Nomadic Rituals – gravestone-heavy doom metal from Belfast
What you may need to know…
01. Purveyors of downtrodden, doomy, slow-crawling filth are Belfast trio Nomadic Rituals.
02. Second full-length album Marking the Day releases next month, on handmade CD (with art-cards) and digital download. An ambitious piece, the LP is a concept record taking on the birth, life and death of the Cosmos, as well as the purpose of humanity. Perfect for summer barbecues.
03. The album is streaming in its entirety in the widget above, and available for digital and physical pre-order via their Bandcamp.
04. The record launches on the day of release, February 17th, with a gig at the Voodoo in Belfast, with support from Cork’s Soothsayer, War Iron, and MAW.
Thoughts: An hour-long odyssey whose heaviness and heft is matched by its scale.
The Inner City Helping Homeless outreach team counted 76 rough sleepers in Dublin – 63 men and 13 women.
Meanwhile, this morning,Olivia Kelly in The Irish Times reports:
Modular homes, originally intended to provide short-term accommodation for homeless families living in hotels, are to be used as permanent housing for applicants on Dublin City Council’s housing waiting list.
The council in November announced plans to build modular or “stackable” apartments at two sites in the city. The 70 apartments are expected to cost €15 million.
The smaller of the two sites, a vacant plot on Fishamble Street near Christ Church Cathedral, will have four to eight apartments at a cost of €1.5 million to €1.8 million. This will be used to accommodate homeless families living in emergency accommodation.
However, the council has decided the second site, a €13.5 scheme of 62 apartments at Bunratty Road in Coolock, will be used to accommodate people on the council’s general housing waiting list. The list currently stands at some 20,000 applicants.
Young One wakes
To the morning after
Sees graffiti-ed marker
Friends, names, written on the rafter
Of her sister’s bunk
Who’s no longer there
Disappeared
A feather
Blown to the night winds
Where some day
Young one hopes to follow.
Black permanent smells
Sweet and spells
Christine 1916
Deborah
Up The Ra
Jenny loves Karl
Taylor is a slag
I love Seán
Her face
Is a picture of grace
As she reaches, touches
Runs a hand along the bunk
Thump, thump thump
Now who would have thunk?
Her ma made it home
She’ll be early morning lucid
When Mam’s hazy
She lets Young One and friends
Sit in the box room
Listen to tunes
Smoke squidgy
Like cavemen
From the BC whens
They write the happy story
Of the lives
On the bedroom wall
It belies a hurt narrative.
The ma
Fuck does not give
Because she is well out of it
The daddy?
The picture?
Well, he has been out of it
Recently
Young One has got breasts
And attention
And not just boys I should mention
But fully grown men
Who remark
She’s an old 15
But an absolute 10
And that was when
The boys starting yelling:
‘Here, here, here,
Come here, come here, come here
Let me shout sweet obscenities
In your ear’
Heartbreak
She does a double take
And sees Seán
She feels
She likes this one boy
Because he didn’t shout
No
Young One is special
Young Fella said
She always thought her first time
Would be in a bed
Not a wet patch of grass
With a dog barking
At the back end
Of where two housing estates meet
And I think
When he said it
He meant it
He truly did
Because he’s not like
All the other boys
But he is still just a boy
Who’s pulling out late
And now pulling out early
She sits in a chemist queue
For a patronising talking-to
‘Well, if I knew it was going to happen,
I wouldn’t be here talking to you’.
So she bounces
Weeks later
Stomach follows suit
Sister, no longer there
For advice
If they were
Together she could be stronger
And one of her friends
Simply said, ‘stinger’
Her ma said, ‘here,
Come here, come here,
Come here, look, listen,
Understand
There’s no money
For a trip on the ringer
That’s only for those that can’
Heartbreak.
But now
She’s wide awake
No longer dropping yokes
But dropping little pre-natal
Vit, hit
No longer smoking rollies
With a little nodge of squidgy
She thinks ‘this little nodge in me
That I see
From this strangely rendered
Orange 3-D picture
Of my little… squidgy’
It doesn’t look or feel real
And the chemicals that are 12
Started running riot
And were only now just settling down
Are whipped up into a frenzied sensation
Of emotion
Puts her head on the brinks
And she thinks
Heartbreak
She has the baby on her own
But for its sake
She resolves
To love this thing
More than she was ever loved herself
But the gaff is still ill
The Auld One’s on the thrill
Of the back ends
And the hallways are still full of new
‘Come Here, Come Heres’
Every weekend
So she kicks it
To a back-alley B&B
Asks a grubby blue-shirted TD
For help
And the problem compounds
When he says
‘Go back to your mam’s’
Sound
Newspaper learns of her predicament
Asks for a photograph and an interview
So she rocks this little €15 Boohoo
Made by her counterpart
On the other side of the globe
‘Look at her,
She looks fine to me
My tax euros
Mean she gets everything for free’
‘What about cherishing
All of the children equally?’
