In case you missed it.
The Rubberbandits’ Guide, having kicked off last winter with the Guide to 1916, has returned as an ongoing concern, beginning with the Rubberbandits’ Guide to Money.
In the trailer above: the Modern Economy Gameshow.
Nobody wins.
The Smoke Clears – Galway-based electronics
What you may need to know…
01. The Smoke Clears is a pseudonym of Galway-based house/techno producer John Daly, a project in which he eschews genre tropes for experimental electronics.
02. A leader in his field, Daly has been well-travelled, co-founding and rebooting Irish label Feel Music, and releasing on well-renowned independent labels, among them Drumpoet, Secretsundaze and Running Back.
03. Streaming above is a teaser for the project’s second eponymous LP, released in September via Dublin label/shop All City Records.
04. Appearing live next at the Triskel in Cork on November 12th, with support from WRY MYRRH and Huerco S., as part of the Cork Film Festival.
Verdict: With more in common with ambient electronica and post-rock than with any established club fare, The Smoke Clears allows Daly to explore his own outer limits.
This Ain’t No Disco.
The (spiritual) return of the RTÉ music staple, presented by Irish music legend Dónal Dineen, co-producing with Arbutus Yarns man Myles O’Reilly.
Streaming above: an interview with Dónal Dineen on the original TV show, and the new endeavour, broadcasting exclusively online.
The absolute best news.
That Snaake – reissue first two E.P.s
What you may need to know…
01. Dublin noise-rock four-piece That Snaake riff equally on no-wave angularity and bleary-eyed early ’90s pop, a concoction referred to by the band as “seshcore”.
02. Hailed by Goldenplec as “unfashionable”, the band have been steadily gigging in Dublin over the past while, and have notched up stage time with Proto Idiot, Cat Palace and Sister Ghost, among others.
03. Streaming above in its entirety is newly-released E.P. compilation, In the Court of the Baby Kyng. Collecting the band’s first two extended players, Go Bricker and Blinded by the Smell, two equally ramshackle statements of intent.
04. Available now for streaming, download, and on limited-run cassette via tape-slingers Little L Records. That’s purple spray-painted cassette, we might add.
05. Also, the label is still selling its entire back catalogue for a fiver/pay-more-if-you-like. That’s a fairly ridiculous deal for nearly 125 singles, E.P.s and full-lengths, if you so desire, including the above.
Verdict: A succession of noisy, entirely smart-arsed, but eminently likeable tunes. Full taste.
Ropemaker – playing Galway with Hope is Noise and The Magnapinna
What you may need to know…
01. Math-rock three-piece Ropemaker hail from the alternative-music capital of Ireland, Portarlington, Co. Laois.
02. Having gigged sporadically the last few years, they’ve already shared stages with Steve Strong, the dearly-departed Terriers (the real ones, not the Dublin-based pretenders), ZINC and others.
03. Streaming above is the band’s 2015 extended-player, Abyssinia, available for download via the band’s Bandcamp.
04. Catch them live next at the Roisín Dubh on the 19th, in support of FEAST’s Cork takeover of the Roisín Dubh, featuring Hope is Noise and The Magnapinna.
Verdict: Swaggering, striding math-rock in a Battles or Alpha Male Tea Party vein. Grand.
The 2016 installment of the Other Voices festival in Dingle, and attendant tapings for the TV series of the same name, were announced today in a video (above) featuring headliner Lisa Hannigan.
Heading into its fifteenth series, it remains one of the few outlets on Irish television for independent music.
Liza Geddes writes:
Between Friday 2nd and Sunday 4th of December, Lisa will join a slew of Irish and international artists to record the fifteenth series of the music TV show, which airs on RTÉ2 in 2017. The St. James’s Church recordings will be hosted by BBC Radio 1’s Huw Stephens, Dublin born/London made DJ and broadcaster Annie Mac and Fight Like Apes‘ leading light May Kay.
In an exclusive Other Voices performance filmed in Berlin, Lisa confirmed appearances in Dingle from internationally breaking Dublin hip hop artist Rejjie Snow, much lauded UK singer and writer Pixie Geldof, Californian musician and singer Margaret Glaspy, Rough Trade signed Irish indie act Girl Band and Mobo nominated musician, poet and artist Kojey Radical.
These and many more emerging and legacy artists will travel to Dingle for the December sessions.
Lisa also performed the track Snow from her latest No. 1 album At Swim, a taster of what to expect from the festival.
Tickets are will be given away free in various competitions, keep an eye on ’em here.
