The Dublin Community Blog

In my opinion, one of the most interesting events that is currently happening in Dublin city is this monthly themed night of music, spoken word and performance: The Brown Bread Mixtape. Happening upstairs at the Stag’s Head is an evening full of great entertainment, prose, poems, song, laughter, fun and the odd Swedish pop song. MC’s, chief organisators and jacks-of-all-trades Kalle and Enda present a hand-picked array of artists, and are spicing it up with their own performances in between.

Dublinblog sent some questions their way, and here’s what the two main men had to say:

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Sending Letters to the Sea were already introduced in Brandon’s recent post; but I’d like to use the opportunity to feature the two ladies and four gentlemen in this month’s Discovered in Dublin. After a successfull release-show in St. Columba’s Church in Swords last week (were some of the material for the debut album were recorded), Dublinblog spoke to main main and initiator Mark Garry about future plans for the project and the reason to merge visual art and music in this band/collaboration.

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Almost October, but still time to squeeze in the September-”issue” of Discovered in Dublin. And this time we are featuring a young lady whose hypnotic sounds are quite fitting for the upcoming autumn season – and who likes knitting. Abigail Smith is a singer/songwriter hailing from Dublin, has played the Electric Picnic in 2008 and has recently released her debut album  “Night Time Walking”. And she’s also the sister of Dublinblog’s very own Roseanne.

Without further ado, here’s what Abigail has to say:

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The August installment of Discovered in Dublin bears a more sombre tone than the previous articles. This time we are featuring an upcoming folk band, if you wanna call it like this. The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock are weaving rock sounds and traditional influences together into what the Evening Herald calls “haunted, rabble rousing folk” – I’d call it folkrock with a dark twist. Quite fittingly for a band who calls themselves after a haunted canal lock. After releasing their self-titled debut in 2008, the band played a tour in Japan in the beginning of this year and has played together with New York’s O’Death in Whelan’s recently. Dublinblog spoke to band-mastermind Allen Blighe.

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In the second instalment of Discovered in Dublin we are featuring a young lady with a little house in her tummy: Riona Hartman. This lady is an emerging songwriter from Dublin, who contributes vocals to Sami Moukaddem’s live band and also sings on his album “The facts of life for the Palestinian”; and has performed on the balcony of Balcony TV Dublin. Her songs tell little stories in their own right, reminding of early Tori Amos but with a more definite hint of jazz in there (listen to “Sea Snail”). And she’s not afraid to use the right language – this is definitevely no polished accoustic-pop.

Here’s what Riona has to say:

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“Discovered in Dublin” is the new regular feature on the Dublinblog, were we present the newest and freshest up-and coming bands and musicians from the dirty old town. With no limits concerning genre, style, or age; featuring signed and unsigned artists – the main purpose is to show you that the Dublin music scene is alive and kicking, and that there’s more to it than Beyonce at the O2 or fake trad-sessions in Temple Bar.

The first band we allow us to introduce are: Friend?

Hailing from north Dublin, this extraordinary outfit combines different musical backgrounds (post rock, -hardcore and downtempo) into an outstanding instrumental  soundtrack for the times we live in. Having won the “Demo of the month” of Phantom 105.2 and Connected magazine in April, the 4 lads and 1 lass also played the Sibin Festival in May.

Dublinblog asked, guitarist Josh answered:

Tell us sth. about the band – how you got together, how you write your tunes and how do you plan to achieve world domination?

Well, myself, Colm and Sean started writing bits and pieces of music together around May of last year, and eventually decided that we would try and arrange them together in some conceiveable order. Having lost our previous drummer to the film industry (he will now be making our first video for us) we subsequently realized we quite liked the sound of various pots and pans being assaulted by a deranged young man named Dave… so we all moved into a dilapidated house together. Then, because most of us need a female in the room in order to behave (dynamically)… we were then joined by Margie, our lovely violinista. With regards to the writing process, Myself, Colm and Dave are the only ones without full time jobs so we spend a lot of time in the house working out rhythms and arrangements. Myself and Sean then generally separate the guitars from the rest of the mix and work on them together to find the right frequency balances, and then Margie comes over and adds a thick, translucent layer of class over everything. I think it might be better for everyone if we didn’t achieve world domination… we’re very silly people.

Do you think it is an advantage to hail from Dublin (or at least being labelled so)?

We’ve only ever played in Dublin, so i’ll let you know when we play Galway if they’re throwing bottles of piss or bottles of compliments written on tiny bits of paper.

How important is the liveshow for the band and your sound?
Crucial. Recordings can be so static, it’s really tough (especially on our budget of fuck all) to properly convey the energy and dynamic of a live show. Being in a band isn’t what I thought it was when I was 14, it’s 50 hours of playing the same 32 bars of music to get it tight during rehearsals, 150 hours to record one song because your mixing desk insists on shitting the bed every 20 minutes, 300 hours of giving out to each other and 45 minutes of bliss and adrenaline on stage. The live show is the real reason for the band at the end of all the repetetive tiresome bullshit.

What do you think about the current discussion about downloading, filesharing and copyrights? Is the web an advantage for new bands (without deal)?

Keep stealing music. Everybody. It’s pushing the industry in new directions, keeping bands on their toes. It’s forcing us all to produce something you can’t reproduce on some shitty mp3 that fell off the back of a truck! A small example… we gave free cakes out and had an art and photography expo during our last gig. Why? Because we’re just cool… but also because we know we will make little or no money on our recordings, we all need to do something different for our audiences now, it’s time for a shift in the way people think and I really believe that filesharing and downloading will spur this change in new and exciting directions. The web is obviously an excellent tool for new bands, it enables them to become the type of bands who don’t need a label. Of course, these will be the bands that the labels will want to sign…

Where can we find more information about your band? And, is there anything the world needs to know about you?

You can find us at myspace.com/weshouldbefriends, our demo, “Take A Bath In Public” is available for download… steal, steal , steal away. I suppose the world should know that we’re playing Andrew’s Lane Theatre on Saturday the 6th of June and we’ll also be setting up our own mini festival during the summer, the details will be on the myspace… Toodles x

As statet above, Friend? will be playing at the Andrews Lane Theatre tomorrow evening – see you there!

If you are an artist/musician/band/busker who wants to be featured on “Discovered in Dublin”, please send an email to authors@dublinblog.ie