of the treaty.

What made Channel 4’s coverage a little different was its closing image; that of a field at dusk, with the sun dipping below the horizon to leave a beautiful orange sky as the silhouette of an elderly man ploughed the earth. With a hand held plough!

Now I don’t know exactly when these went out of usage but my bogger senses are telling me they aren’t the standard apparatus used in tillage farms across the country today. Likely, anyone in Ireland watching would gather that this piece of kit was on display at the ploughing championships as part of some sort of ‘ploughing through the ages’ kind of feature; nostalgia is big business these days.

The implication though to the eyes of UK audiences is likely to have been altogether different, one would like to assume not, but it is always the fear isn’t it; there they go again, promoting us as nothing but a nation of bog-trotters, so quaint that we are still using hand held ploughs. I’d love to assume I’m wrong but as an aside may I mention an occurrence involving a friend of mine visiting friends in England who refused drugs at a party, she was met with an awkward look of pity “Oh yes, I forgot, you’re from Ireland aren’t you, sorry, I forgot you wouldn’t be around this stuff much. Hope I haven’t offended you.”

Images of Ireland outside of Ireland have always been imbued with this misty-eyed stereotypical stuff, I suspect our generation believes that dissipated a few decades ago, though too much evidence suggests otherwise.

However, images of rural Ireland in urban Ireland tend to convey the same message. I think therefore that it is good to see a world at work beyond the media images that turns this perception on its head, whether covered in the mainstream media or not, things outside the pale certainly aren’t always as they seem when looking out from the inside of the Dublin bubbble.

One such place that contributes to contemporary rural Irish identity is Kilcock Car Dismantlers in Co. Kildare. This is essentially a recycling plant which comprises of a huge yard with rows and rows of unused cars; cars which the owners no longer wanted and traded in for a newer model, cars which were damaged irreparably in a crash.

Many of the cars on the premises got here through insurance companies following claims settlements after accidents. The cars are lined up according to their make and model and the car-driving public are free to visit the yard, seek a car that matches their own model and find a part to replace their broken counterpart with, take it to the counter and make a purchase.

In this instance we can see how something as everyday and common as a crashed, unwanted or old car becomes the basis for an industry of its own, generating employment and also playing a part in all things good and green; recycling.

It is also a much more cost effective way of fixing your car rather than heading straight to a mechanic as soon as you think something may be amiss with your vehicle; taking the D.I.Y. approach can save you oodles of cash.

The yard is a vast expanse covered in cars, car parts, purpley-green shimmering oilslicks, debris, an old dog, stacks of tyres, a wall of crushed cars waiting to be shipped to Liverpool for further recycling, and plays host to folk from all walks looking for a good deal and to get their hands a little bit dirty.

These images portray not only the workings of Kilcock Car Dismantlers and its team of industrious staff, but also serves as a visual representation of an Ireland that is somewhat invisible yet is very real and thriving.

As published in Oh, Francis #4, November 2009

Photo by Claire Weir

Lily Allen live review

2010-02-03T03:51:00.000-08:00

Day one of the extended Luas line to the O2 – a red letter day for the Dublin transport system. Combine it with Lily Allen at the venue, part of her largest headline tour to date, and the atmosphere on the tram is certainly a celebratory one. Lily’s acerbic lyrics and tales of relationship woe obviously strike a chord with the female masses of the city as the Luas is packed with stiletto-heeled ladies clutching cans of cider and singing ‘Fuck You’. This is before the gig has even started.

Once ensconced in the 02 we can see that the crowd is a little more mixed than the journey suggested. Amidst all the vindicated young women there are a few bored boyfriends, middle-aged couples and quite strangely lots of young kids with their parents. When Lily finally emerges in thigh high boots and cowboy(ish) hat she launches into ‘Everyone’s At It’ swiftly followed by ‘I Could Say’ and ‘Never Gonna Happen’. At this point she looks a little dwarfed by the stage as she dances around the vast space on her own. After a bit of banter she introduces ‘Oh My God’ and appears to relax a little and settles into the set.

Since this a much bigger venue to her last visit Lily announces that she gets much more money for this gig and has asked for a keg of Guinness as a result, she then proceeds to pull pints at the side of the stage and offer them out to the nearest audience members. Professor Green makes a cameo appearance for a duet, before she finishes off with a raucous trio of ‘Smile’, ‘The Fear’ and ‘Womanizer’. Returning after an outfit change she says hello to her small cousins in the audience who know the next song as ‘Banana You’, dedicates it to Thierry Henry to much applause and cheering as the crowd happily sings along to ‘Fuck You’ before the night is rounded off with the ladies’ favourite ‘Not Fair’. All in all a triumphant gig in a dauntingly large venue.

As published on State.ie, December 2009

Photo by Claire Weir

Liam Clancy and Alan Gilsenan interview

2009-10-26T08:14:00.000-07:00

The Yellow Bittern, Alan Gilsenan’s biopic of Liam Clancy is a rather surprising illustration of 20th century counter-culture, meandering as it does from 1930s Ireland to the folk hey-day of 1960s Greenwich Village, New York and up to the present day. State recently chatted to Liam Clancy and filmmaker Alan Gilsenan about the film prior to its release on September 11th.

The film started off as a documentary… Alan: Well it did but the plan was always to make a feature documentary, but part of that was going to be a one-hour documentary for RTE because they were involved, and that just turned into a two-hour TV documentary, but the plan was always to make a film. But the two versions are hugely different, it’s a different medium. One of the joys of working on this project for so long, we started five years ago, is that we got to go through so much footage, we had such a huge amount of footage.

Liam: I had old rusty cans up in my attic and I had no idea what was in them, and Alan took them and cleaned them up and put them together.

Alan: I found footage of Liam’s wedding that he hadn’t even seen himself, some great stuff. There’s really something special about that stuff that we found.

With so much footage was it difficult to edit?

Alan: Yes, hugely, especially considering the career span, and the film itself is quite long. Given the joys of modern technology we will have a lot of extras for the DVD. We were spoiled for choice.

Liam: One of the great things that Alan dreamed up was on the first day in Ardmore Studios, to have one guy in the spotlight and darkness and then as the story unfolds the ghosts of all the people that are in the story are appearing. So there is one person telling the story but you’re seeing all these ghosts emerge.

Alan: I especially felt, coming to Liam as an outsider, he lived through extraordinary times. So we’ve got a life story woven into what were extraordinary times, that period of the late fifties and early sixties in the States was a very tumultuous time.

Was there a sense of that at the time or is it more evident in retrospect?

Liam: Oh it was, there was a tremendous kind of tension in the air because of what was happening, there was a real sense of something momentous, and that electricity just permeated everything else. Also America was changing so drastically, I remember the cops, New York cops, raiding apartments where they suspected that a couple were ‘living in sin’! And travelling through the south everywhere you went was segregation; coloured, white, coloured, white.

Alan: I think what’s interesting about this is that my generation had a very warped idea of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Maken, that somehow they went over to some kind of Irish-American ghetto and sung the songs, whereas in actual fact you took the authentic folk and traditional songs to the States but you moved into a milieu of other influences, black influences, folk influences. And it wasn’t part of the Irish-American thing at all, it was the opposite. And what fascinated me musically was the way you took certain styles such as that of Josh White, which would have been unknown in Ireland, and made it your own and they in turn were influenced by you, I think that’s something very exciting, musically, that a lot of us here in Ireland underestimated.

Liam: Well musically too there was a great feeling of rediscovery. Just in the fifties there was a bombardment of entertainment when television was invented, and it was all pop music and all of that. And a lot of people at this time start realising that the culture that had come over with settlers, the old ballads were all being swept away by this tiny box of popularity. The old songs were all going to be gone in no time so there was this, almost crusade, to save them before they became extinct. They were a species.

With Liam the only surviving member of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem this film is a timely and timeless piece of work and certainly the folk crusaders of that era should be satisfied to see the songs immortalised on celluloid.

The Yellow Bittern was released September 11th.

As featured on State.ie, September 2009

The Noisettes live review

2009-10-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

The last time State clapped eyes and ears on The Noisettes they were a little known indie band opening for Babyshambles at that band’s manic first Irish gig in the Village. Following that they were seen on these shores opening for the likes of the Holloways and again Babyshambles in such random places as Carlow in 2006. So what just happened?

Arriving at The Button Factory State is welcomed by a chalk board declaring that tonight’s gig has been moved to Vicar Street at what appears to be the last minute, and likely due to the band’s evidently surprising popularity. We eventually make it to the new venue as The Noisettes have just finished their opening number and the place is packed to capacity. Not ones for conformity the band’s breakthrough hit, the pop classic ‘Don’t Upset The Rhythm’ is played third rather than as the expected encore. Played early it really sets the tone for the evening with everyone dancing like crazy from here on in. Dancing, and worshipping at the bare feet of front woman Shingai Shoniwa.

Outstretched arms clamber to touch fingertips and shake hands as she struts back and forth across the stage, in between standing on the bass drum to address the crowd and boom out her powerful falsetto or indeed arching her back and draping herself over it completely. Tonight is certainly all about the singer, as the adoring and inspired predominantly female crowd will testify. The set is made up of a mixture of the newer poppier tunes and ballads such as ‘Never Forget You’ along with the older more rocking numbers which sit perfectly together, with a smattering of cover versions such as The Killers ‘When You Were Young’ thrown in for good measure.

When the band return to the stage for the much begged for encore they remember their roots and play ‘Scratch Your Name’, with Shingai on bass and then after prompting the technician to turn all the lights purple they launch into final track of the evening, a cover of T. Rex’s ‘Children of the Revolution’. Half of which is sung upside-down from a strobe-lit hanging ladder, the other half while Shingai crowd surfs around the venue and makes it back to the stage in time for the last chorus before disappearing with her band in a flurry of glitter and sequins. In a week where their previous headliner Peter Doherty has had to pull out of yet another succession of gigs around the country this is certainly The Noisettes’ moment to shine and they’re definitely taking it.

As featured on State.ie, October 2009

Jack Penate live review

2009-10-26T08:05:00.000-07:00

Last weekend and Dublin, more than ever, is awash with skinny jeaned young men sporting Dalston crops and a burning desire to be discovered (worn as utter nonchalance of course) at the HWCH festival. Tucked away upstairs in The Village though, a whole different kind of crowd is waiting to see Jack Penate. The front three or four rows are tightly packed with screaming and excitable teenage girls and a smattering of adoring fanboys sporting their own Penate imitation hairdos and shirts. Further back the venue fills up quickly with an older more sedate yet no less adoring type of fan.

When Jack Penate and his band finally emerge from the little door at the back right corner of the stage to chants of ‘We Want Jack’ they immediately burst into ‘So Near’, with the singer barely waiting for any crowd reaction before he is dancing around the stage like a non-gothic Robert Smith. Tonight’s set is made up primarily of songs from the recently released and critically acclaimed second album ‘Everything Is New’, with a few of the favourites from the somewhat less celebrated debut Matinee. Next up is ‘Have I Been A Fool’ from that album, which sees the entire room attempt to keep up with Penate’s energetic dance moves. Following this are three new tracks, including the title track from the new album along, all of which receive a resounding welcome.

Penate introduces the next track as “a song which I’m sure you will all very much know”, and indeed the crowd continue to lose the plot down the front to ‘Torn On The Platform’. The only cover version of the evening is by the band’s favourite band, Talking Heads; ‘This Must Be The Place (Naïve Melody)’. This is followed by ‘Give Yourself’ and ‘Second, Minute or Hour’ which culminates in a stage dive and plenty of feverish groping and hugging before Penate returns to the stage and swaps his telecaster for a keyboard. For a moment there’s a fear he is going to go all Chris Martin on us but no, instead he plays standout track from the new album ‘Body Down’, accompanied by a female backing vocalist.

Penate and band encore with the first single off the album, ‘Tonight’s Today’ which is so anthemic that it prompts a stage invasion, somewhat encouraged by Penate who gives the front row a helping hand. After a set which lasts little more an hour the band are engulfed, leaving the security and staff grumpy and unimpressed but a lot of very happy punters.

As featured on State.ie, October 2009

Interview with Niall from Reader's Wives

2009-09-22T05:00:00.000-07:00

Meandering our way through amps, guitar cases, drum kits, leads and all kinds of rock n roll paraphernalia we become ensconced in a collaged room high above the din of the bustling city below. I am with Niall from Reader’s Wives and we settle down for a tea and a chat about the Electric Picnic and what exactly is going on with his living room… So you’re just back from Electric Picnic, how was it? It was killer. Couldn't have gone better. We didn’t camp. We were playing two nights but we had to get a member of our team back to the airport for Sunday morning. To play two nights in a row was sweet though. Must have been the only band doing that. It's not often you get to say "Thank you, see you tomorrow" at the end of a gig. I was happy to drive back to Dublin both nights, I don’t really like the whole camping thing, I’m a bit of a city boy, I’d much prefer to go to gigs somewhere that I can walk home from. We played in the Leviathan Political Cabaret Tent. Lots of full-on debate which was much more lively, heated & entertaining than I'd expected. By the time we got on, on Saturday night, things were running a bit late. The political debate was run by David McWilliams & as you can imagine, without ad breaks, he goes on & on ..& on. We were ready to go though. Standing room only. Audience really up for it & I think it was the best gig we’ve done as a band, musically. And the reaction was great too; We're a great band so we don't do bad gigs but sometimes it can be a musical night, sometimes a night for the audience to go bananas. Saturday was one of those magical nights where everything fell into place. The best gig we've ever done, I'd say. Sunday night was a bit more subdued to begin with but turned out really well too. We felt we really had to give it up to those soliders who hung in till the end of the festival. Just an amazing experience and we look forward to going back next year. We have our eye on the tent Billy Bragg played this year Judging by the environs I take it you’re recording now? Yes, we are recording at the minute. Just started really, getting set up, getting the drums right but it's going great. We\re not on a clock, so it's all very relaxed. Alot of laughing between takes, the way it should be. Enjoyable. This is the killer thing about recording in our own apartment. I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to do that until we were talking to Steve Albini about recording. We were thinking of recording with him. He's well known for answering the phone at his studio so it had been in my mind to call him for a while. It was a night I went to see Tom Waits last summer, actually and afterwards I was really buzzed so I figured it would be a good time to call His Albini-ness in his studio. He advised that it would be best for us to record at home if we had the space, which we do, rather than paying for flights and accommodation in Chicago in order to record with him, which was talked about for a while. Mr. Ethics. Good advice though, since we just want to track everything really clean & get the belt out of the music at the mixing stage. We're trying to make something to cut through all the over cooked music that's out there. Tunes are written. We've been playing some of them live for almost a year so we plan on having everything recorded and tracked by Christmas and mixed in January and February. Do you have any other live shows coming up? Yeah in the meantime we have a debut EP coming out on 360 Degree Music in November. It's called 'Secrecy & Sex' and we’ll be doing three dates in London to coincide with that. The Legion & Tommy Flynn's are confirmed. There'll also be our Dublin EP launch in Odessa on November 21st which will be a great night. Then we’ll have a second EP released in February and are planning live shows around that including our first Irish tour. Our second album's due out next summer and we will have a major series of shows across Europe to coincide. We will also shortly be making a live mini acoustic album entitled “Summer Mugging” available free to fans via our web site.