Last Friday, with a voucher for TWENTY-FIVE *entire* euro for Golden Discs on the line, we boldly asked you to select your favourite instrumental pieces. The specific wording, in fact:
‘The finest contemporary musical composition without lyrics or singing would have to be__________________________________’
The competition, as ever, was stiff, but there can only be one (each week)…
…and Kolmo’s after earning it:
The finest contemporary musical composition without lyrics or singing would have to be ‘An Ending’ by Brian Eno and I’ll tell you why if you care to listen –
when you put in your earphones and play this tune on repeat, every single thing you do will turn into a surreal music video in your own mind, from walking to the train station or even going for a pee, shopping in Lidl is a masterpiece in videography, going to pick up the dole doesn’t probably doesn’t seem so bad, wading through the many, many colourful characters on Talbot St is like a moving work of art of the Flemish School…
..watching the skrotai wheelying up the street on really, really lovely mountain bike fills one with a temporal joy at the nature of movement, strolling past the perennially arguing non self-aware shouties on O’Connell street combined with the gentle warm waft of doughnuts being fried there is like live theater, with the volume turned off and replaced with the goosepimple inducing sounds of ‘An Ending’ by Brian Eno, all is well in the world.
So there you have it, now.
Extended highlights (and these were hard to narrow down):
PJ Ryan: “The finest contemporary musical composition without lyrics or singing would have to be Ocean by John Butler, go ahead and give your ears a treat by giving this a listen (this is the short version, I don’t want to frighten you away).”
MysteryBeat: “Set Guitars to Kill by And So I Watch You From Afar. Set Guitars to Kill is the first track on the music memory stick in my car, so normally pops on as I leave the car park after work. It’s an exhilarating way to round off a day in the office!”
ZeligisJaded: “Music for a Forgotten Future by Mogwai – 23 minutes of bliss.”
realPolithicks: “Metamorphosis by Philip Glass… it’s hypnotic.”
edalicious: “Maggot Brain by Funkadelic”
Cathy: “Burial and Four Tet – Mole”
Bertie Blenkinsop: “The Liquidator”
We missed this one.
Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged session was released as a full-length recording on November 1st, 1994, months after the suicide of frontman/guitarist Kurt Cobain.
Original MTV broadcast streaming above.
Fight Like Apes – announce breakup and final gigs
What you may need to know…
01. Dublin indie/pop veterans Fight Like Apes announced their imminent split on social media this morning, following a prolonged radio silence. It closes a career that includes two Choice Music Prize nominations.
02. The band last year released their self-titled third album, a slightly calmer affair than its slightly overcaffeinated predecessors, Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion, and The Body of Christ & The Legs of Tina Turner, bearing an energy for which the band became infamous live.
03. Streaming above is the video for Crouching Bees, the lead-off single from the aforementioned eponymous long-player. Not to pick favourites, but it’d be silly to just horse Jake Summers into their eulogy.
04. The band’s farewell statement included the announcement of their final gigs. Write the band:
Stick a fork in us, we’re done.
We’ve been quiet for a while now. We’ve had a lot of thinking and talking to do.
We’d be here all year if we started listing the people we wanted to thank, so we’ll just do that in our own time.You’ll see us all again under different musical guises but, these 3 shows will be Fight Like Apes’ last. We want to call it a day while we’re all still pals and are proud of what we’ve done.
And we are very, very proud.
It’s a deadly time in so many ways to be in a band; you can have so much control over your work if you’re clever; you can release it how and when you like and in our opinion, right now, Ireland is the healthiest it’s ever been in terms of talent and diversity.
But, there are massive challenges for a lot of bands, mostly financial, that make this a tough job and sadly, those obstacles have become too big for us.
I think we all know that we’re going to hear announcements like this more often. A lot of people don’t seem to understand that we can’t keep producing records if you keep not paying for them. Bands are having to sell beautiful albums for €2.99, labels can’t give you as much support since they’re losing income too and our alternative radio stations* are practically non existent now, meaning so many wonderful bands will not get a chance to get played on radio as they’ll be competing with huge pop acts.
Please buy your music in independent record stores or directly from the band.
Don’t fool yourself in to thinking that your £10 subscription to Deezer and Spotify helps us at all. It does not. Look how many bands are on there and do the maths.
Please go to gigs. Please buy merch.
Thanks to all you entirely crazy, wonderful people who have supported us and danced and screamed with us over the past 10 years. We could never thank you enough.
I still can’t believe some of the amazing things we’ve done together and how far we came.
If you want to come see us here’s how:
November 24th, The Roisin Dubh, Galway (free)
November 25th, Connollys of Leap, Cork
December 9th – back to where we had a our very first gig 10 years ago – Whelans, Dublin.
FLA out.
-MK, Jamie, Conor, Pete-
*RIP TXFM. We absolutely adore you and everything you’ve done for music in Ireland.
VERDICT: Another veteran act calls it a day in a time of transition for an active Irish music scene. They’ll be sadly missed, but this upcoming tour ought to be the New Orleans funeral that Fight Like Apes deserves.
Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year 2016, from Left: Sue Lowe, Alicia Lowe, A’Driane Nieves, Jane Maynard, Bono, Diana Lamon, Mazelle Etessami, and Carrie Cohen
Let the meninists stand up and cheer
For U2’s much loved balladeer
As well as making pop
He’s shot to the top
Of the list of great women this year.
John Moynes
Pic: Glamour
