We in Dublin had our fair share of festivals this year already – the Dublin Writer’s Festival, the Dublin Soul Festival and the Latin America Festival to just name a few – but we’re not done yet. Which is a fact I very much appreciate. So, without further ado, here are my favourite festival picks for the upcoming months:

Image by Absolut Fringe

Phizzfest (09. – 12.09.) – The Phibsborough Arts Festival has its premiere this year. This promises a fantastic opportunity to explore this touristically underdeveloped working-class neighbourhood from a different perspective. Also is Anne Enright reading at the festival and I live here, so there are two things that speak for the festival

Absolut Fringe (11. – 26.09.) – This year’s edition of dublin’s own Fringe Fest seems even more packed with great events and artist then last year. I’m especially looking forward to the Icelandic Music Weekend with my friends FM Belfast.

Arthur’s Day (23.09.) – This may come as a surprise for some, but after the success of last year’s worldwide Arthur’s Day the Guinness Brewery decided to have a ball on this special day again this year. And the line-up is nothing else than fantastic.

Hard Working Class Heroes 2010 (07. – 09.10.) – In my opinion the HWCH is Dublin’s most likeable music festival. Battalions of bands and musicians will spread out to 7 venues all over town to provide a showcase of what’s hot in the Irish scene at the moment. Don’t miss it.

Remember the friendly guys from Friend?, one of the first bands we featured in the Discovered in Dublin-series? The 5-piece has intensively toured in the last year, and has also secured a deal with local label Eleven:Eleven. And they are playing in Whelan’s this week. On Thursday, to be more precise. Together with two other Alternative/Rock bands from the North, Kasper Rosa and Axis Of.

So, if you are interested in getting a glimpse of the next generation of Irish alternative hopes from both sides of the border, why not head to Wexford Street on Wednesday – even to celebrate the German win over Spain after the game on Wednesday. To whet your appetite, here are Axis OF with the video for their new single “Port Na Spaniagh”:

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:

Tell us sth. about yourselves and how you came to organise the Brown Bread Mixtape:

Kalle: Well, I lived in New York City for about 7 years where I dabbled a bit in comedy and music. I had some poems published by Lilies & Cannonballs Review, which led to me performing poems at their launch events. They were pretty successful and I really enjoyed the energy of performance poetry. When I moved back to Ireland I was looking for something similar. Enda and myself had known each other a while and had been chatting about doing some kind of an event or gig that captured all of our interests (music, poetry, comedy, theatre). We put our heads together and came up with the brownbread mixtape!

Enda: I’m a session musician and a sound engineer. We are a couple of dudes who had a random idea, and a free night in a pub to try it out…

What is the story about theme for each evening? Why not have the artists decide for themselves what to perform?

Kalle: Because it was going to be a mixtape of different types of acts, we knew we needed something to tie the night together. So that was where the theme idea came in. We really liked the idea that each new brownbread mixtape was about a specific topic, rather than a standard gig or open mic which is more open-ended. But more importantly it gave us the opportunity to create a full show centred around the theme. We wanted to create a fully realised night of entertainment, like an old style revue show, where the audience was guided by an MC through a showcase of the best spoken word and music artists currently working. So, on any given month, once we’ve decided on the theme, we inform the artists we have booked to perform so they can prepare thematic material for the night. Also, for each new theme, Enda and myself will prepare an opening singalong segment for the audience to get them in the mood. I will usually write a new poem or two related to the theme as well as a bunch of sketches for our resident actors, the brownbread players, to perform. So, to answer your question, the theme is there to generate ideas for us all and the artists actually do have a lot of leeway in terms of choosing what they perform, we just ask that they perform at least one piece directly related to the theme of the night.

Enda: We call the theme, we set the stage, the performers take the mic(k)

Why upstairs at the Stag’s Head? Are there any plans to change venue?

Kalle: The folks at The Stag’s Head were incredibly polite, professional and simply willing to take a chance on us. We have a great relationship with them now. The upstairs of The Stag’s Head is a lovely room and when it is full on a brownbread mixtape night it has a terrific energy. It’s also one of the most iconic pubs in Dublin, which must make it one of the most iconic in the world! We don’t really want to move right now.