The Mighty Stef / Summer Sound interview

2009-08-24T09:19:00.000-07:00

This year’s festival calendar has been pleasantly impacted by the rise in DIY culture throughout the country and is seeing a lot more smaller festivals taking place. One of the last hurrahs of the summer takes place this August 22nd at the East Point Bar in Dublin 3, with shuttle buses provided from and to the city centre. Summersound Festival is in its first year and is playing host to some of the best indie rock around with the likes of The Spikes, The Funeral Suits, Identity Parade and Disconnect 4 playing. Headlining the event is The Mighty Stef who talks here about his second album and his own festival experiences. Connected also had a quick chat with Summersound’s A&R Aurelie Montfrond.

For full details on the festival see www.myspace.com/summersoundfest

With your recently released second album and an extensive tour schedule you seem to be outstripping some of your contemporaries in becoming one of the city and country's most respected bands and live acts, would you say that's a fair observation? Where do you feel you stand within the 'scene'?

The way I pretty much look at it is that everything is going according to plan in the sense that there never was a concrete plan. When I started the Mighty Stef thing in 2004 it was just me and a guitar and a growing number of songs. The sound and the line-up has been ever changing, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. In 2004 there were some great bands I was friends with who kinda fostered some kinda scene. Most of those bands have either disbanded or evolved into something else. The Things will always be one of my favourite bands and the band most instrumental in helping me in my early days. I just do what I do, I don’t think I’ve outstripped anyone but I’m proud of my output and glad that I get to get up and sing and play as much as I do these days.

Many of your songs illustrate an anti-authority stance and portray an alternative bohemian lifestyle. Did you ever feel like jacking that in and joining the rat race? Or have you always believed in what you are doing?

I’d worked in various different jobs from my mid teens to my late 20s. I got a taste of the lower end of the rat race, I also did a few stints in college. It would break my heart if I ever had to trade what I do now for any of that again. Music was always what I dreamed of doing, I work hard at it and hopefully I’ll be doing it till I’m back in nappies. The travelling life is great; a lot of my writing comes directly or indirectly from my own experiences. I believe more in what I’m doing now than I ever did.

How did it feel to collaborate with Cait O'Riordan and Shane MacGowan on your new album?

It was a great experience. Cait has been a real friend to me and the band, always willing to help us out, she’s come and sang live with us on numerous occasions. Shane is a hero to many, including me. The day we recorded with him we had great fun, got drunk and had a laugh and somewhere in the middle managed to get the song sounding as dark and evil as it does. It was a good day’s work.

You play quite a few festivals and the upcoming Summersound Festival is one of them, is there anything about this fest in particular that you are drawn to/looking forward to? Are you a fan of the festival experience in general?

Summersound put us as headliners which is exciting, and I’m excited to see ID Parade who are also on the line-up, it will probably be our last Dublin gig of the summer and maybe for quite a while after that. The festival experience can be mixed, on one hand we played Benicassim this year and it was the single most amazing gigging experience of my life and on the other hand we have done some really depressing festivals which I won’t name.

What's in store for TMS for the next few months?

We have still not officially released a single in Ireland from the current album, Downtown has gotten some great radio support but was never officially released so we might put that out and push for that elusive number one hit!! The Sins Of Sainte Catherine was released by a label in Germany in June so I go on tour there solo-acoustic in September. We’re also playing at Electric Picnic, possibly another tour in the States October/November, a tour in Scandanavia is talked about too as well as loads of gigs here and there around Ireland in the midst of it all...Me and the lads will be kept busy enough to hopefully stay off crack for a little while longer at least.

Aurelie Montfrond, A&R, Summersound Festival.

What made the Summersound team feel there was space on the calendar for another festival?

Well basically Summersound is one of the last festivals of the summer, and we wanted to bring about an event with some really interesting music and we were thinking of doing that a long time ago. We’d been talking about it for a couple of years and this year we really started working on it. We are all friends working together and we are all from different backgrounds, both professionally and ethnically so we can all contribute different things. Professionally we have all been working in the music and media industry.

What makes Summersound special?

Well, it’s new. And it’s an independent festival as well, so we are free to choose what we believe are the best independent bands around and we can really focus on musical quality rather than having to deal with commercial responsibilities.

Who should go to Summersound?

Just about everyone really, apart from the bands we have a combined music and art exhibition. Pieces will be displayed through a projector on to one of the walls of the venue and there is a lovely outdoor space where we will have a BBQ and there will also be DJs playing after the bands.

As featured on Connected.ie August 2009

Sea Sessions

2009-08-24T08:37:00.000-07:00

Day 1

Only in its second year, Bundoran’s Sea Sessions sees the sunny seaside town buzzing with excitement at the influx of festival goers: even the local merchants are super-friendly. Small festivals, by their very nature, offer a greater sense of intimacy, communion and one-ness between punter, staff and performer alike and this is definitely true of Sea Sessions: the atmosphere is notably laid-back and the festival crowd is a mix of city dwellers, who take every opportunity to hit the countryside, and hordes of locals coming down to see what the buzz is all about, making for a visually intriguing sight as State wanders through the various tents and food stalls.

Having procured the first of many frosty beers, team State head to the main stage to check out a blistering set from Sligo’s finest; Tucan, who storm through tracks from their very recently released debut album, Aliquot Strings.

“The album debuted at number 30, which we guess isn’t too bad for an instrumental band,” Donal and Pearse tell State after their set. It’s not too shabby at all, but their blend of Spanish guitar and rock has been gestating for a decade, but it was only three years ago that they began to play under to Tucan moniker: “for most of that time we have been trying to get the album together. We funded it ourselves so we just did it in instalments. We were lucky enough to impress Lance Hogan from Kila so we recorded in their studio and he produced the album. It’s a beautiful studio: it’s in one wing of an old country mansion, so that went really well.”

Next on the bill is David Kitt who ploughs through his set despite suffering from a cold, even shoehorning in some Michael Jackson covers, including ‘Blame It On The Boogie’ and ‘Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough’, (sacrilegiously without a cowbell), alongside tracks from his most recent release, The Nightsaver.

“We played this festival last year too,” Kitt tells State. “It’s nice to come back as it’s very laid-back and informal.”

Kitt and his band aren’t exactly overdoing it on the festival circuit this year, but not through any fault of their own: “I think the big promoters and the radio stations here are really guilty of not supporting home-grown talent. Unless it’s on a major label or has a big UK following, there’s no support. We don’t get any daytime radio play, we get more exposure on late night niche radio shows.”

Kitt remains busy, however, and is currently working on a collaboration with Tindersticks, as well as continuing to experiment on the Spilly Walker material with his brother Robbie. “Sometimes it’s hard to make ends meet being a full-time musician but it’s not hard on a creative level,” he notes. “I have a lot more enthusiasm for it and I’m really enjoying writing and performing.”

Can Kitt confirm or deny rumours that his next album will be a rap album?

“Well I have about eight records in my head at any one time, so they are all fighting for my attention,” he laughs. “I own a lot of hip-hop and I feel like I understand it well at this stage. I’m finally getting the hang of making certain sounds that I’ve been trying to make for maybe nine or ten years, but it’s going to take a bit of time to get it right, so I wouldn’t say it will be my next record but maybe in three records’ time!”

In what turns out to be a fortunate turn of events for the evening’s proceedings Donal Dineen is running late and his and Zion Train’s slots are switched. Zion Train really get the crowd going with their bass-heavy reggae and set the perfect tone for Dineen, who packs out the tent as the sun is setting and whips the masses into a frenzy, before Kila take to the stage a little later than scheduled and play long into the small hours, much to everyone’s delight, despite having an early start for a jaunt to England and another gig. And so Day 1 of Sea Sessions comes to a close some-time in the early hours of day two. Time for sleep…

Day 2

The second day of Sea Sessions brings both blazing sun and a lot more revellers descending on Bundoran for the mix of music and surfing. Unfortunately the tide conditions are really not conducive to the latter and today’s surf event is postponed until Sunday afternoon. State settles itself in the main tent and catches the re-scheduled set from R.S.A.G. who proves why he was one of the most anticipated acts of the weekend. The new Irish talent continues with the 202s on the main stage, while the long missing Kill City Defectors offer a decent alternative in the Bavaria Bar Tent.

The evening’s early highlight is Mick Flannery, who packs the main stage with happy drunken dancing punters, starting his set off with a few songs on piano and before moving onto guitar for a more up tempo run that set the scene perfectly for Fred, who seem to have quite a following at the festival. As normal, they engage in a lot of interaction with the crowd and have a sing-a-long on the go by the end of their set.

As the sun starts to set and casts orange brushstrokes across the twilight sky, outside the tent the BMX and skate competition keeps us entertained during the inexplicably long delay before Super Furry Animals. It’s unclear whether the band like to make us wait or if it is down to the gear changeover that we wait so long, but it is near midnight before the Furries take to the stage. The fact that the bar has been closed since at in or around ten o’clock doesn’t help as the crowd start to grow impatient, leading to a fair bit of booing as when anyone bar the band come on stage. Finally Super Furry Animals arrive to a jam packed tent and manage to save the day, delivering a series of crowd pleasers both old and new, including the always awesome ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’. Just in case the crowd aren’t sure how to react, Gruff Rhys wields placards emblazoned with the words ‘Applause’ and ‘Woah’ between songs. He needn’t have worried – we knew what to expect and SFA were well worth waiting for.

In truth though, that’s about it for the Sea Sessions. By Sunday the festival was really winding down, with the site already being dismantled in the afternoon and the tide lying low forcing the weekend’s surf events to be cancelled altogether. The town emptied as many headed home for Monday morning work commitments, leaving the remaining festival goers to enjoy one last hurrah in the company of Andrew Weatherall and DJ Mad Dog. Not the biggest festival in the world but Sea Sessions has a charm all of its own, surf or no surf.

As featured on State.ie July 2009, Photo by Claire Weir

Noah & The Whale, The First Day of Spring album review

2009-08-24T08:32:00.000-07:00

For Londoners Noah & The Whale, The First Day Of Spring is a ‘difficult’ second album in more ways than one, an aching and poignant journey through heartbreak, and the subsequent attempts at healing, recovery and moving on. Much of this theme has been attributed to lead singer Charlie Fink’s break-up with Mercury-nominated Laura Marling; this album, it would appear, is his catharsis. The title track is the album opener and is an epic song laden with layers of string and brass instrumentals, and lyrics packed with allegory and hope, sung in an almost spoken-word trance; “I’m still here hoping that one day you will come back.”

Every track on this folk-pop album charts the course of the classic break-up scenario, from the awkward conversation that ends it all in ‘Our Window’ (“I don’t think that it’s the end but I know we can’t keep going”) to the first post break-up dalliances with a new bed partner in ‘Stranger’. All of which are backed up with the ever present and torturous desire to return to the comfort zone of the falling apart relationship (pre-falling apart obviously), as illustrated on ‘I Have Nothing’; this tends to be an overriding theme on most tracks on the album. ‘Love Of An Orchestra’ is choral and upbeat and features the universal premise of finding solace in art and creativity, while ‘Instrumental II’ is a bucolic stream of church bells, acoustic guitar, and trickling water sounds.

Towards the end of the album the mood rises and the heartbroken narrator starts offering advice to anyone going through the same experiences in tracks such as ‘Blue Skies’; “This is a song for anyone with a bro-o-o-o-ken heart, this is a song for anyone who can’t get out of bed”. The album closes with the country-tinged slide guitar sounds of ‘My Door Is Always Open’ and it is a lovely little piece of optimistic closure with the lyrics taking on a more positive stance, “Now I’m free from all your pain” and “You know that my heart’s not yours.” The deluxe edition of the album comes with a short film made by the band, none too surprising when one considers the nature of the album’s universal imagery used within the songs and promises to make the package a sensory treat. All in all a beautiful and accomplished second album, yet one to approach with care if you have anything close to a fragile state of the heart.

As featured on State.ie August 2009

Interview with Mary Guibert

2009-08-04T06:06:00.000-07:00

Grace Around The World is a new Jeff Buckley DVD release, which is being released to mark the 15^th anniversary of Grace. Prior to a recent screen and fan event in Dublin State spoke to Mary Guibert, Jeff’s mother and producer of this new release.

