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

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.

I wouldn’t normally post this, but I actually thought it was a really generous offer, so worth the plug.

One of our readers who is a musician has commented on a post here about the fact that they are an up and coming musician in need of some assistance from a photographer to do some live action / portrait shots for promo work for “posters/flyers/myspace/local press…etc”

The unfortunate part of this is the ‘up and coming’ part, as our dear reader is a struggling student / musician who cannot afford to pay cash for the shots. What she can offer instead is free tickets to a gig, and a home baked cake!

Now as a photographer, I know that I love cake, as do many other photographers. Unfortunately, being on the other side of the world to Dublin doesn’t really leave me with the option to do this work myself, but I’m sure there will be some photographers out there willing to help, who can do with adding some portrait and live action shots to add to their portfolio and a nice slice of cake.

Any queries should be directed to rionahartman _at_ hotmail _dot_ com

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

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:

Tell us sth. about yourself and how you started making music; and maybe how you came to be the vocalist for Sami Moukaddem’s band.

Just before I graduated from college (I studied architecture in UCD) I wrote a ridiculously impractical list for myself of everything I wanted and didn’t want from a job. Number one was I wouldn’t work in an office, which ruled out most architecture jobs, number two was I didn’t want to pay taxes and number three was I wanted to get payed for something that was no effort at all, like breathing. Mostly I was scared of turning into a Dilbert character.
When I showed it to a friend he pointed out that a) musicians rarely work in offices b) they don’t pay taxes and c) I’d already been payed to breath (on Sami Moukaddem’s album ‘Facts of Life for the Palestinian’ I’m listed on the credits for breathing and heartbeat as well as singing. The breathing and heartbeat part was the easiest day’s work I’ve ever done, the singing part was the hardest.)Being a musician fulfilled two out of three on the list which was better than zero out of three for architecture, so I put architecture aside for a while.

I got to know Sami from going to gigs and then he heard some of my lyrics and liked them so he asked me if I’d sing on the album. It was a massive learning curve, and massively intimidating singing with al those amazing musicians in JJ Smyth’s but it doesn’t really prepare you for doing your own gigs with your own material. That’s much scarier. Its a vicious cycle that you want your first gig to be brilliant and show what your capable of but the only way to get good is to learn by doing gigs. Eventualy I got over it and just did it.

You quote Annie Lennox as a big influence on your myspace-page, but I’d guess there’s also a good part Tori Amos hidden in your sound – any other influences?

I am completely OBSESSED with Annie Lennox. She’s written so many absolutely perfect pop songs. Like ‘Walking on Broken Glass’ is this big anthemic ass wiggler but if you pay attention the lyrics are quite dark. I love that. Pop has a reputation for being shallow but there’s lots of very intelligent pop out there, and right here in Dublin like Automata and Miriam Ingram.

I used to listen to a lot of Tori Amos, Fionna Apple and the likes but lately I’m moving towards more fun loving music. I still really love their music and I think if I was recording I’d go a little more in that direction for some of my tunes but it’s a bit introspective and I want my gigs to have more of sociable feel, I want people to feel like they can dance and join in. Gospel and soul’s great for that with all the call and response. I love live recordings of Patti Labelle where she’s singing away and then stops in the middle of the tune to have a conversation with the audience about her relationship and you can hear them all shouting up to her on the stage saying ‘hell yea’ and getting into it.

I’m not sure if this counts as an influence but I spend a lot of time on youtube and this is my favourite thing I’ve come across. I’ve watched it a million times so it must have had some influence on me by now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlFqhHJczDs

Do you think it is an advantage to hail from Dublin (and to live on the Nitelink:-))?

I love that I have a choice of two brass bands on a monday, and I can go see a gospel choir Sunday morning and a jazz gig that evening. It’s no New York but I can’t imagine there’d be that many options in a small Irish town. Also I like the choice of venues in Dublin. I like having gigs in the more unusual quirky venues, maybe it’s from studying architecture but I think the room is really important, like I love The Back Loft with its crusty walls and big old radiators or The Cobalt Cafe is another favourite. I did a gig in The Back Loft in May with visuals by Banbha McCann and I think the setting did half the work for me, set a good tone to the night before I’d ever sung a note. I’m on the lookout for for more quirky venues in Dublin and beyond if anyone wants to recommend any.

Also living on the night link is like being Cinderella backwards, I’m a pumpkin all day then at night the ball comes to me.