Enda: eh… yea what Kalle said

Do you think the web an advantage for artists, especially for people without record deal or published books?

Kalle: I think the web is hugely important for what we do. In fact all of our advertising and promotion is done on the web and by word of mouth. Sites like facebook and myspace are not necessarily my favourite thing in the world, but they are an incredibly rapid and powerful way to communicate with likeminded people, as well as being a brilliant way to network with performers for future shows. It also affords us the opportunity to showcase the brownbread mixtape gigs online for our friends and family outside of Dublin and Ireland. We are planning on setting up a webcast of future gigs, so the web will play a pretty integral role in the show down the line. If our web presence allows the artists who have performed at the brownbread mixtape to publish work or get a record deal, then that would be an incredibly huge honour and we would be thrilled that we played any small part in that

Enda: We give the performers a complimentary recording of their set, and ask them to choose one of the tracks for our facebook and myspace jukeboxes, which we showcase until the next gig. It’s a way of paying the performers, but most importantly they can use the recordings on their own webpage to promote themselves.

Where can we find more information about the mixtape?

Kalle: If you want more information about the mixtape, then point your browser here for our myspace page to sample audio of previous performers, or alternatively you can read reviews and find out about upcoming shows at our blog right here. If you wish to become a fan of ours then we have a regularly updated facebook page and the obligatory twitter page.

Enda: We’re on the Internet!

And, is there anything the world needs to know about you

Kalle: Most of all we want people to know that the brownbread mixtape is just great fun. And like all fun things it has to be a little mad and a little beyond your control.

So, we have to keep reminding ourselves that it’s the challenge of the theme, the openness to try out new ideas, the collaboration between ourselves and all the artists, and the audience for that matter, that makes brownbread greater than the sum of its parts.

Enda: Yep, what Kalle said…actually, i want to say also that the performers we’ve had so far have been amazing; they’ve either written material specifically for the gig, or creatively shoehorned their own material to fit the theme… as Kalle would say, “that’s some serious talent” (and i don’t mean that as in Kalle’s checking them out like he fancies them)

Kalle: I’ve heard it said that the recession brings about great art. Based on what I have seen it’s true. There’s a real buzz happening in Dublin at the moment and we’d like to think that the brownbread mixtape is right at the heart of that. Don’t take it from me, come along this month and see for yourself!

Enda: It’s FREE!

To sum it all up: it’s free, it’s great fun, and some incredible art is created there. The next mixtape takes place on February 24th. Be there.

Big thanks to Declan for letting us know about a gig happening in The Button Factory this Friday night to benefit relief efforts in Haiti. Attention Bebe and Mob Fandango headline the show and The Button Factory have offered their venue for free so that all proceeds can go to Partners in Health in their efforts to bring relief and humanitarian aid to the people of Haiti. CLICK HERE to see the Facebook event page. Tickets are €10 at the door.

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.

Tell us sth. about the band and how you started making music individually, how you write your songs, and maybe a bit about yourself-titled album.
Nina and Karl and I had a band called A=apple, we mainly played improvised music (Guitar and piano based ) in Art galleries such as Project Arts Centre ,The RHA and the Irish Museum of Modern Art; we also played in the Temple bar music centre and Whelans. We released a 10” as part of an exhibition I curated .

About 2 years ago I got a visual arts commission and suggested I would like to make an album of music as part of the commission. After a period of research to try and find an interesting conceptual approach to the project , I decided it might be interesting to make a record about faith but not in an organized religious sense . I asked Nina and Karl and Sean Carpio and Fabien Leseure if they were interested in the project, thankfully they all were . We spent a period of time coming up with ideas that we all brought to a week long recording session in Berlin we also came up with some new ideas during this session . Nina and I also wrote some lyrics that we brought to this session. Fabien then wrote strings and choir parts for a number of the pieces and we recorded a string and choir in a beautiful church in Swords.

Would you consider Sending Letters To The Sea more as an once-off project, or are there any future plans in a band-related enviroment?
It is sort of a once off project, but we are bringing the participants to a Museum called The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania next summer to collaborate with a number of amazing musicians from Pittsburgh and this will culminate in a second release. There are also some film ideas in the pipeline .