Tell me about the new release…

The new release is a DVD, the main focus is the visual. Jeff wasn’t as popular in the United States as he is in Europe and in Europe he did quite a bit of television and turning up for an MTV appearance, or any TV show really, means that you have a really good 3camera shoot with really good sound so we had a bunch of these VHS tapes and we decided to compile them and make a programme and as more people left the record company and more turmoil ensued more people would be cleaning out their closets and more tapes would appear. So we came up with the idea of a visual Grace so we set out to find a performance of each of the songs from the album, and the only one we could not find was Corpus Christi Carol, which I have only heard of him ever performing once, mainly because he already had his solo song, Hallelujah was always his solo song, so he wanted his band boys playing most of the time and didn’t want to play a song that was sort of a snorer, so that went out of the repertoire and he replaced it with something different each night, and in this instance we have footage of him in Germany and he was supposed to sing Lilac Wine and he changed his mind and he decided to play What Will You Say, so we have this additional track. The whole thing opens with him being introduced and there is a reference to him being his father’s son and he flicks the bird, because he always hated all these mentions of his father, so we decided to open with that.

You’ve been managing Jeff’s estate and legacy, was the decision to do this a difficult one, it’s bound to be quite painful going through all this material all the time?

It always is. Especially when you’re going through all this footage over and over again to make the decisions and some of his performances are so moving that they could break a stone heart and here I am, the mom, and it feels as though your heart’ll break and you just have to leave the room and go somewhere private, and then you go back in because you are working with gentlemen, and they can get a little awkward but they understand and they are compassionate so when I need to take a moment I just say ‘excuse me gentlemen’, and I go in the restroom and I bawl like a baby, pull myself back together and I go back ain and take up where I left off.

When did you first realise how talented Jeff was?

He sang a lot when he was a little boy and I always thought he had a nice voice. I never wanted him to want to be a performer, absolutely not, what a life. And his father’s is no small example of that. Very often that life takes very normal people down very destructive paths. He drew a lot and I had hoped that he would become a graphic artist, so when he asked for a guitar at age fourteen I thought ‘okay this will be nice for him’, but when he got it he wouldn’t stop practicing. He worked in a record store and he would buy albums of all these amazing jazz guitarists and by about fifteen and a half, he had been listening to this amazing jazz guitarist, very complex stuff, and he was playing this album every day and there was this one song he would play all the time, just non-stop, so I walked in one Friday night and I heard it as soon as I walked in the door and I thought ‘you know what I cant take this one more minute, I love you son but this has to stop’ and I marched down the hallway, opened up his bedroom door and he was sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to me, and he was playing really loud and I went to speak and say ‘would you…’ and as I started talking I looked at the stereo and stopped, the light was not on, he was playing exactly like the master. I shut the door and made my way out and it was at that moment that I thought ‘oh shit, it’s going to happen.’ Two years later at seventeen and a half he was out on his own and made music his life.

Jeff described himself as a chanteuse, what do you think about that?

He really found a lot of inspiration in some of the best chanteuses, Nina Simone and Judy Garland being two of the best I can think of, because of the soulful way in which they sang, and that’s what he wanted to master. And so when he went to New York and started singing in that little Irish coffee house Sin-E that’s what he did, he sang every song he knew, he’d start about nine o’ clock and he wouldn’t stop until about twelve thirty, and then he’d end up washing dishes to help ‘em out. So he was interested in learning the best way to deliver a song that would make people sit up and listen, in New York, in any pub you go into, and there’s someone singing away in the corner on an acoustic guitar they don’t often get much attention because obviously people are there to socialise. So he found a way to sing that would make people listen and pay attention. And I think that’s the sign of a true performer.

Was it worrying when he went off to New York on his own?

Oh very much so, very much so, I was always worried, it can be a very dangerous place. But he was now in a circle of people that were very artistic, he used to say that they were intoxicated with their own eccentricity. I thought that was a good place for him because he never felt like he fit in anywhere in his life so when he plunked himself in the middle of Greenwich Village with all the kooks all of a sudden he was very normal so I felt good about that side of things. The worry came when I thought about him being signed to a record label, then he is contractually obligated to work his ass off, and we used to discuss how he could control the outcome of his career, and he would say ‘well I’m gonna be very small it’s gonna be very manageable’, and I said ‘really? Well we’ll see how that works out. But if people fall in love with you, you can’t stop them from making you famous and not letting you walk down the street without signing an autograph, you can’t control that.’

What is your funniest memory of Jeff?

He loved to make people laugh so he would often do silly things like stick French fries up his nose or talk in different voices, he would recite entire Warner Brothers cartoons, and he liked to sing songs in the voice of Elmer Fudd, ‘memowieees…’, one of my favourite memories is of walking down St. Mark’s place and burst into song singing On The Street Where You Live, from My Fair Lady and was dancing around me and tipping his hat and swinging around the lampposts like Fred Astaire and not a single person looked in our direction, New York was so…eyes straight ahead, busy, busy, busy.

May I ask briefly about Tim, because Jeff didn’t grow up with the surname Buckley, he adopted it himself at some point…

Tim and I were high school sweethearts, I was seventeen and he was eighteen, and this was before the pill and before the sexual revolution, and in those days if you got pregnant, hell if you missed a period, you got married. And I had a miscarriage within three months of our wedding and then about six months after that I got pregnant with Jeff, and by the time I was five months pregnant he was gone. He had left for New York to go on tour and never returned home.

Well that’s quite selfish…

Yeah and even more selfish was that I knew he was gone and I had known he was going to go and be famous and have his career so I wrote him a letter and said ‘I’m fine, I’m going to look after my baby and we’ll be here whenever you want to see us.’ And that little boy went nine years of his life without a single indication that that man wanted anything to do with him. And when he was about two and a half I fell in love and re-married and those two loved each other very, very much, they absolutely adored each other, so when it came to registering for school and kindergarten because Ron was the only father he knew he said he wanted to be called Moorhead, because this was the seventies and families generally all had the same surname and it was that of the father or stepfather.

So when Jeff was nine (Ron and I had broken up by this point), there was a notice in the local paper and there was to be a one time performance by Tim and I took Jeff to see him and he ended up spending a couple of days with his Dad, during Easter vacation, as I wouldn’t have him miss school. And the following June 28^th he was gone. And that was an accidental death, Tim was not a heroin addict, he did do cocaine and he’d had a fight with his drug dealer over money that was owed and the drug dealer said ‘well here, here’s what I owe you’, and reached into his bag and gave him a bindle and he had given him the wrong bag and instead of giving him an eighth of cocaine he gave him an eighth of heroin and Tim out of vengeance for the guy said ‘oh that’s nothing’ and snorted the whole lot and threw the bindle at the guy, and little did he know he had just taken an overdose of heroin, and because he was so drunk when his friends came to get him they took him upstairs and just put him to bed, and he stopped breathing. And I had to tell little Jeff, who had just met his father for the first time. So when he went back to school after that summer he said I want to be called Jeff Buckley now, I want to go by my real name. And he said something quite profound for a nine year old child, he said ‘it’ll just go back to being like it was before, I will know that he’s out there but I have no way of talking to him’. I do think that if Tim had lived things would have been different. If he lived now he would know that he didn’t have to be so hard on himself, and in that last meeting we had with Tim he said ‘The best thing for him is for me not to be there. I was just afraid I would be as bad a father as mine was’, and I said to him ‘there’s worse things than not having a father and that’s having a father who beats you or mistreats you or doesn’t talk to you.’ So his heart was still hard but I think he’d have come around, I really do.

As featured on State.ie July 2009

Pilled Up Picnics

2009-08-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

Could I get three days in the rain in a field please? Yeah, site preferably waterlogged so I can try to dislocate my hip as I trudge around looking for the right stage for that band I want to see. And could the information tent be located in the remotest possible place so we can all fork out about ten of our hard-earned dole bucks on a laminated schedule that bears no similarity to actual reality once the festival kicks off. Thanks. Could I dish out about 300 quid for the privilege please, and could I queue for hours for a Dublin Bus and sit in traffic for a few hours on Friday afternoon? I’d love that, jaysus thanks. Oh could you throw in extortionately priced pints and long queues for them as well, maybe someone defecating on my tent during the night? Most of all I’d love if you could give me the same headliners as the last few years and well then I’ll be pretty much sorted for festival season. You’re so giving dear festival behemoth; shall I bend over now?

Okay so maybe I’m being a little harsh but by and large, the biggies can become an exhausting endurance trial; luckily there are tons of alternatives that offer better value, better vibes and most importantly a greater variety of performers and general all round entertainment. Oh, Francis spent some time mulling over the little nuances which serve to make these small fests so special, memorable and preferable with the people behind Sibín, Mantua Project and Inisfox. The first festival of the summer, Sibin, has just had its second annual event on May bank holiday Saturday. The festival brought together some of the city’s most popular and most neglected genres over six stages, with 50 acts and over 14 hours of music. Mantua Project (formerly The State of Mantua) had been a summer highlight for festival-goers for a number of years though sadly it won’t be going ahead this year, though the team continue to put on smaller gigs and events around the country, and Inisfox is an exclusive invite only event which has been taking place on an island off the west coast since 2006.

First and foremost one wonders how a group of people take it upon themselves to try and pull together a new fest, Lorcan Fox of Inisfox explains his motivation: “It was a birthday party about six years ago and as more and more of our friends who DJ and are in the 'creative arts' got involved it naturally progressed from there. Our experience from working on loads of other festivals and film productions helped the process.,” Sonja Bermingham of Sibin puts it down to the partying spirit: “It's something we've always wanted to do, we've been going to festivals since we were kids and in more recent years we've been doing little stages at some of the independent festivals so we were moving in that direction for a long time. Then a few years ago we came across our current site at the Man'O'War and just decided to take the plunge! We used phone-calls, emails, veiled threats, arm chancing. Nothing is below us really.” Mike from Mantua: “Not sure I’d call it a concept but more the desire of a group of party and music loving people to get together and create something different that would benefit artists, punters, musicians and the local community and would be a lot of fun for us to do. Sharing a big house in the middle of nowhere gave us lots of time to talk about and plan stuff from that kind of rural perspective, presumably had we lived in a city we would have done things differently, or more likely not at all. At the start we had to blag quite a lot and call in loads of favours, ‘cos to a certain extent we really didn't know what we were doing, so massive credit is due to all the people who helped out with advice and put days and weeks into the physical and organisational set-up with little or no financial reward - none of it would have happened without their efforts and the goodwill of the local community…if any of them read this- THANKS AGAIN!” So what makes you lot think your festival is different to all the others, and what do you think these smaller events have over the bigger festivals around the country? Lorcan: “Genuine intimacy, all night music, no transport issues, no 'undesirables', better atmosphere, less hassle finding friends, less restrictions on music policy and behaviour and the freedom to do what you want.” Sonja: “It's a festival by party-people for party-people. We don't get too bogged down trying to attract the top of the pops crowd, instead the focus is on bringing in more underground acts that we know will rock the place and put smiles on faces. How close Sibin is to Dublin also makes a big difference. People can get out and back simply and quickly, being that it's a one-day event as well people can get that whole outdoor, country-air, festival vibe into them for the day and still be back home in the comfort of their own bed afterwards. Smaller festivals offer more FUN! First and foremost. But there's a lot of truth to that. We love the picnic and support anyone doing something creative but most of the bigger festivals are terrible. The people who go to the smaller festivals always seem to enjoy themselves and contribute to the vibes, rather than stand there expecting to be entertained like you get at the big ones. It's more of an intimate vibe where everyone feels they know each other instead of 100,000 people in a field at Oxegen or whatever. So big up all the small festivals Life, Mantua, Techfest, Mictchelstown; everyone is trying to do something positive. Mike: “I suppose we wanted to keep the DIY, non-corporate buzz of free parties and festivals and add to that a really good and varied line-up and include other art forms so that folk could enjoy some of the best home-grown and international music and art without the advertising bombardment, blatant money-grabbing and restrictions imposed by bigger festivals i.e. daft music curfews, strict security, exorbitant prices for tickets and beer, food etc; and be able to wander around and enjoy the intimate and care-free atmosphere that doesn't and can't exist in other bigger festivals, especially in Ireland… Plus it had an extra edge because of the location which would never before have been a destination for that kind of demographic; so it was a new experience, especially for local residents who welcomed the event and everyone involved with open arms. Obviously larger festivals can throw money around getting in huge names and some like the Picnic do in certain areas try and create an intimate atmosphere in parts but there is no comparison in sharing a space or a marquee with 10-15,000 people to sharing a whole festival with a fraction of that amount, you're almost certain to have more craic, meet more people and are less likely to be herded around by security for a weekend with one choice of ganky warm beer on offer…in smaller festivals people tend to interact more with each-other and there is much less of a separation, often none between the organisers, artists & punters- kind of a by the people for the people type of thing where everyone gets stuck in to make things work and hopefully benefits from the experience.” Inisfox started out as a birthday party and remains an invite-only event, why so? Lorcan: “Safety, and the delicate nature of the island. It just would not be possible to have more than a few hundred people safely stay the weekend. The island resources couldn't handle it either. This year it’s going ahead on a very small scale, but no big tents or temporary chapels or the like. We’ve got to let the eco system replenish every few years. Just like Glastonbury. In fact I think they stole that idea from us.” As with most things none of this would be possible without the cash to back it up, so it may be interesting to note who receives government funding and who doesn’t when looking at festival promo material around the city this summer, it seems of these three only Mantua managed to successfully get Arts Council funding while the others ain’t too bothered; Lorcan: “We got some sponsorship in the form of merchandise; drinks and accessories and a hell of a lot of man hours donated to the cause!” Sonja: “We're 100% independent which is part of our outlook. No government help or corporate sponsorship. As far as we're concerned the government in Ireland is completely against young people gathering and having fun. We'd have to lie through our teeth and make out like it was an art exhibition to get any money and we don't want to do that. Yes we have the whole artistic side of it but there's a load of big sound systems in a field as well that's the core of it!!! Yes, ticket price has gone up, the main reason being that it's bigger this year with 2 more stages. Last year we deliberately kept the price down as we had no track record and knew people were taking a chance on it. That worked to an extent but we ended up making a big fuck off loss on it so this year we've had to be more realistic. I think we have a good little thing going. Obviously we're suffering with the recession along with everyone else so it's a bit of a gamble running again this year but we said we'd give it a shot. Hopefully it works out for us; if not hey we did our best and tried to make something happen.” Mike: “We did receive a small amount one year from the Arts Council but for reasons most likely only understood by them and their colleagues in other government bodies the more we tried to do the less inclined they were to help and this includes other council bodies as well- whereas on the other hand people like the Gardai who one might imagine not being too keen on having to police a couple of thousand extra people for a weekend went over and above the call of duty to help out and make sure everything went smoothly?! Personally I think councils, local authorities etc should more actively encourage not only this type of event but anything that promotes creativity and community involvement rather than trying to stifle them just because of some ridiculous regulation or by-law.” The last few years have seen an over-abundance of festivals around
Ireland, last summer being the pinnacle, a lot of these festivals have
now been cancelled or postponed until next year, Mantua sadly being
one of these, is this due to the (far too) oft-sighted recession or
did other factors contribute? Mike: “The recession had nothing to do with it, We were all just worn out really- continuously losing money didn't help- and people had different things they wanted to pursue- careers, families, studies… rather than work their **** off year in, year out… So the impetus and drive wasn't there like before so rather than do it half-heartedly we decided it better to take a break, recuperate, all that shit… and come back in the future with a different perspective on things.” What can be expected in the future from team Mantua? “Who knows? People and groups involved and others are continuing to put on and do great stuff around the country and no doubt something will spring from the ashes in the months and years to come (Mantua 2010?)- We'll keep the website and myspace updated as soon and as much as possible- In the meantime to mention but a few check www.rootical.com, www.alphabetset.net, and The Punx Picnic.”