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

It’s a cunundrum for songwriters starting out that you can’t book gigs until you’ve got a band and a demo but a band of session musicians are rarely willing to put the effort into learning your tunes and rehearsing unless there’s gigs lined up. I’m lucky in that a lot of my friends are music students or session musicians who were happy to work for little or no money (so long as I bake for them every now and then). I wouldn’t say I have a set band but I have a pool of people to choose from and handily enough they’re all amazing musicians. The last gig I did at The Bray Festival was with The Riona Hartman Trio  (that makes us sound very grown up, the other name we were throwing about was Riona and the Heartmen, or The Sharkitects coz we all were or are architecture students….anyone has any suggestions they wanna throw our way feel free) which is myself Steven McNamara on guitar and Dina Ryan on clarinet/sax and I really enjoyed playing with them, clarinet melds really well with voice I think, so the next few gigs are going to be just the three of us. It’s hard to feel comfortable when your performing, sometimes that little fear button goes off in your head and you blank but having good friends play with you is a nice comfortable feeling security blanket.

Having said that I’d like to do solo gigs in the future. Unfortunately the piano’s an awkward instrument, I can’t carry one up the stairs without my Hulk potion and I hate the sound of electric keyboards. I’ve had a loop pedal on my wish list for a while, if I scrounge the money together for one doing some small solo gigs with it could be fun. The guitar is a really useful portable instrument, having a hot guitarist boyfriend means I can do gigs in awkward places like Cavan which is handy.

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

The only ones I hear complaining are the people who are used to ripping people off, who charge their fans 100€ to stand in a football pitch with thousands of other people a mile away from the stage. If that was me I’d damn well want the album for free. People freaked out when the radio started playing recordings rather than live bands, they freaked out again when movies got sound so they didn’t need a live piano player, and again when people were recording songs off the radio onto tapes. Maybe it’s naive of me but I think in the long run if your good at your job you’ll make money out of it.

At the same time I’m not into the idea that the web is the be all and end all for new bands, you still have to put the work into getting good at doing live gigs. It’s pretty easy to make yourself a flash myspace profile but it doesn’t mean much and doesn’t make up for practicing and learning the craft, you’re still gonna have to learn to write charts eventually even if you have millions of ‘friends’ on myspace.

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

I have a very not flash myspace: www.myspace.com/rionasallyhartman

I’ll be singing in Chapter One Cafe in Cavan on August 13th.

I’m moody and there’s a little house floating around inside my tummy.

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

One advantage of the festival season in Ireland is that most bands booked for these events include a stopover in Dublin in their touring schedule; so we can all avail of this without leaving the city boundaries and heading for the country. After last week’s visit of the Hot 8 Brass band in Whelan’s and Emmy the Great‘s show in Crawdaddy this Wednesday (both acts appearing at the Galway Art’s Festival), I’m especially looking forward to next week’s performance of O’Death from Brooklyn (again in Whelan’s).These five guys use fiddles, guitars, banjos and trombones to create an extremely interesting sound, fittingly titled “Folk Metal” on their Myspace page. Stay tuned to see if the Dublinblog can obtain a photo pass for this show What was Oxegen again?

O’Death – Legs To Sin – Live @ Bowery Ballroom from Kemado Records on Vimeo.

For the 4th time, the “Let’s French”-festival will be happening in selected venues all over Dublin next week. To give Dubliners an overview of French music (and culture) and to celebrate this year’s Fete de la Musique,  the Alliance Francaise of Dublin has invited some interesting contemporary French artists, and there are also screenings of French music movies at the Denzille Cinema and an open mic day.

Kick-off will be a show of Parisian HipHop-three piece DSL at the Andrews Lane theatre on Thursday, 18.06., and my personal highlight of the festival, a show of Housse de Racket at the Twisted Pepper on Abbey Street follows up on Saturday 20th. Concluding all the events will be a free (! – its the Fete de la Musique) show of Singer/Songwriter Marie Cherrier at the Village on Wexford Street Sunday evening. Alors, on y va, dear Frankophiles. And watch out for reviews here on the Dublinblog.

SYNTHE TEASER Р(( Housse de Racket РSynth̩tiseur )) from Housse De Racket on Vimeo.

And did I mention that there’s a free Henessy-cocktail included when you purchase a ticket for one of the shows?

“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