‘It was a poet’s way of describing
Catholics and Protestants
Surviving harmoniously
Under one flag
Not so my taxes
Could pay for a house
For a working-class slag’
Heartbreak
But now it’s money she’ll have to make
Young One grows
And gets a job
Just to prove them all wrong
She kicks the rhyme in a zero-hour contract
No overtime
How can you work your way out of poverty
And down, down, down, down
Downtrodden, property
And keep getting poorer while working
She shouts
Cause prices go up
And wages go down
Now then she’ll have to do more
To change this hellacious situation
Progression
She feels
Will only come through education
The boy grows tall
And strong
And school becomes
A place for the two
And now inspired by a brilliant teacher
She’s got that yearning
For learning
But she’s not learning
For earning
No she’s just learning
For learning sake
So that she can articulate
This incandescent rage
Between all the young women
Of Ireland in 2016
She learns things
Like constitutional refusal
Of bodily autonomy
Thinks this is backwards
Blasphemy
You mean,
As a woman,
Or plebeian
In this country of opportunity
This ceiling
And sea
Is a shamrock-coloured green
Glass to me
You’ll only get the last of me
And still dealing with the ignominy
And getting followed
And hollered at
In the street
In spite of undergraduate accomplishment
‘Relax darling, take it as a compliment’
‘Boy’s leave it out, look at her, she’s a mother’
She says
‘Stop. Here.
Come here, come here, come here
I am not defined
By the fact that I am some man’s daughter,
Sister, cousin, mother.
I am a woman and I have agency
Just because I’m breathing air, motherfucker.
And I’m standing here, motherfucker
And you and the State are the ones
Who are trying to fuck me’
The boy sees this treatment
In the street
And from the state,
All his life
So he decides to regulate
But Young One now
Fully grown
Tries to sate this rage
And build this young man
This young boy
He will be the best elements of femininity
Wrapped in a rebellious feminine
But benign
Masculinity
The man she always hoped for
He will love you to the end of days
Traverse space
And time
And do even more
And with her words
Her life
A mixture of loving
And ethics
Food in his belly
And all the right seasoning
And from the instant he achieves
Cognitive reasoning
And then maturity
He will be the man
To settle up the score and say
‘Here Ma, you embody all that is good
And are the one that I am fighting for
I’ll never catcall
I’ll treat and respect
And help to create an Ireland that will stand
In awe of all mná’
Heartbreak
Heart mend
Sinn Féin TD Eoin Ó Broin asked the Taoiseach Enda Kenny about the regulation of properties on Airbnb in Dublin.
They had the following exchange…
Eoin Ó Broin: “As the Taoiseach knows the November homeless figures showed, yet again, a further rise in the number of people living in emergency accommodation, with 6,985 people in such accommodation, including 2,549 children. ”
“In addition to the lack of supply of social housing, the lack of adequate private rental accommodation is feeding this crisis.”
“Today in Dublin there are only 1,564 properties available for rent but there are 6,225 units listed on Airbnb. The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy [Simon] Coveney, gave a commitment in October to introduce secondary legislation to properly regulate this sector to ensure that only properties adequate for the purposes of Airbnb would be considered and the rest would require planning permission. When will this secondary legislation be published and will the Opposition be consulted on its contents?”
Enda Kenny: “We have been through this at some considerable length over the past period of time. The action plan allows for the building of 1,500 rapid-build units and 1,600 vacant units have been sourced by the Housing Agency.”
“The expanded HAP scheme for homeless tenancies reached 550 in 2016 and will reach 1,200 in 2017. The plan also includes a 40% increase in homeless funding from €70million to €98 million in 2017. This year there will be a spend of €1.2 billion on social housing.”
“I will ask the Minister to give Deputy Ó Broin more accurate details and a date on which he expects the legislation to be published. I would point out that 200 extra beds have been provided at Ellis Quay, Little Britain Street, Carman’s Hall and Wolf Tone Quay.”
Meanwhile…
Further to this…
Yesterday evening, Mr Ó Broin released a statement, in which he said:
“In Dublin there are currently 6,225 Airbnb listings. According to data available on Inside Airbnb 2,847 or 45.4% of these listings are for entire homes and apartments. Furthermore 44.5% of the hosts have multiple listings which can indicate that it’s more likely they are running a business.
“Today, according to Daft.ie there are only 1,564 properties available to rent in the capital. With the homeless figures for November showing that 6,985 people were accessing emergency accommodation, including 2549 children, we need to ensure we are looking at every option possible to make more housing stock available.
“Back in October 2016, when An Bord Pleanála upheld a ruling that a property owner in Temple Bar required planning permission to continue renting the property out for short-term lets, Minister Coveney backed this ruling. In December, when the issue was raised in the Seanad, the Minister stated that efforts were underway to clamp down on this activity and that a change in the planning treatment was a good way to deal with it.
“Today I asked the Taoiseach to detail when the secondary legislation promised to deal with this issue will be published. Unfortunately he couldn’t give me an answer but I will be writing to Minister Coveney asking him to provide the information requested and to ask if the opposition parties will have an opportunity to have some input on the development of the regulations.
“Sinn Féin is not against the principle of Airbnb as it was originally designed however it is my view that renting out a room in your home is entirely different to renting out your entire property. If the latter is the case then you need planning permission to change the property from residential use to commercial use. While we will assess the Minister’s regulations when they are published, we believe that a maximum of six weeks rental per year is reasonable. If you are providing a commercial accommodation service then standard B&B permissions should apply.”
I have recently started up a Facebook page for my illustrations and was wondering if it was possible to give it a bit of a plug. It started off with illustrating the place where I met my girlfriend. Then, visitors to our house started asking for illustrations of their own and it snowballed from there.
I primarily illustrate buildings/places around Ireland, but have had requests from Spain, Argentina and the USA, of late. I usually charge €50 for the print, including frame but, depending on size and detail, this can increase.
With Valentine’s Day coming up, I thought that others may like an illustration of the place they met their loved one or a place of significance to them.