Clearly at the heart of all this festival fervour is a love of music and partying and I wondered how each individual festival goes about creating their line-ups, Sonja: “Well we basically decided the focus for the different stages and then talked to the people that really know about those vibes. So Reach have a big input in the drum'n'bass/dubstep line-up, ElectriCity work with us on the techno stage, Connected and Antics are bringing most of the live bands. It's a formula that works well ‘cos the people who really know and love the music are choosing the acts. Mike: “Initially we asked artists/bands etc that we knew would be into the idea, then those that came highly recommended and others that we really liked and thought would suit the buzz, then as time went on other collectives and promoters (mainly Rootical & Alphabet Set plus iKaboogie, Reach, Choice Cuts, Poo Promotions etc) got involved and brought in their ideas, but the main drive was always high quality and varied plus a few quirky bits for a giggle.”

Other highlights of the festival season include Indie-Pendance in Co. Cork which features the most established acts of the irish music scene, The Punx Picnic now in it’s second year takes place outside Letterkenny in Co. Donegal, Sea Sessions in Bundoran, Co. Donegal is a music and surf festival with Super Furry Animals headlining, KnockanStockan bills itself as ‘fun in a field’ and takes place at The Blessington Lakes, Co. Wicklow, and Life Festival, the ever-popular psytrance festival continues to go from strength to strength in Gort, Co. Galway and the Dun Laoghaire Festival of World Cultures rounds up the small festival season in late August. Along with this and despite the massive cuts in the Arts Council’s budget this year there is an abundance of literary and arts festivals taking place throughout the country, most reputable of these being the Galway Arts Fest and The Flat Lake Festival, itself set up and run by renowned author Patrick McCabe and film-maker (and Lily’s uncle) Kevin Allen, which takes place in Clones, Co. Monaghan and describes itself as the point where high art meets popular culture; “have you seen Brendan Bowyer's King Lear in the Butty Barn?...It’s seminal", and likely the only place one may bump into such literary stalwarts as Seamus Heaney leaving an eco-loo.

As featured in Oh Francis # 2, July 2009

Interview with ATP founder Barry Hogan

2009-06-23T05:56:00.000-07:00

The allure of the smaller festival is obvious. Most punters with a genuine interest in music and community opt for the more intimate and less corporate event time and again as the perfect antidote to the thousands-heavy throngs that pervade the faceless big business models of the larger festivals. It goes without saying then that these punters are more than happy to revel in a festival experience that involves a few local favourites and the best of the new batch on the go too. It is unusual for the smaller events to host international line-ups of influential musical stalwarts, and that’s okay. One festival bucks that trend and has been doing so for ten years now. Originally inspired by the Bowlie Weekender with Belle and Sebastian in 1999 All Tomorrow’s Parties has turned into something of a global phenomenon, in a sort of underground/for-those-in-the-know sort of way, and manages to present some of the biggest names from music past and present, yet always in an intimate location. All Tomorrow’s Parties is an experience like no other, and that experience has now made it on to the silver screen with ATP: The Film which was recently screened at the IFI’s Stranger Than Fiction Documentary Festival. I spoke to festival founder Barry Hogan.

How did you realise that a small festival with such stellar line-ups was ever going to be feasible and did it take a long time to start making a profit on your original input?

The idea for ATP was to create an alternative to the bigger festivals such as Glastonbury and Reading, and V Festival which started the same year as ATP.

I was frustrated with going to some of these festivals where only 3-4 bands were worth seeing and waiting around in a field with 50,000 other people to watch a band look far away and the sound disappear when the wind changed.

I designed ATP to be an event that I wanted to go to. I never set it up to become a money making machine and we avoided sponsorship so we could keep integrity in the event and remain true to its goal of providing a great platform for old and new quality music without selling our souls to the devil. That’s where most festivals go wrong. It stops becoming about the music and more about how much money people can make.

But I do laugh when I see people like Vince Power advertising that dogs dinner of an event Hop Farm and trying to boast how much integrity he has, now he has multi millions stashed in his bank, that he has no corporate branding and no sponsorship. They even advertise no sponsorship on their posters! We have been doing that for 10 years but it’s not like we are hoping we get an award for it.

ATP does make money from shows but like all promoters we lose money too, it’s a gambling business that’s for sure, but whatever money we make, we put it all back into the events and try and make each one better than the last. Our goal is to present each event like it’s our last one so we give more than 100% to make the experience something fans will remember with fond memories. I think this has paid off because we have a very loyal crowd who have kept the ATP flame alight for 10 years.

ATP started off in Camber Sands and now events are taking place on a global scale, is this how you always envisioned it?

Yeah I always thought that when we did the Bowlie Weekender (the pre-ATP event) we would take it around the world and tour it like a Lollapalooza style event by presenting bands such as Tortoise to Aphex Twin or Shellac. It never ever got like that but we are slowly setting up events in some amazing places like the Catskills in New York and Mount Buller in Victoria, Australia. Both unique settings that make each of these events an adventure.

Are there any plans for more international locations for the fest?

Not as yet but if we could stage one in Japan, I think that would be the icing on the cake. We have looked at places out there but until the right spot appears I think its best to wait.

I was at The Breeders’ ATP last month, was it a thrill to hear Kim Deal thanking you for such a great experience and saying you are likely the only music promoter in the world who hears those words regularly? It’s obviously a great testament to the nature of the festival and how it operates.

That’s so nice to hear and we have had people say some super kind words about us, but we treat bands with respect and I think that artists appreciate that.

That’s the difference with ATP, we invite bands to stay all weekend and enjoy the event for 3 days, and compare that to T in the Park where say you are someone like Lily Allen – you can have your dressing room for 2 hours and once your show is done, you have to leave so Primal Scream can take it over before they go on. We want all the artists to walk away with positive thoughts about the event not to feel like they have been herded around like cattle.

How close has ATP come to creating the perfect line-up, in your eyes?

It’s hard to say which one is the perfect one as they are all different interpretations of people’s musical tastes so it’s like comparing apples and oranges. My favourite event was probably The Dirty Three, the music that was presented that weekend was mind blowing and we had everything from Grinderman’s first ever show to Roscoe Mitchell of the Art Ensemble of Chicago to Low and it was crazy running from one stage to the next to try and catch stuff. I think this Christmas when My Bloody Valentine curate is already starting to look very special. Where else would you get to see Sun Ra, EPMD, MBV and Sonic Youth all on one bill.

How did the film come about?

Both ourselves and Warp Films felt ATP deserved to be documented. The idea came about in the early days of Warp Films’ existence, and it seemed a good fit – ATP and Warp have a

similar independent artist-driven ethos. Luke Morris, the producer of the movie, asked Jonathan Caouette, who had made Tarnation a year or so earlier, to come on board and they developed this idea of using found and contributed fan and musician footage to create a

collage that would try to represent the spirit of the festival. Thurston Moore called All Tomorrow’s Parties the ultimate mix tape and we wanted Warp to convey that idea on film.

Was it long in the making?

Yes it was a long process that was filmed from the very beginning which has footage from the Bowlie Weekender event in 1999 to the Slint event in 2005, but Jonathan Cahouette began his shooting in 2006 and we ended up with about 600 hours of footage, with submissions and contributions from over 200 people. Although we only used footage from less than half of them in the final film we still credited everyone on the end of the film. These are the All Tomorrow’s People.

It only has a select few screenings lined up thus far, are there plans to take it to many other film fests etc?

Yes there are screenings lined up the Edinburgh Film Festival, The Los Angeles FF and Melbourne as well as a host of others. The reaction so far has been so positive and it’s refreshing to hear from ATP regulars that the makers of this film have captured the spirit of the festival perfectly in this movie and it has all been pulled together by Luke Morris who was the driving force in making this film what it is.

As featured on State.ie June 2009

The North Strand Kontra Band Interview

2009-05-13T11:58:00.000-07:00

How did you get together?

Well there are about thirty different versions of this story, which one do you want? Okay I’ll give you the real one, I started playing the clarinet, playing klezmer tunes, that’s why I bought the clarinet, I wanted to learn klezmer music, then my brother started accompanying me, and then we invited Daly to join us on guitar and it just gradually went from there. There’s seven of us now.

How did you hear about klezmer music?

My Da is a musician and his musical partner Johnny lived in Turkey for a while and when he came back he started incorporating eastern sound into his music so that’s how we got interested in the eastern sound, and then klezmer music in particular came from our Jewish lawyer friend from Philadelphia, and he told us what to check out and we really liked it and started playing it. We are primarily apprentices to the recordings; we like to go from the old recordings. But by the time it comes out in the band it sounds quite different again. Of course we’re not doing just klezmer anymore.

Is that why you’ve changed your name recently?

Yeah it is, we’re not just doing klezmer anymore, klezmer is too specific, we’re not doing that sort of stuff solely anymore, partly because we are doing our own stuff now too, and we’re incorporating loads of different styles and eventually in the long run we want to bring trad into that as well. So the main reason was we didn’t want to get bogged down with one particular style, it would be like calling ourselves the North Strand Tango Band, and doing a quarter tango and three quarters something else. So what with expanding our sound and the new band members we figured it would be a good time to rename. We don’t think it will confuse people too much, there aren’t likely to be any other bands from North Strand called the North Strand Something-or-Other Band, so it should be fine. We haven’t released any recordings yet and that is something we are planning on doing very soon, hopefully before the summer, so that will hopefully be an album with our new name on it, and something that people can recognise us by.

Did you find it hard to get bookings when you started out given the nature/accessibility of the music you were playing, not many people I expect would be aware of it?

No we didn’t find it hard, at the start a friend of ours was working as a manager in the Gaiety and she told us to get two hours together and she’d give us a gig, so we did and we impressed so then she said ‘get three hours together’ and we did and then she gave us a bit of a residency there. So we’ve never really sought out gigs, they just came our way so we’re lucky in that respect, we do have a bit of a niche.

We like do to a bit of guerrilla gigging too; we started off busking so it’s fun to do a bit of that for the craic, and sometimes when we play we don’t want to stop so if a venue kicks us out we tend to continue playing elsewhere. We’ve been thinking about showing up at places with all the gear and going ‘what do you mean we’re not booked? Well we’re here now we might as well play.’ Our songs are something we are very conscious of, we may not come from a Roma background but we certainly come from a singing background, most of our stuff at the moment is instrumental but we want to incorporate some singing and more writing, we are working hard at shaping our own sound and we’re looking forward to getting this recording done and having something to promote and sell at our gigs and we’re really looking forward to the festival circuit too.

The North Strand Kontra Band play a double-header at The Button Factory on May 29th with Yurodny. For further info check out www.myspace.com/thenorthstrandkontraband

As published in Totally Dublin, May 2009

Jaime Nanci of Cuckoo Savante interview

2009-04-16T13:00:00.000-07:00

Cuckoo Savante have been kickin’ around for a few years now, they started off gathering crowds in Galway, lurking around the Dominick Street district with residencies in the Roisin Dubh and a weekly clubnight, ‘The Cuckoo’s Nest’ in Massimo. After some time they realised the old adage may damn well be true and Galway could easily become the graveyard of ambition, with this in mind they flew the nest and headed for NYC for a month or two of gigging and a bit of a reboot. Feeling all refreshed upon their return they entered Vicar Street studios and embarked on recording what has become their recently released debut album ‘Lennonstown Lies’, which has of late been keeping good company in the iTunes Blues Top 5 with the likes of Imelda May and Seasick Steve. Along with all this they piqued the interest of one Mary Coughlan who duetted with them on charity single Red Apple, and has since released her own critically acclaimed album ‘House of Ill Repute’ a song and title borrowed from the Cuckoo Savante back catalogue. Cuckoo Savante are currently on tour around Ireland, full details to be found on www.myspace.com/cuckoosavante The album can be bought at Tower Records, HMV and a whole ton of online places. I spoke to lead singer and lyricist Jaime Nanci about inspiration and plans for the band’s immediate future.