Do you think it is an advantage to hail from Dublin (or at least being labelled so)?
I personally think it is an advantage . From an international perspective we are still recognized as a serious musical city and we have all in different ways been part of great Dublin based musical circles and have learned lots through this connection.

How important is the live performance for you?
It is very important to me and we had an amazing performance in the church we recorded in last week , unfortunately we all travel quite a bit with our careers and some of us live abroad (Berlin , Belgium) so it is difficult to play consistently. I think this is why the internet is amazing in terms of spreading the word about the record and we will post a live video and musical recording of this gig in the next week or so.

It seems the visual aspect of music is also important for you – considering your background. Will this be incorporated in the live-performance as well?
Not really. I wanted to keep it as much about the music as possible , but we have some film ideas in the pipeline. Nina has performed live to film in the past and this is something we are interested in .

What do you think about the current discussion about downloading, filesharing and copyrights? Is the web an advantage for new artists/bands (with or without record deal)?
I think in general the web has been amazing for new unsigned bands and I think that downloading & filesharing really only effects the top end (corporate) of the industry, I don’t think it will be much of an issue for us.

Where can we find more information about you? And, is there anything the world needs to know about the project?
We are really proud of it and feel it is beautiful and hopeful record and we hope people enjoy it. Here are some links to my other works:
http://www.kerlin.ie/artists/Garry.aspx
http://www.friezeartfair.com/yearbook_2009/artist/mark_garry1
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattressfactory/2533271759/
http://www.mattress.org/index.cFm?event=ShowArtist&eid=86&id=403&c=Past
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU1wz1cw6iI

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

I have to confess that I completely nicked this off the good people over at culch.ie, but this is so incredibly good it has to be reposted. Visual artist Eoghan Kidney’s video for Underworld vs Mark Knight and D.Ramirez, played “on” Liberty Hall. Could someone please convince Dublin Tourism to make this the official video representing our city?

This morning, as I was getting some work done, my attention was drawn to the MySpace page of a collaborative music project assembled by Mark Garry called Sending Letters to the Sea. As I let the music play in the background, I found it very relaxing and yet interesting enough that it actually began to distract me. It doesn’t seem to have any pretenses of being an ambitious hot new act in Dublin. Instead, one gets the sense that this is a collective of artists who merely wanted to get together to express their creativity, and in the process had a lot of fun and (maybe accidentally?) created something rather special. Be sure to have a listen for yourself and tell us what you think.

Letters to the Sea will be releasing their first album and performing on the 19th of this month at St. Columba’s Church in Swords, where much of the album was recorded. After having a listen to the tracks on their MySpace page, I have a feeling that there will be no better place to experience this music than inside the walls of an old stone church.

And if you are still looking for something to do at the weekend we recommend the 2009 edition of the Hard Working Class Heroes Festival. But to be honest, you must have been deaf & blind if you did not hear anything about it yet – mega mega mega.

(image via)

Hard Working Class Heroes is 7 years old this year. 7 years building what is now a staple in the Irish music calendar. A festival of newness, 100 bands, 6 venues, 3 nights.

In one weekend, in six venues you can see the 100 best new acts in Ireland. We know they’re the best because we have 35 experts from Ireland and around the globe helping us to pick them. Not only are they good but they are very different from each other and come from all over the country. Diamonds who have played previous HWCH include Heathers, The Lost Brothers, Jape, Adrian Crowley, Duke Special, Fight Like Apes, The Coronas and a lot lot more.

I am not even trying to give an overview of what’s happening where and when, please see for yourselves. The acts I am going to see however include Dublinblog darlings The Spook of the 13th Lock, C!ties – which have recently opened for the incredible And So I Watch You From Afar, Fionn Regan and of course the lovely Ham Sandwich . And there’s also a street performance initiative called “HWCH and the city”, featuring acts who are performing at the festival playing on the streets, record stores and bookshops all over Dublin city centre, so don’t forget to mark your calendars.