Cuckoo Savante to many are a new band as you’ve just released your debut album ‘Lennonstown Lies’, to a select few this has been a long time in the post though, can you give us a potted history of the band?

We have been together as a full band for about three years, but Morgan, Kevin and I have been writing and gigging together for about five, starting out doing a set of covers in local wine bars and jazzjoints in Galway, gradually introducing our own original songs, and new members, until we were confident to start playing proper music venues and showcasing a full set of our own songs.
And we have been doing that for quite a while now, playing as much as we can around the country, the UK and even venturing Stateside to try and drum up some interest. Which kind of leads us to the album, which we recorded in Vicar Street studio's with Conor Brady on production duties, it took about eighteen months to complete from start to finish, and so now its just a matter of getting it out there for as many people as possible to hear it, hopefully like what they hear, and from that come to see us play. The CD stays very true to the live show; that was our main agenda.

You are the main lyricist in the band, when did you start writing?

I began as a kid really, My nickname in school was ‘Kavanagh’s Mother’ coz I was always scribbling poems and trying to write songs, I think I had a lot of things inside I just couldn’t say to anyone else, so I used to write it all down…it was all very bleak though quite transparent in retrospect.

What influences your writing and do you find it difficult?

Hmmmm, sometimes I just sit down and something comes out really easy, like with "Freddy’s Gotta Fly", it was an urgent song, I was compelled to write, and all the elements were there around me to inspire it I guess, other songs were a long drawn out process, "Ghostsong" I actually started in 1999, and it didn’t get finished for years. If I deliberately sit down to try and write something, it most often doesn't happen, usually it starts with a line I hear, or think of, and I put it in my phone, and go back to it again and again, and gradually a story or emotion forms and the song comes out of that, its frustrating, I’d love to just be a hit-making factory. Lyrically I am very much inspired by love, or the human condition, I write more when there is something tragic going on in my life, I find it hard to write about being madly in love, although I will write about someone I am in love with, does that make sense? But basically most of my songs are about love, losing love, finding love, unrequited love...and lust.

At a recent gig a punter commented that you/your songs have a ‘one-track mind’, what would you say to this?

I would say that they are right! I don’t know, I think sex is very important and it is something that pretty much the entire world are doing, alone, together, in groups…it’s such an integral part of being alive, I mean it creates life, its a force that compels people to do crazy, foolish, sometimes terrible things, and yeah I guess I am a bit obsessed…so a lot, but not all of our songs will contain some sort of sexual reference. On a side note, I guess as a queer man I have the agenda to be unashamedly vocal about my life, I am very proud of the life I have and I’m not going to sugar-coat that for the masses, because I don’t think there are enough visible and diverse public personalities for the younger generation to see. Especially in Ireland. I resent that someone like Will Young would cover "Light My Fire" and not change the words to show he was singing it to a man, like, why bother singing it then, its not sincere. When I was a kid I used to sing pop songs I’d hear, and I remember being given out to for singing songs by people like Madonna or whoever and not changing the words, from boy to girl or whatever, so now I guess I’m working through those issues.

Your music is quite difficult to describe or pigeon-hole to any one genre, is that an ally or enemy in the quest for superstardom? How would you describe your music or would you really rather not?

I love that no-one knows how to describe it, or categorise us; who wants to sound like some other band, if we were easily comparable I'd feel like we weren’t doing it right. We don’t know ourselves, to be frank, we could list all our influences and you might see some kind of map form of how we come up with our sound, but that wouldn’t explain it, really it just happens, its not premeditated, I write a lyric, maybe hum a melody, the boys build something around that and hey presto, we have a song, we have an oldstyle sound with contemporary messages, universal themes, with a bit of an anarchic edge.

You could be aligned with the likes of Amy Winehouse and recent collaborator Mary Coughlan et al, why do you think now is a time where acts like this are flourishing within the music industry?

I don’t know that we would be in that category, I love these artists, and I think that personally I do strive to convey the emotion of any song I am singing, which I think both these ladies do superbly. I think that there is a little backlash against the pop/teen market, but I also think that with the millions of outlets available to get your music to people, itunes/myspace/ilike, all these internet sources and people looking for something different that there is room for everyone now. But without a big machine behind you marketing you and whoring you out to the buying public, it’s a much harder job to get your voice heard.

What can punters expect from your upcoming tour? Are you doing the festivals this year?

We are just booking as many shows as we can to try and make people aware of us, so the tour will be a showcase of the album. It’s going to be a different type of venue each time, some will be big and loud, some dimly lit and intimate, we enjoy both settings, so it will be pretty fresh from venue to venue. As far as festivals go, we will be doing the Brighton Fringe, and the Dublin Fringe, but the actual music fests? We will do some of the smaller boutique fests around the country, they are always a lot of fun, probably Mantua, the Sibin festival, hopefully The Cork Jazz, I think it will be a busy summer.

As featured on Connected.ie March 2009
(photo by Melanie Klein)

Interview on publishing with Niall Turner, Leagues O'Toole and Brendan McGuirk

2009-04-16T12:55:00.000-07:00

Artistic and creative expressions once given an outlet generally necessitate an audience of some kind, be it to fund the creator, to create a dialogue or so that a piece is not produced solely to exist in a vacuum. Which is why many magazines like our own are formed; to create a platform to showcase things we like from the world around us and to do so in a non-critical way. We seek to inspire rather than cast judgement. In this endeavour we wish to cast an eye back to our predecessors before we move forward. There have been many unique, independent magazines published in the last few years, sadly many have folded yet a few remain strong and consistent in the market. With this in mind we caught up with Niall Turner, editor of Connected magazine, Brendan McGuirk, editor of Analogue magazine and Leagues O’Toole, of Foggy Notions, whose magazine is now defunct but who continue to work under the same moniker booking and promoting live music. First things first I had to ask why they took it upon themselves to get into publishing, and the general consensus seems to be to cover music that they felt wasn’t being covered elsewhere; as Leagues puts it “I think the main motivation behind the project was to make a healthy, positive contribution to the music scene, to support and document the music we were interested in. It was made out of love. It was also a fun activity that engaged our collective interests - writing, design, publishing etc. It was a challenge to everyone involved. We wanted to make it unique because we'd lost interest in other music magazines and tried to make something that we ourselves would buy. We tried to make something more collectable and less disposable than other magazines around at the time.” Brendan cites similar reasons “I set up Analogue because at the time I felt that the music I like wasn't been covered very well or at all in other Irish media outlets. When Analogue first started, the idea was to cover indie and electronic music that is neglected in other publications and to cover it from a younger person’s point of view.” Connected’s beginnings were a little more meandering as Niall explains “Well, DJing and producing electro/techno music are my biggest passions, I chosemusic journalism as my fall back plan, which was a really stupid idea inhindsight, or not, depending how you look at it, naivety is often your bestfriend in going down a road, if you knew what you were getting yourself intoyou might think again. It's worked out quite well though, we've still a long wayto go but the first two years were sheer hell really. Two years is two wordsbut it can feel like an eternity. I started the whole thing by doing flyeringfor my mate's clubnights, I was pretty good at it having spent a summer in Spainthe year before, I started doing it for a few different venues and Jazz FM andOllie who ran the station told me I should start a flyer pack - a big businessin the UK that no one did here. He neglected to mention the Irish litter laws tome... We (me and a mate Darren) set it up anyway and from looking into theEnglish scene most of the best packs had a magazine in them so I decided to dothat...I'd previously tried to get a pirate radio station going, we gotbusted after four days, a record label and a club night and a mag with matesfrom Ballyfermot college, and a pub map guide thing for students, and none ofthem worked out at all... I was pretty confident about this idea though... I wasjust turning 25 at this stage by the way...So anyway the plan was to do a fortnightly 36 page music and events mag - Iborrowed €500 from my folks - but then from talking to different people; aHot Press journalist named Hannah, printers and advertising types we knew wehadn't a hope unless we could raise another €60,000, turn into ad sellingwonderkids and get a free work force overnight for the first four years ittakes for new magazines to break even... So our first issue wasbasically a folded sheet of a4 paper in a bag with flyers and a Chupa Chup -but we covered the print cost... and just expanded as ad sales allowed... forthe first 18 months we mainly sold ads to club and gig promoters I knew fromgoing out, we also printed flyers and posters for people to get as many moneystreams in as possible...Like I said it was hell (but I loved it really, themore difficult things got the more determined I found I became…). We got intosevere debt but then eventually the big guys started taking our calls and wegot some of the major drink companies on board, we spent the next two yearsconsolidating that position and here we are now. Although we're at thebeginning of a recession I'm still confident we will expand this year with boththe magazine and our website and a few other projects.”
While a positive contribution to the music and publishing community is always a welcome idea, a dedication to which can only be admired and applauded I wondered if the setting up process caused much bother, while Brendan felt setting up Analogue wasn’t easy he accepted it was always going to be a learning curve and wasn’t put off by his non-media background “Yes and no. Setting up anything from scratch is difficult and for us, putting together Analogue was essentially a learning curve. I don't come from a media or journalism background so I was learning as I went along. The initial reaction that the magazine received when it first launched encouraged us to keep going and to try to improve the magazine bit by bit as we went along. After a year and a bit, I feel we're still finding our feet” Leagues found the whole process a little more tedious “No. It never ran smoothly. We were learning everything as we went along. It was always very difficult and tiring and stressful.”
Publishing and the meeja in general is often considered a rather glamorous industry, and most will concede that the high points are the opportunities to meet people, often subjects whom the writer/interviewer can be considered something of a fan of, a view which Brendan maintains “The highs - getting the chance to talk to great bands like Radiohead, Final Fantasy, Deerhoof, Arcade Fire, Yacht, Times New Viking and the list goes on; winning the People's Choice Award at Student Media Awards in 2008; launching nationwide in August; releasing Peek! An earful of Irish Underground on vinyl in October 08; and generally being able to meet new interesting people everyday”, Leagues was just happy to go to print “Getting an issue out was a high. Getting positive feedback was a high.” Nothing is ever as it seems though so what can be considered as low points in these editors’ careers? Leagues “Receiving printing bills was a low. Not being able to really get it right was a low”, Brendan “the stress that goes with being a Publisher / Editor.” When asked who they consider to be their main competitors most editors and publishers appear to believe they exist in a market free of opponents due to their own distinctive style; Brendan “Analogue has always just done its own thing so I don't pay too much attention to that. Just to add, from February onwards, Analogue will also feature art and fashion alongside our regular music coverage. Each issue will now feature a four page fashion shoot and an art section which will profile artists, illustrators, photographers and anyone else we think is interesting,” and Leagues “I suppose the only real competition was Plan B in a way. I don't really know to be honest. You can only real compare things that have the same goals.” Niall appears a little more business savvy on this topic however “On a business level, any medium that carries advertising, from flyers and billboards to radio, tv and huge sponsored sport events - we're all chasing the same buck...On a music level, we've none. I don't see the need to feel like we're incompetition with other music magazines or websites, if they're good, fairplayto them... If they're shite it's still someone busting their balls and somegood bands will still be getting coverage out of it so, again, fairplay tothem... We're a fanzine at heart and make no attempt whatsoever to be balanced,(what the fuck do we owe major record labels?? - They're also the last peopleyou'll ever get money out of by the way) We've done this the hard way, with nofinancial backing or previous experience, so we're only ever going to cover/helpstuff we like and respect (apart from the odd big international act on the coverto keep the advertisers sweet hehe).”
Despite the demise of the Foggy Notions magazine Leagues remains hopeful for the future “Yes I think we all really miss doing it. But we have no point ever thought it was over. The concerts kind of took over. The key to the future is finding away to do both the concerts and the print magazine and have families and professional careers at the same time. It's difficult but I'm confident it is doable. I think right now music magazines aren't taken too seriously. I think through the last decade the music press have perpetrated this image of the modern musician as someone who feels somewhat self-important about his/her role in culture. I think eventually that might put people off reading about artists they listen to. Maybe music needs to be a little more anonymous at the moment, a little more mysterious. At the same time, I still think there is a future for print music magazines. It's just not right now. I think some magazines have been led down blind alleys by perceived marketing wisdom; changing the lay-out, the logo, the size and appearance of magazine without really making a radical change in content. It's too cosmetic. If you're going to overhaul a magazine you need to overhaul the content. In terms of music mags, what I'd be interested in reading about is how music makes people feel.” The future of Analogue looks bright as it looks set to expand its content and with the demise of so many other magazines it is left to magazines like it and a few others to bring the best they can in terms of writing and art to the publishing industry, a prospect Brendan seems pretty confident with “As long as readers find Analogue engaging I'm happy and that's been the case from the very start. I think we've built a fairly loyal readership in Dublin and it's growing pretty fast nationwide, particularly in Cork and Galway. I've always had a fairly good idea of what I wanted Analogue to achieve and at this stage the magazine is well on track. Analogue has some great writers and some really talented illustrators and photographers as contributors so I'm confident we'll continue to produce a unique and interesting magazine unlike any other.” Speaking on the general state of the publishing industry Niall is quite concise in his opinions “It's pretty much a sham, all the best mags have been independent, The Slate andMongrel the standouts... It's so expensive to start up (as State found out thehard way, Christ what I wouldn't have done for their start up cash) unless youdo it like we did, that it's never about anything other than recouping themoney. Bland, cover-everything populist type mags are pretty much the orderof the day, although Totally Dublin seems to at least try to buck that trend infairness.”

As published in Oh, Francis February 2009

The Amazing Few interview

2009-04-16T12:46:00.000-07:00

Have you plans to go global?
The Amazing Few is a big band, with big ambitions! We plan on going as far as the music takes us. We're making a trip to the U.K. in May, then off to Germany in June, and a few other dates in Europe. We'd love to play in Mexico, and Tasmania (just cos it's a great name for a country!). When we have an album out who knows what might happen. We've been very lucky so far. Our song "Russian Girls" was number 2 in the charts in Indonesia and mysteriously enough got picked up by a pirate radio station in Arizona, who loved it and played it loads! We haven't been invited to any exotic places for gigs just yet though. Maybe they're scared of us? Who knows!

How did you decide to do a residency in Whelan's and how is that going?
At first we weren't meant to play a gig. We simply went to drink and realized we had all forgotten our wallets. We have been playing there to pay off our tab ever since, so we'll probably be there for a while... It's a jail sentence. Pure and simple. Just kidding! We love our Whelan's residency! We were offered the residency in place of the usual late night DJ slot, and it's been a huge success. Most weekends (and sometimes extra midweek surprise shows when we need to blow off some steam) the whole band and as many people possible as can squeeze in, gather together upstairs in Whelan’s and have the ultimate end of week celebration. It's utter madness! (We'd love you to come along- no doubt you'll be handed a shaker and dragged onstage if you do!)

You seem to pay particular attention to style and theatrics on stage, was that a conscious decision to set yourselves apart from other new bands and stand out a bit, or is it more in line with your own backgrounds/interests?
We don't really think it was a conscious decision to be stand out. We just try to have fun and be ourselves, and it happens to be different from what others do. We don't sit in a room and say, "Crap, we can't do giant balloons because Jethro Tull did it in 1979!" We just blow up giant balloons and hope it knocks some poor sap to the floor. We're immature like that. Saying that, we've always enjoyed shows that are more than just a musical experience, but rather an all-encompassing good time. It's why we're such big fans of Devo and the Flaming Lips. They're so much fun to watch, and just as cool musically.

Have you any releases lined up or are you happy concentrating on the live act?
Our live shows are definitely where we're at home. When the whole band gets together on stage, with all our costumes, instruments and props, the energy is incredible. We're as much about the performance as the music; and the audience really gets that and feeds off it. They're part of our performances, so when we decided to record an album, we decided naturally enough to record a live show! Hence, after our super fun gig in the Button Factory in November '08 we chose to put together a live album and thanks to some very cool and talented friends, a live DVD. The CD will be released in the next couple of months, and the DVD shortly after. Just sorting out last minute art work, dedications and secret extra bonus features at the mo'!

When and how did the band form?
The band formed in 2006. It started off with just Keiron doing his solo stuff and Sorcha joined shortly after. Dan saw us playing a show and emailed us saying "I play every instrument and really need to be in this band", so he jumped on board and we were absolutely delighted. He showed up with a suitcase full of instruments, but confessed that he didn't know how to play them and had just stolen them from a busker. Nevertheless, he was handsome and quite the guitar player, so he had to stay! Then Sorcha's brother Niall joined in on bass and brought in his old band mate (John). This freed Keiron up, allowing him to get into full storyteller mode, which added loads of new dynamics to the band. We then emailed the girls and asked them to join the ranks. They happily obliged. They added a new depth to the performance and lifted the songs higher than they'd been before. Djollie our Serbian drummer was the last to join up, and he completes the package. He's a bit crazy but we do love him. We take on new members all the time straight from the audience too. We usually have about 5 different rattle players every night!

How did The Amazing Few come to have so many members?
It just evolved I guess. When Dan joined he added new levels musically. We needed bass, drums and more vocals, then we could hear the horn parts in our heads, and when kazoos failed us, we got some horns. Right now, we need to get someone who knows how to play a goat. There aren't that many really great goat players out there, so if you know one, tell them to look us up. He or she is probably in Wicklow.

Who would you consider to be your contemporaries on the Irish music scene?
Musically it's really hard to answer that. Any band that has great energy and really love what they do. NO sad songs please. We love watching so many acts on the scene at the moment: Walter Mitty and the Realists, Gran casino, Hot Sprockets, Jape, Elavator, Romanov's Goodbye, Red Kid, Warlords of Pez, Dudley Corporation, Lisa O'Neil and anything Simon Cullen has going.

With so many members is it hard to stay democratic and diplomatic? Keiron are you actually the owner of the band who tells everyone else what to do?
That is a hard one to answer in a democratic and diplomatic way! We have so much fun playing music! We're always smiling so no one ever gets mad at each other. I have learned that most problems are to do with simple communication. If you're honest and don't eat someone's last cookie, everything should be just fine. Except me, I can do what I want, ‘cos I own the band hahaha! No, it is a collective of very lovely people who are all really good friends and all bring something unique to the band. I used to play solo and the Amazing Few family just grew from there. It really makes all the difference playing with people you respect and can trust. If I'm off in the audience or engaging in a spot of crowd-surfing and the song needs to change they read me like a book. I think. That, or they're all just extremely patient. I love them.

What are the future plans for The Amazing Few?
We're going to keep up the residency in Whelan’s at least through April because it's so much fun. We have a single coming out "Humpty Dumpty" in April, a Live DVD coming out in May, and hopefully a full studio album in July.
We hope to play many of the fine festivals in Ireland and abroad. Basically we'll keep doing what we're doing, ‘cos we really are having a blast.

What inspires your songwriting and who are your main influences?
All the songs are written as stories first, either past adventures gone wrong or perceptions of human behaviour. The major influences are the stories. Every song demands such attention to the words. We have a song called "Pitch" which is about the Heaven's Gate cult in northern California, who believed they could buy a ticket on the comet "Hale Bop" if they cut off all their hair and killed themselves at the exact time the comet flew over. The music is that of a comet, and some seriously confused people. There's a song that describes the first five minutes of Bruce Lee's "Fists of Fury" so you can imagine all the chops, kicks and bad overdubbing. Drama in its finest form.

As featured on Connected.ie April 2009

Not Squares interview

2009-04-16T12:35:00.000-07:00

Belfast nippers Not Squares are just about celebrating their first birthday and in their one short year together they have succeeded in accomplishing quite a bit for such a short time. They have enlisted a large following in their locale, playing gigs and parties and a whole host of support slots while creating their own DIY scene too. I spoke to Keith Winter from the band about the bands plans for the next while.

How did the band form, and how long have you been together?
The idea of the band formed from a chance inebriated conversation outside Botanic Gardens in Belfast late at night in November 2007, when a few of us felt it was necessary to begin creating positive, upbeat and 'danceable' music within the Belfast music scene. We began playing in a practice room in January 2008.

What would you consider to be the band's main influences?
We have been looking to acts who make a niche for themselves by making original and exciting music not prescribing to a tried and tested formula. It's fair to say we respect a DIY-enthused mentality in bands that we follow as that is where we have all come from in approaching the public side to our own music. Older bands such as Fugazi, Can and Devo have this DIY attitude and more contemporary acts such as Black Eyes, Animal Collective, Deerhunter and Health all have a particular place in our hearts as well as numerous others. We would ideally love to be in a music community which is beyond our locality in Belfast but still firmly rooted in it. We generally endorse bands who appear at Primavera and ATP Festivals as we are lovers of those events.

Your songs have a mixture of weird sounds that I'm guessing were created using stuff beyond the usual instruments, is this hard to replicate in the live act? Or do you approach live performing differently to recording?
We have a slightly more unusual setup in that we have 2 bass guitars, synths and drums and all four members shout and sing at certain points and within that framework we attempt to be as experimental in the use of those instruments including a number of effects pedals and contact mics. We have always recorded ourselves in a rough way from the beginning to document ideas and be able to recall any good bits that arise in jams and rehearsals; so, in theory, studio recordings are a natural progression of that process and are similar to the live performing. We try to see performing live as an extension of our practices and bring that kind of energy and at times unpredictability to the live setting.

When was the last time you were drunk?
Notably New Year’s Eve was a night we shared a collective drunkenness playing a wild house party, and on New Year's Day we were all still drunk.

Where do you like to shop?
Good question! Well, Michael likes to shop in Barcelona, Rachel in Manhattan, Ricki is going to Mexico City in May to go shopping whereas I much prefer Tokyo's range of Chinese imports.

What are the plans for the band's future, any tours/singles/albums lined up?
We are hoping to make a quality recording by the end of the summer and follow it up with a proper Irish & UK tour in the Autumn. The question still remains whether it will be an album release at this early stage for us or something smaller, but whichever we are eager to travel and play. In particular we are keen to make connections around Ireland and join the live circuit of an already thriving whole Irish scene. The reception and gigs we've had in Dublin last year over a few trips was a real highlight for us so far.

And eh, are you really not squares?
We are all very square.

As featured on Connected.ie February 2009

The Glimmerman

2009-03-09T15:09:00.000-07:00

It is not hard to see that there has been, in the last few years, a migration of barflys from the shiny new superbars and clubs that dominated the weekend itinerary as the primary watering holes in the early part of the noughties, to the more traditional pub, noted as it is for its popularity among the older drinkers among us, hence giving them the title ‘old man’s pubs’. The Glimmerman in Stoneybatter may qualify as one such place. While much has been made in recent times of the questionable authenticity of pubs which have been adorned with material items posing as relics from Ireland’s past, items which have more often than not been procured online, all of these old man’s pubs certainly contain such items. The Glimmerman however manages to successfully straddle the uneasy partition between traditional and kitsch, for while its excessive and impressive paraphernalia pre-date the pub’s 1990 opening, the bric-a-brac was acquired in more amusing circumstances than simply being bought over the internet. The building itself was assembled with the bricks robbed from the remains of an infirmary hospital in Arbour Hill, much of the walls trinkets were given to the proprietor in lieu of moneys owed and he threw it all up on the walls to save himself the bother of wallpapering the place afresh. A bed suspended from the ceiling sees Charlie Haughey bedding down with Margaret Thatcher, while Jimmy Dean looks on from the Boulevard on one wall and Bertie looks on from another, emblazoned as he is on an original 1997 campaign poster. Overlapping discs of vinyl decorate much of the ceiling while the bar is plastered with very old match boxes, beer mats and coins, and a succession of jugs hangs overhead. I visited The Glimmerman on a quiet Tuesday but for the football match on the big screen, so my disinterest in the Championship was certainly appeased by all the artefacts which held my attention while my partner’s was preoccupied with the match. The pub generally seems to be populated by Dublin 7 locals and the staff are extremely friendly and accommodating. The smoking section/beer garden is certainly the finest in the area boasting a large decking area and furniture and the exterior and interior areas of the pub are perfect for having a chilled out chinwag. Whatever can be said about the authenticity of the rest of the city’s old man pubs The Glimmerman certainly takes on the properties of kitsch given its décor; cultural artefacts from the last twenty years and beyond, spanning politics, music and pop culture, pinned to every conceivable space. I for one am looking forward to many more spring evenings being spent in these confines.

As featured in Totally Dublin March 2009

Enda Walsh interview

2009-03-09T15:04:00.000-07:00

The Walworth Farce received its premier with Druid in Galway in 2006 and won the prestigious Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 2007. Having toured from Galway to Edinburgh, from London to New York, Enda Walsh’s dark comedy is again about to be greeted by Irish audiences when it returns for a run in Galway’s Town Hall Theatre and Dublin’s Project Arts Centre. A Dublin native who spent a lot of time working in Cork with Corcadorca Theatre Company, Walsh has since moved to London, where I spoke to him about the current production of The Walworth Farce among many other things.