The gigs will all take place during the day, so if you’re lucky you’ll be able to see some of the bands playing plugged at night doing an accoustic-stunt in daylight hours. To know who’s playing where you’ll need to follow the festival on Twitter.

See you around.

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:

Tell us sth. about yourself and how you started making music, how you write your songs, and maybe a bit about your debut album “Night Time Walking”:

I started writing songs when I was first able to write music. I had a little manuscript book. My first song was about seagulls. Night Time Walking is my first release. It consists mainly of songs arranged for voice, piano, viola and cello. I wanted to do one take on each song and release this rather than doing take after take. I think this can take away the edge. I love the connection between musicians in a group setting and how we all move through the song together. When I was a kid I loved hearing the musicians humming along to their improvisations or the chair squeak of a musician recorded on my Dads jazz records. These days recordings can be so clinical. I wanted this album to have a real human feel to it. The songs have always just come into my head. I write lyrics quickly without thinking too much about them as this often blocks the flow of ideas. Then I go back over them. I try not to be a perfectionist because the perfectionist in me would never let me do anything! Then I arrange the music for the instruments I want and we rehearse together. With any creative work you have to just let it all go at some point. It’s not the finished piece that has as much interest to me to be honest. I am always excited by the song or music I am working on. Putting music out is all part of the process too so I am very excited to have the album out now.

The musicians on this recording are Gráinne Deery on piano and Lioba Petrie on cello. Aaron Faye produced it. When I play live Niamh Loughran and Maeve Buckley often join me on violins with Andrew Cooke on bass and Andy B Clarke on drums.

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

Yes. Dublin is a great place for all kinds of creativity and there is a great mixture of cultures from all over the world. For example I heard an amazing Klezmer group busking on Talbot Street last week. We have a great tradition of storytelling and sing songs here and music is really part of the fabric of this brilliant city. I love it here.

How important is the live performance for you? And do you always work with a band or do you do solo shows as well?

Live performance is very important to me. Anything can happen and the audience and the musicians really communicate in the live performance environment. Music changes the energy of a room. I think it helps me as a musician to become truly aware of the present. I can only ever be with the note I am playing or singing. I have to let go of what has come before and not worry about any tricky bits coming up! Music is part of time having a beginning and an end. It is an incredible process and so exciting. I love to perform with the full band as we all bring something to the sound we are creating together. I have performed solo but I do love the experience of performing with a large ensemble. I will be singing one of my songs with a full guitar orchestra in the next few months. I can’t wait to try that!

It seems the visual aspect of music is also important for you – New York Tisch Film School made a video for you, and you wrote the music for “Trolley Boy”. Coincidence, networking or planning?

Winning the Tisch Film Music video was a real boost. I was very lucky that the director I worked with, Adena Rice was really on the same page as me creatively. We are both into craft and making things. She is an incredible knitter. One of her dreams was to create a knitted world so we went from there. It was a brilliant process and we had half of Dublin knitting leaves for us. I had great fun making some props for it too.

Teemu Auersalo, the director of Trolley Boy, heard my music through Andy Clarke who plays drums in my band. Andy is also a very talented animator and digital graphic artist. Writing and performing the music for this film was also a very interesting process. It was great to work as part of a team and try to get across the directors vision through the music. I think like everything in Dublin music is a small group and we all get to know each other and support each other.
http://www.glimpsefilms.com/trolleyboy/?page_id=5

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

I think for unsigned bands the whole file-sharing thing is great. I personally don’t part take in it but it’s more because I never got into it. I love going out and buying the cd. The artwork and lyrics are another aspect that I really enjoy. I think it is great to support new music and the likes of my space is a brilliant way to hear new sounds. Radio can be good for discovering new music but the Internet is just an incredible resource for music fans and new bands. The spotify idea sounds pretty interesting to me.

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

You can read all about me and hear some songs on my myspace page www.myspace.com/abigailsong

I am playing in the Button factory on the 20th of October. A short documentary called ‘The City of the Dead’ by Alessandro Molatore, which I did the music for, will be screened and I’ll be performing with the band after. The film is about people who live in graves in Cairo. It is an amazing film and I loved writing and performing the music for it. http://www.cactifilms.net/city-dead.html. It’s definitely worth checking out.