Jade: The Walworth Farce is about an Irish family in London, did you feel that you wanted to write yourself into that tradition of the immigrant experience, or was it more a case of feeling compelled to tell that story, but make an obvious break from the usual narrative features i.e. lamenting the land etc?
Enda: I think it was just a starting point, anyone that’s born in Ireland, we know ourselves, there are so many references to these plays and these type of plays, and we all know that type of person, the immigrant in London. And basically it has been written, it’s done, and I think that’s a very good starting point for a play. It was an original commission from Druid and Druid have got an extraordinary tradition; if you look at the body of work that they’ve done, some of their work might be passed off as that type of thing, but these were very significant plays in the seventies. My feeling when I began writing the play was that I was going to sit down and write it and I didn’t know what form it was going to take or how it was going to go or how it was going to turn out. And it’s not a matter of subverting those plays; it was just my starting point. There’s no cynicism involved, it wasn’t like saying ‘riiiight I’m going to take Kings of the Kilburn High Road and play against that’, because it’s actually a play I’m really really fond of. I think The Walworth Farce is very quickly not about that at all, you know the immigrant experience, it’s actually got nothing to do with that at all.
Jade: Is that why you chose farce?
Enda: Yeah the farce thing, that was a bit of a shock to me that it did become a farce, it ended up being a piece about, I don’t know what the fuck the piece is about, it’s about many many things to many people. Many people will just see it as a father torturing his sons and making his sons re-enact a day that never really happened in a really really funny way, and distancing themselves from a terrible thing that happened. Many people will see it that way but I don’t see it that way. I see it in a completely different way. But that’s what you hope with work, you stick it out there and people can read whatever the hell they want to read into it.
Jade: So how do you see it?
Enda: Well I think it’s just about how cracked and stupid the life of a writer is, you write something and demand people to perform it, they’re locked into the performance, it’s like an emotional attack on them as performers, and it’s all a house of cards. It’s an incredibly fucking vulnerable thing you know; theatre. And that’s the thing I like about it, its just so awkward and vulnerable and it’s all up there, and it’s only people pretending, they’ve learned lines and there’s some lights and we’re all sitting down here; the spell of that can be broken really easily…by just walking onstage and going ‘you’re all just pretending’, but as an audience we get on with it and we get completely lost in it and this is why it’s a much stronger medium than film I think, the attachment to it as an audience does work, it’s a deeper experience, for all its flaws, for all its tiny vulnerable things. And for me the play is probably me having a dialogue with myself about how insignificant I fucking feel as a writer, but no-one’s going to see that, apart from anyone who knows what writing is like, how ludicrous it is to get onstage every night and pretend. But people will see it as many things, some people will see it as a realistic thing unfortunately, some people will see it as a Josef Fritzl thing, I think that’s just hilarious, I think some people need that though, especially in the British media, they’ve really hopped on it like a fucking crutch. I mean, it’s fucking make believe, we can do whatever the fuck we want, it doesn’t have to be derived from a real event. You don’t have to write about a rabbit being squashed in the road just because it happened yesterday.
Jade: How did you arrive at writing plays rather than other things?
Enda: It was sort of by complete accident, I was down in Cork about fifteen years ago and it sounds so naff but we wanted to make something as a group and it was the only thing that we could make that was cheap and, I’ve no idea really, I mean standing up and making a play it’s sort of like ‘why the fuck are you doing that? why are you bothering doing that?’ You put yourself through this all the time where you go ‘why bother, it’s been said already hasn’t it, a fucking million times, so what are you trying to do, show people that you can do it again in a different way? And that’s going to maintain the human being?!’
Jade: So why should anyone go to The Walworth Farce two years after it debuted?
Enda: Well exactly, well the thing about it is, is that it’s fucking, the work is sort of good and it’s fucking you know, it’s a bloody good play but it’s an incredible production. It shatters you and it connects with you and it enlivens you. There’s that experience of looking at actors onstage and going ‘oh my god they’re superhuman, how the fuck do they do that?’, vulnerable as it may seem, they’re leaping around up there and they’re connecting with themselves and they’re in a really highly charged emotional state, as a normal human being we don’t get around to fucking doing that, we do it maybe a couple of times a year when someone dies on us or whatever the fuck it is, or we’re mugged, but apart from that we sleepwalk through life, and I do too, I’ve got the most boring life. With The Walworth Farce you will piss yourself laughing but it also shatters you, it’s a tragedy played in the rhythms of farce, now that’s an extremely weird thing for an audience, and I think audiences, and particularly Irish people, which is why we’re glad to be bringing it back to Project after touring all over the fucking place with it, have a real sensibility for the fucking strange, for the odd, for the broken, for the dysfunctional, for the mad, and I think we allow it; we allow a bit of madness, a bit of the surreal, and the actors have a real rhythm for that, I mean it’s in their bones now so it’ll be great to fucking play to Irish audiences again and go ‘aw fuck, we are fucked people’. We’re sort of wired differently. Irish people are a strange bunch.
Jade: You’ve adapted some of your plays such as Disco Pigs into films, and you’ve written Hunger recently with Steve McQueen, is it nice to have a different platform for your work?
Enda: Yeah definitely definitely. The work of a writer on a film; it’s about trying to get to know the director as well as possible. You are writing you and your characters but ultimately you need to ask yourself what a director is and what you can do to get the best out of him. It worked out with Steve McQueen, he’s a very bright guy and a lovely human being actually, it was a very sweet experience.
Jade: Your plays are more abstract expressionism rather that naturalism, why do you prefer that style?
Enda: Because I think life is pretty strange and pretty complex, and I like the weight of that. and you know fucking hell I live in the world and I go out and see people and go to restaurants and go to dinner parties and the notion of actually trying to replicate what happens at a dinner party and putting it onstage just actually fucking, I would rather drink my own fucking urine than actually trying to replicate that onstage, and I cant understand it. That’s just not the sort of writer I am, my brain is wired and I don’t mean to sound wanky but I’m used to writing in the way that I’m writing and I put it through some rigour and it might start off being very like naturalism and then it goes through my brain and then it comes out in a different way and I don’t do that with any sort of affect, its just important for me that the characters write it, that I’m distanced from it, that it’s not coming from a middle class twat from Dublin living in a nice house in London; it’s about the characters on the stage so the audience has to feel that my work has been written by these people. So a lot of the time it’s about me immersing myself in character and letting the characters go for it and not trying to stand in the way and not being morally above them. Everything that I’ve done is about ‘get the fuck away from Enda Walsh’, because I can’t imagine a more boring fucking evening than listening to someone like me; that just doesn’t work for me.
Jade: Your work has won lots of awards, are they important to you as a recognition of your work, or do you regard them as more of a token gesture?
Enda: No no no, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, absolutely no, no fucking way, I really really couldn’t give a shite about them. I mean they are stupid, you can understand the fastest person in the world having an award; because he’s the fastest person in the world. But all of those awards for things like a painting or a book or a piece of theatre or a performance or best lighting, you sort of go ‘what are you talking about?’ All that is complete rubbish. It doesn’t mean anything to me at all. There are maybe ten people in the world that I would value their opinion and anyone else you know I really really don’t care, I mean critics have hated my work and really loved it in equal measure, you take everything with a pinch of salt, and you have to be really self-critical yourself. And then there are contemporaries of mine that could really really hurt me, people that know my work that could turn around and say ‘do you know what Enda that was pretty shit’, or ‘that was a bit lame’ or ‘you’re getting quite boring’ and that would absolutely fucking crush me. But I think every writer is the same, or anyone that makes stuff. I mean there are certain critics who are a bit like, I mean I could poo on the stage and they’d still go ‘oh my god, Enda Walsh is so great, look what he did’, and that’s fine but jesus christ it’s not about me anymore its about them having conversations with other critics, and the older I get the more I realise how newspapers work and how critics work and in terms of fucking awards I think they’re an absolute no-no, I just think they’re absolutely fucking ludicrous. What use are they? I still have to get up in the morning, and you know what I’ve got a fucking ton of confidence anyway and no one’s going to tell me otherwise. No one is going to tell me that I can’t do something.

As featured in Temple Bar magazine November 2008 and totallydublin.ie

Camille O'Sullivan interview

2009-03-09T15:01:00.000-07:00

Born in London of a French mother and Irish father Camille O’Sullivan moved to Cork when she was a child. Prior to running away with the circus The Famous Spiegeltent, she spent a year studying Fine Art painting then onto UCD, where she graduated as an Architect. As a solo performer Camille has performed 5 Star sell out seasons in Australia, New York, UK and Ireland and sold out her run at the Sydney Opera House and the 3000 seated State Theatre as part of the Melbourne International festival last year. After being spotted in ‘La Clique’ at the Famous Spiegeltent by Ewan Bremner, aka Spud from Trainspotting, O’Sullivan recently co-starred in the Academy Award nominated film Mrs Henderson Presents directed by Stephan Frears, opposite Dame Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins.
I caught up with Camille on a cold November night to discuss the various meandering strands of her career and this month’s show at the Olympia. As she is fresh from a radio interview where she was asked to discuss beauty treatments we launch straight into a discussion about all things aesthetic “…the looks thing, I think I look much better now than in my late teens and early twenties, and it’s because you get to know really well how to present yourself in the best light possible. I like to have my off days too but when I’m gigging I really love to go for it. I mean I love the fantasy of dressing up and really glamorising yourself. I definitely think you find a certain look that suits you. I really like that classic retro look, women like Eva Gardner or Rita Hayworth, Dita Von Teese, I think it’s a really beautiful way that women can look, and you can be really edgy with it, it’s a very strong look. With clothes, when I first started I’d dress quite old-fashioned, whereas now I add a modern twist to it, so it looks more contemporary. You don’t get many occasions to dress up like that, so performing gives me a great excuse to wear unusual clothes and to really go for it”
Jade: Switching back to your career, how did you make the transition from painting and architecture to performing?
Camille: I think with performing and the dressing up and glamour element, the thing it has in common with painting and with architecture is creativity. I’d always wanted to be a painter but I didn’t quite have the confidence to pursue it to so I went into architecture, but I always kept up things like acting and singing and drawing while I was doing that. I still keep up that stuff too, I still draw and sketch when I’m travelling. I always wanted to perform but was never quite sure what form that was going to take, but just always feeling this need to be on stage. When I took a year out in Berlin that saw the beginnings of what would be the now the whole reason why I am on stage, that obsession with old Weimar cabaret; which was quite political and confrontational, and provocative. That was the first time I was really moved by music. These songs are all about the truth of life, and about questioning one’s surroundings, which means they always paint t the prettiest picture, but there is a lot of pleasure in sharing those stories and experiences. I think I found something I was really interested in there and that kind of performing suited me very well as I’m not very good at doing reality. When it comes to performing I think it’s a great thing getting adulation, and it’s not always ambition that gets me on stage, it’s fear. It was very difficult when I started performing in Ireland, trying to get gigs was hard, I was getting turned away, people need to pigeon-hole you, and if you say Cabaret, it then becomes Irish Cabaret and it conjures up Jury’s and things like that. Cabaret isn’t a word I even like using because it conjures up just Burlesque and it puts a restriction on you already. It’s more individual than that, I don’t write my own music but I am like an actress singing a monologue and interpreting something that’s often dark or sad.
Jade: Have you ever thought about writing your own material?
Camille: No I haven’t, I think because I am scared that it would be rubbish, I think it’s the things that we want to do most that we keep postponing, I think about it and then I do things like cleaning door handles in my house that have never been cleaned, putting off the big day when I finally sit down to write something, my other excuse is how can I write after singing Brel and Nick Cave, I mean they are phenomenal writers.
Jade: How do you choose your songs?
Camille: Well the Brel stuff would be because I am half French and my parents had a great record collection, and I started listening to songs that were more like storytelling and had characters, and I like dark and dramatic tales. If I hear something and it resonates with me then I’ll look into doing it. It’s more about the story within the song than singing the song sometimes. So when performing it is always a personal thing, even if I haven’t written the song, and it’s always about being sincere with a song rather than it just being about my voice. As a woman too I think that it’s important to shake that image of yourself, and not just be the femme fatale in the fishnets and heels singing, it’s important that you show every aspect of yourself, that you can be vulnerable that you can be tough or angry or gentle. What I love best is humour and charm and that’s what I love about the intimacy of being onstage; you use all these aspects of your personality to lock in with the audience, it’s not just about singing to them, you’re very much with them.
Jade: What women are you influenced by?
Camille: I love all women I think women are great, I think PJ Harvey is great, she’s quite out there, and there are so many writers and performers who are very devoted to what they do. I have great admiration for people who are not in the arts. I tend to like people who are talented but who are good with it, who are tongue-in-cheek and enjoy themselves, who work hard but aren’t up themselves.
Jade: What can we expect from your upcoming show in the Olympia?
Camille: Well, I will do Cave, Waits, Brel, bit of Radiohead, the show is becoming quite contemporary and a bit rock, and we now play in places like Glastonbury and Oxegen and those were things I never thought I’d be part of. The show will be about these songs, and telling those stories but also about creating a dreamlike world for people, you have to make them believe that you are that character, there will be seven musicians onstage with me. The Olympia is the perfect place to create this intimate show, you feel like you’re in a little jewellery box, so it’ll be a lot of fun.

As featured in Temple Bar magazine, Dec 2008

The Sycamore Club

2009-03-09T14:56:00.000-07:00

It’s called a club because you have to be a member to get in.
It is only fitting now with talk of this wearisome global recession turning into an all out depression that we find ourselves ushered quickly into a lift and transported to a seventh floor enclave that is truly reminiscent of a thirties-era speakeasy. Perhaps this ambience is inadvertently achieved due to the party of burlesque beauties and their dapper comrades present on the occasion of my visit, themselves indulging in a little nightcap following a cabaret show in the nearby theatre. Be that as it may secret handshakes, nods and whispered passwords are all that’s needed to escape the bustle of Temple Bar and enjoy the top three floors over The Purty Kitchen.
During my visit I settled in the penthouse bar, though there are a number of cosier quarters to choose from, each decorated comfortably and casually with couches and pop art prints of Debbie Harry, Pattie Boyd et al. These I discovered as I ambled through the maze of rooms and the gallery, dazed by the large-scale luminous images of beautiful women adorning the walls, en route to the terribly continental unisex restrooms. The penthouse bar is favourable to most for it offers a very rare treat, to be found almost nowhere else in the country; indoor smoking! Or what seems like indoor smoking, for the top floor features a large oval aperture, making it all okay in the eyes of the law. As the penthouse/rooftop bar features heated seats and restored brick feature walls it is a far cry from any other shabby smoking yard semi-concealed by a soggy canopy. The décor here is casual and minimalist and this spacious room holds up to 250 punters. I attended a Sunday Social, which is the new favourite hangout of the A-Gays, and serves as a more low key gathering than the usual Sunday clubs on the scene. The atmosphere was relaxed and the bar offers the usual wide range of beers spirits and also features an extensive cocktail menu. The Sycamore Club opens from midday every day, is wi-fi enabled and is said to suit a range of daytime uses before its soirees kick off later in the day.
So if you’re feeling a bit A-list, if you’re a little bored of the UK-imitation paparazzi-laden hangouts frequented by Dublin’s D-list (at best) ‘socialites’ then The Sycamore Club is likely to suit you just fine sir. Now all you have to do is hope for an invitation so that you too may take the lift to the top floor and avoid that downward spiral we are so incessantly being reminded of.

As featured in Totally Dublin December 2008

Roses Kings Castles / Adam Ficek Interview

2009-03-02T08:48:00.000-08:00

How did you come to record your own debut album?
Adam: You know what this album’s cost me about twenty grand, and I’ll probably get about twenty quid back. It’s not about the money, it can’t be, it’s about a creative outlet. Lucky enough I have Babyshambles to pay my bills, my main band is my income so I’m lucky enough to be able to put that money back into something creative.

I wanted to ask you about Babyshambles, obviously being in a band like that will help and hinder a project like Roses Kings Castles, and you’ve said playing in large stadiums, you tend to have a lot of time on your hands which is when ideas for this album originated, did you feel in that sort of environment the need to forge your own career due to the nature of being in a band like Babyshambles?
Adam: Yeah I think maybe there is a sense of some semi-insecurity being in a band like that, you just don’t know where it’s going to go. That didn’t deter me from doing solo stuff, but it’s looking now like Babyshambles is going to last a lot longer than I had initially expected, when there were a lot more problems. But it’s nice to have that outlet and not have to rely on anyone else for your creativity. That’s the main key and it’s not about any financial stuff but it’s nice to have that creative security.

I’ve been to a few Babyshambles gigs, one that sticks out in my mind in particular is one you were supposed to play in the Temple Bar Music Centre about two and a half years ago…
Adam: Well when you say you…you know me and Drew were downstairs in the dressing room ready for that gig, it is really the worst feeling in the world.

Yeah that’s what I was wondering, Drew obviously has some solo projects going too, I was wondering is that because in the situations you are left in with Babyshambles, your hands are tied, and you are always left to pick up the pieces
Adam: It is an awful situation to be in, you can’t even imagine, it’s really difficult. So it is nice to have a bit of security, I can say I’m going to play n Ireland next week and I will play in Ireland next week. But obviously along the way someone could get ill but if I’ve got a commitment I can honour it. And it’s a nice relief to have that on this side of my creative outlet. With my stuff if I say I’ll be somewhere I’ll be there, there’ll be no qualms about it. It is frustrating when you miss shows, with ‘shambles and stuff. But I think some people actually like it, some people go along in anticipation of ‘oooh maybe it’ll be a no show’, it’s quite an odd thing, people are sometimes excited by it, it really brings out the dark side of human nature. It’s not for me though, I wouldn’t be impressed if I paid to see a band and they didn’t show up. But you know things are getting better, and I have the utmost respect for Peter.

I think it might be getting better in the respect that we aren’t privy to that tabloid coverage anymore...
Adam: He’s out of London now, and out of that sort of limelight, I think it’s a really good thing for the band.

Do you think place and location influence your work? You grew up in Milton Keynes which is quite an odd place.
Adam: Yeah environment plays a huge factor in the writing process, I believe in energies too, some places have a great energy about them and some places just don’t. You can hear a lot more of the rural in my album; it’s not really a city album. Sometimes you hear albums and they sound like they are written by kids that grew up in the country, moved to London, shopped in charity shops, go to art college and pretend they are down with it. You know what, just because you shop in charity shops doesn’t make you any more sincere. I hate all that bullshit I really do, and there’s a lot of it in London. Milton Keynes is a strange place, I think it was set up when they were trying to rejuvenate London and get people out of London, so you get a lot of people from there, but you’ve got a real odd cross of people, you’ve sort of got people with a piece of straw coming out of their mouths followed by cockney gangsters. That’s how I always felt when I was growing up, I could go out my door and a hundred yards one way there’s beautiful greenery and horses and cows…
And concrete cows…
Adam: Yeah exactly, on the other side there’s the concrete cows and the big horrible glossy glass central Milton Keynes, it’s so sterile. I was lucky enough to be on the border between the two. The nature of that place still influences me, I’ve called my record label The Sycamore Club, which was a youth club I used to go to when I was young, and that was partially to have something green on the album, the artwork is red and black, so I wanted to balance it out, it’s a lot about balance this record. And also because putting your own album out; people see that as quite street and urban, and sycamore club takes that away from it and makes it a little more twee. I’m not going to come out and say I’ve been working in co-op all my life and now I’m a kid from a council estate. Most of the kids I know that are singing that council estate vibe are just full of bullshit, they are totally middle class and kids of school teachers and the like. The people I know that have come from humble working class backgrounds are the ones that don’t feel the need to glorify it.

It’s always been the way, rich kids love pretending to be poor…
Adam: Yeah I know, and I find that really insincere and I hope the sincerity in my record comes across.

A lot of the tracks on your record are quite sombre…
Adam: It’s weird that you should say that, most people say they are really luscious and full of melody, and yet they’re not, when you dig beneath the surface…
Lyrically they’re quite dark…
Adam: Yeah it’s weird, it’s quite juxtaposed between the lyrics and the music. At first you get these nice little melodies and then you get some scathing attacks and cynicism. Generally about people I’ve met, people I’ve yet to meet, fictional characters…
Factual characters that you can pretend are fictional…
Adam: Ha! You’re not going to get it out of me like that!

I have no interest in getting it out of you, in fact listen to that song ‘Entroubled’, it hadn’t occurred to me about who it might be about in the way that it has to everyone else.
Adam: Obviously people are going to make the natural association with who they most relate to me through, but it’s a bit patronising to assume I have nothing else going on in my life.

Well I’m sure lyrics like ‘cling to your mistakes, play the rumours down’ is about your other band.
Adam: Ha ha yeah maybe, that’s what I love about lyrics, they’re so open to interpretation. Although in hindsight I do feel some of the lyrics are a bit too personal, it might hinder the record a bit.

Do you feel a little exposed?
Adam: Not personally no, I don’t feel exposed at all, I’m fine with that, but people buy into stuff you know. And if you look at bands that are really popular their lyrics are quite ambiguous and not so personal.

How do you find lyric writing?
Adam: I find it really hard and I don’t think about it, I don’t consider myself a lyric-writer, I don’t sit there and ponder over stuff, I’m not well-read at all. At school I was never really into that stuff either, I could sit here and pretend to be a real literary head but I’m not, I was always much more interested in playing music or football. So writing songs I have a melody and then I just sing something over it, it’s more about the structure of the word suiting the music, rather than the meaning of the words themselves.

You seem to have quite a close relationship with your fanbase, it’s more like a community?
Adam: Yeah it’s certainly a two-way thing, we find each other venues for gigs and help each other out in anyway way we can, it’s really nice to have that relationship. It helps with a project like this especially, I see this as something I want to do myself for a long time, maybe release and album a year, or if I don’t have time an EP a year, it’s important to have your own body of work and to have that creative outlet.

As featured on State.ie February 09

Synth Eastwood interview / DEAF 08 preview

2009-03-02T08:41:00.000-08:00

The seventh annual Dublin Electronic Arts Festival runs this year over the bank holiday weekend, from October 23rd to 26th. Musically the festival welcomes a number of high-profile international acts such as Nurse With Wound, Trans Am, Steinski and M83 all of whom are complemented by a strong line-up of local home-grown talent. While DEAF features a host of renowned musicians working in the electronic arts there are a number of other electronic disciplines featured too. The audio-visual presence is very strong with the ‘Gallery Weekend’ taking place in a number of galleries throughout the city such as the The Joy Gallery, Versus and Thisisnotashop. Working in partnership with these galleries emphasises the DEAF ethos. The DEAF programme seeks to support new names and prides itself in providing exposure for a new generation of Irish-based artists working in the electronic arts and accordingly works with predominantly independent artist-run ventures. This year’s line-up is further strengthened by DEAF TALKS, a day of interactive and participatory workshops, screenings and discussions. Highlights from this include a BBC Radiophonic workshop presented by Dave Vorhaus and Mark Jenkins, (White Noise, UK) and the Irish premiere of ‘Totally Wired’, a documentary film about Schneider’s Buero in Berlin, followed by Q+A from Andreas Schneider and director Niamh Ahern. ‘Totally Wired’ tells of synthesizer store owner Andreas Schneider, ensconced inside a crumbling socialist office block in former East Berlin, preaching the way of analogue to a loyal following of infamous electronic musicians. The highlight of the festival is undoubtedly the closing party, which takes place on Sunday 26th October in Whelan’s, Whelan’s Upstairs and The Village. The event runs over three stages with access all areas to sets by Laurent Garnier, Juan Atkins, Model 500, Moritz Von Oswald Trio, Fuck Buttons and many more.
There is a focus on the participatory this year with talks, screenings and an adult music workshop facilitated by local collective !Kaboogie. DEAF Junior, a children’s workshop programme, will visit some of Dublin’s less well off areas offering kids of all ages an opportunity to experiment with new music technology. With this sentiment of interaction and participation in mind I met Simon and Karl from local art, music and technology collective Synth Eastwood to talk about their involvement in DEAF and the particularly participatory experience of a Synth Eastwood show.

How did Synth Eastwood come together?
SE: We were all friends first, all met going out to the same kind of nights basically, mutual friends, living together and that kind of thing, and between us all we were doing different art and stuff; we thought we could pool our resources. We’d all go to each other’s gigs and we always just felt that we would like to work together.

So what exactly is it that Synth Eastwood do?
SE: It’s kind of hard to explain. We have a show, an exhibition, a gig. It’s sort of a multimedia event. But not in an awkward sense of an exhibition, not in the chin-stroking…looking sense of an exhibition, we like to create a bit more of a fun element, a common ground between an exhibition and a gig but not too much of either, so you’re getting a common crowd, and so there’s something that will appeal to everybody.

What would discourage you from the usual exhibition experience?
SE: Well we go to those ourselves as well, but even if you go to something like The Candy Collective, they are brilliant, and they have international guests alongside Irish guests talking about their work, and there’s always great energy. Plus there’s a tendency for regular exhibitions to be over by 8pm or 8:30, so our point was to start something at that time and keep it running all night and that way we could bring in different acts and different visuals too. Our exhibitions aren’t like normal exhibitions and our gigs aren’t like normal gigs, it’s very much a crossover. So people that would normally only go to an exhibition may be inclined to stay on for the gig and people that would only go to gigs would experience an exhibition where they wouldn’t normally. So it’s sort of blurring the lines. A very important part of the event is that we try to come up with as many ways as possible for the audience to participate in the event itself so that they are not jut there as an audience, or to just be present at someone else’s gig. It’s important to us that there are elements of interactivity there that people can play with. And in that way we encourage people to take part in the show. And in some ways we are just facilitating all this stuff. For our last show we had over seventy applications and only about 20% were from Ireland. Most of the stuff we’ve focussed on so far has been print and graphics but we are open to receiving absolutely anything that anyone has to offer within the terms of the brief and although we have no funding, or money, we try and facilitate and show that work.

Is funding an issue?
SE: Well it kind of dictates how far we can take the show and effect the amount of time we have to put into it ourselves. It does take up a lot of extracurricular time, and putting on a show costs quite a lot; printing out all the artwork, venue hire, and even manpower…and ladypower on the evening of the event.

Tell me about your involvement in DEAF
SE: Well it’s pretty much our normal show and we are putting it on as part of the DEAF programme. They approached us and we were happy to be a part of it, we like what they do, and the fact that it’s an arts festival and has a strong musical element to it too, and they have been really helpful to us. This is our sixth show and it means we can reach a wider audience, being part of the DEAF programme.

What’s the brief for the show?
SE: Well the theme is ‘Cycles’, that’s the brief. Our show has three or four parts over two days. First of all, in Filmbase from 8pm we’ll have our print exhibition with work from international artists, and you can buy the posters this time, we’ll also have a touch-screen interactive booth with all the work on it, on the ground floor, then in the basement we have a theatrical piece that was written specifically for the brief, ‘Cycles’, and that will be done with actors and TV screens, so that’ll be a multimedia thing, we’ll have a music performance, we’re going to shoot the crowd at the exhibition and that’ll be the visuals for the night time show. Then at eleven we’re moving over to The Button Factory for the Synth Eastwood band performance which is part of the Night Flight night happening as part of DEAF too. We’ll also be doing projections in Meeting House Square too during the show time, 8 until 11. That’s all on Friday 23rd, then on Saturday night in Twisted Pepper it’s the loops battle; we’re gathering a group of the small independent labels in Dublin and asking them to put forward a representative to do a set with all the submitted loops, in a friendly competition.

What else is in store for Synth Eastwood?
SE: After the show we put all the work on our website and all the loops and photos from the day of the exhibition and the gig too. It’s good to do that to keep a permanent record of the shows and also for international artists who can’t make it to the show so they can see what their work on display. That puts a full stop on the show and we can then move on to the next one.

As featured in Temple Bar Magazine October 2008

Club Nassau - Home of the Slowset

2009-03-02T08:29:00.000-08:00

"Ping-pong and a slowset, what more could you ask for?" This was my editor Mr. Christensen's pitch as he requested I make my way to that most notorious of dens Club Nassau and spend my Saturday night therein. The ping-pong sadly eluded us but the home of the slowset more than made up for that.
Arriving at a place like Club Nassau has the potential to be a little intimidating when one is not familiar with such venues and scenes. Not knowing what to expect and therefore not knowing how to dress I don my specs as I approach the entrance and open my Harrington in an effort to appear in some way...professional, respectable, less skinhead thuggish? It seems to work and after a moment, where we are obliged to step back and allow a taxi load of regulars dressed in what one expects are recession-busting satin dresses, towering open-toe stilettos, tango tans and the indispensable ubiquitous clutch handbag, we are admitted entry after the bouncer eyeballs our scruffy selves. We descend the steps of hope as the echoes of Madonna's True Blue filters up the stairway. Entering the club is a very strange experience - prepare to be presented with a bizarre assortment of characters that make up Club Nassau's clientele. The home of the slowset is renowned for being a middle-aged meat-market, and that's pretty much exactly what it is. Punters are made up of a predatory crowd searching for a soul mate or a shag, ranging in age from early thirties to sixties. The gentlemen appear to be from the farthest flung towns of the Irish countryside, this I guess from the shirts and the pints of cider. The ladies are predominantly Dublin city born and bred and buttered, and are generally an attractive, well-turned out bunch; there are a few hen parties thrown in for good measure too. The circular dancefloor is surrounded by a raised perimeter where clusters of men and women gather on to survey the floor and what it has to offer. The eighties soundtrack is great for a nostalgic dance with your mates but if this place is all that is left in the search for love and romance then a visit by anyone coupled up would really make one appreciate their partner that little bit more than usual.
The décor is dark, gaudy and tacky but doesn't get much of a chance to make an impact as the place fills up quickly and the floor gets stickier with spilled fatfrogs and alco-pops, as you wander around under the stares of endless pairs of hungry eyes. Club Nassau is generally accepted as being one of the last places in town that hosts a slowset, they actually do three, and round the night off on one, almost. More surprising though is the fact that after the final Simply Red song is heard they actually play Amhrán na bhFiann. Not only is this one of the last places to get a slowset in, so too is it surely the last club that feels the need to give its country a standing ovation.

As featured in Totally Dublin February 2009