My album, Night Time Walking is available in Tower Records and Road Records. You can also download tracks on http://www.downloadmusic.ie/abigailsmith.

All the world needs to know about me is that I am very happy to be living in the world!

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

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.

Tell us sth. about the band – how you got together, how you write your songs, and about your debut album.

The Spook initially came together as a solo project based around some stripped down folks songs I had written when my old band had run out of steam back in 2004. At the time I started listening to a lot of Irish traditional music and Irish folk and wanted to do something in that style. I also saw potential to do a contemporary rock/ Irish folk fusion in a way that I felt hadn’t been done so much before, blending the one chord drone of trad and folk with the walls of guitar noise in shoegazing / drone rock and dexterous trad rhythms with prog or math rock time signatures. However fusing Irish folk with rock is something hazardous to attempt and there is a fine line to tread without slipping into cheese or cliché so I tried to walk carefully.

I asked a few friends to put together a full band set for a opening slot at a gig I organised for Josh T Pearson (ex Lift to Experience, Bella Union records) and we felt it worked well, so we kept working on it as a full band.

There’s no formula for writing songs in the Spook. Usually it starts with a series of riffs on guitar or banjo and it constructed and deconstructed into a full song arrangement.

When we started work on the self titled first album we were lucky enough to have Transduction records, and Irish/ Japanese label, take us under their wings. Transduction is great label that is best known for re-releasing some amazing experimental Japanese records over here (LITE being the most famous) but has also released records from Irish and UK acts. The album recording consisted of 4 days solid in the studio doing the basic tracking and numerous days over-dubbing there after, where we honed the ideas. Enda Bates (band bass player) acted as producer. It was released in April ’08 to a very positive reaction.

Do you think it is an advantage to hail from Dublin (or at least being labelled so)? And what was it like as a Indie-band from Ireland to play a tour in Japan?

We’re more of a Dublin based band. I’m from Sligo, Brian’s from Cork and Enda is from Tipperary. Only Donnchadh is actually a Dub. I don’t really see any advantage or disadvantage in being perceived as coming from any particular town.

It was an amazing experience touring Japan. We were touring with a great Danish band called Marvin’s Revolt. The Japanese audiences were really respectful and kind, we met a load of cool people and had a great time. We played with some amazing Japanese bands like LITE, Z and Kurucrew.

It was our first real tour and by the end of it we felt we could play our set backwards. With the jet lag and all the travel we were in bits for most of it. We saw very little apart from the venues and hotels/ people houses we were crashing in during the actual tour. On the last day we got the chance to do some sightseeing in Tokyo and that was amazing.

How important is the liveshow for the band and your sound? And do you always play live as a 4-piece?

Playing live is very important to us. It’s one thing to pull off something in the studio with time and less pressure, it’s another to be able to play it live with conviction. We seem to have a masochistic urge to write songs that are difficult to play, so it’s very satisfying to be able to play it right, after hours of practice.

One of the good things about our songs is that they can be played solo, in a quiet folk band arrangement or the full on rock set. Each variation requires a new arrangement but it allows you to think about the tunes differently and I feel this will inform the sound of the the next record.

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

There has always been a tradition of bootlegging since recorded music began so I guess that file sharing is a continuation of this. There is an argument that filesharing levels the field so that a band’s recordings are ultimately an advertisement for its live show, meaning that a band’s living ultimately comes from live concerts rather than record sales (as it might have been before recording superseded this) and that fans that file share ultimately support the band more so.

However speaking as a member of a small band where all of us work day jobs, file sharing makes it even harder to cover the costs of recording and releasing records. More often than not, it’s the smaller acts and labels who suffer most, as a given record is effectively devalued by filesharing. I can see it reducing the quality of local DIY releases as acts are forced to cut costs. Anyone you file shares a local independent release should be ashamed to do so.

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

We’re at:

http://www.thirteenthlock.net
http://www.myspace.com/thespookofthethirteenthlock
Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Spook-of-the-Thirteenth-Lock/84629883172

Can’t think of anything the world needs to know about us to be honest!

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