Sunday, November 25, 2007
Vidiot: Vinyl Films Documentary On Sir Henrys
Don't know how I missed it till now.
Labels: Music, Out, sir henrys
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Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Gig Review: Modeselektor…. So tell me….
Ha ha see what I did there clever yes? No? Oh well never mindModeselektor are Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary a two man DJ /producer team from Germany releasing almost exclusively on Ellen Alien's Bpitch Control label their music is influenced in turns by hip-hop break beats techno and dub exemplified by their first full album Hello Mom released in 2005 and remixed and re-released in 2006 featuring the brilliant euro crunking French hip-hop crew TTC
Anyone who saw the German duo's Irish debut in the Foggy Notions tent on the last night of the Electric Picnic last year knows how crazy their live sets can be, it was easily the most explosive gig I saw all weekend. However the set up they brought to Dublin on Thursday 8th of March was very different they preformed a two hour D.J set with support from Electric City's Rian Ryan down stairs in Wax on south William street, in my opinion this claustrophobic venue is unsuited for such a gig with the dance floor being uncomfortably jammed for the majority of the set with barely room to move much less dance.
However after a slow start their use of hip hop, techno & electro went down well with "Kill Bill vol.4" and The Prodigy's "Fire" getting the warmest receptions. The crowd was once again electrified and towards the last half hour people were hanging out of the rafters standing on top of ledges and sitting on shoulders in order to dance on the packed dance floor.
As I was plastered to the glass barrier at the front for the majority of the gig I had a good view of the two men's behaviour behind the controls and it couldn't have been more different, Bronsert displayed a foppish calm, with the look of a modern day S.S. Commandant leading the crowd willingly to the aural ovens. While Szary jumped around like a 10 year old kid filled with Fanta at a wedding disco, egging the crowd on.
Infuriately the bouncers made them cut the music five minutes early just as they began to play Jeff Mill's "The Bells." To top it all off in celebration of Electric City's fourth birthday they drenched the front rows of the crowd with first a bottle of champagne and then a bottle of vodka. I left the gig sticky and highly flammable but happy and slightly stupider
There is speculation that MDSLKTR will be coming to Dublin with their full live set sometime in early summer, so keep your noses pealed people.
Labels: Gig Review, Guest Blogger, Mark, Modeselektor, Music, Out
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Saturday, January 27, 2007
Club Review: Thrashed You'll Rightly Be.
If you were wondering where all those bean pole males who take fashion cues from Russel Brand are be found falling around a dancefloor then look no further - Thrashed one of the mid week nights in the Hub is yer man. With practically all drinks coming in at a dangerous 3e you'll quickly find yourself terrorising the dance floor with dysfucntional dance moves before getting in a huff and spilling more vodka and orange over yourself at the side. The music policy runs from the whole NME New Rave schlock, through classic indie and back out the arse end with floor pounding Prodigy. They say: "Interpol -whadda ya make of that?" You say: "Not more fucking Joy Division." Check it out over on Myspace.I meant to mention this before but Reeuq has a review of old time favorites Belladonnakillz recent live show over in Toronto. Goth rave my arse.
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Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Breakcore Nutters Leechrum Set Up Monthly Club In Dublin - Its Wrong - All Wrong!
What happens when you add this, this and this? Probably the potential for one of Dublin's most chaotic and exciting club explosions, that's what's in store - as breakcore nutters Leechrum Records who brought over the likes of Planet Mu beat mangling beasts Exile and Chevron to these shores last year set up their own monthly club night in Fraizers on O'Connell Street. What once may have been a movement of isolated nutters sitting in gaffs downloading brutalized beats and tortured undanceable rhythms that reduce dance floors to gibbering mangled and usually mashed happy idiots has been stretching its wings and pulling devotees in under its wings in an organic flurry of growth over the past wee while. Dublin heads such as Herv, Lakker and others have brought the sound a certain degree of respectability, while the boredom of music scenes full of DJ's that barely dance to their own tunes, the combination of a truly jilted generation living off the jaded memories of musical movements that were worth latching onto means that breakcore is pulling in fans from across the alternative musical divide. No more traveling to the UK or Galway for the nuttiness, now it's setting up camp in the capital and we all better be there. First up its local rave revivalists T-Wok and Solen, with stand up comedy thrown into the mix. Check out the Leechrum site for details of their new monthly club nites, in Fraizers, and worst of all the bar serves Buckfast. ITS WROONG!
Leechrum are also organising a Leprechaun Error tour of some of the Brighton breakcore greats across Ireland. The line up includes Shitmat, Chevron, Ebola, The Gross Consumer and Nwodtlem hits Dublin on Friday 24 February, doors open at 10pm and it goes till late. So hand over your money suckers.
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Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Crawling Up The Walls.
So are you looking? Are the walls creeping in on you, as well? I was out tonight. The lack of a structure was driving me bezerk over the elimination of purpose that was Xmas. Doing Equality Studies as a night time course leaves me with so much contaminated time - moments where I should already be in a course lecture, or moments I should be reading course handouts . Whatever the anti-dote to relaxing that besets the frontal lope in these seconds. Xmas is a nice one. The fire is lit, if not in reality, at least in memory, the comfort is provided, through insular packages of chocolate, white cards lashed on scribbled with the juices of ink that peculiarises the gift to you. And enough, less than engrossing, but palatable TV is presented to you. What a plate - do consume it!Laterly, I do think I/we're living in peculiar times. Smithfield, in my memory goads me back to the dead end of anonymous journeys from the Heuston to town, via the Jarvis abattoir of sense. It was where the cider was stabbed open with the thirst of the most abused after feeblily buying their allowance of two bottles per person in front of Lidl tills. A friend told me the other day - how she recently took this photo of veiled Muslim devotee's playing ping pong on an open, concrete table top set up in the Smithfield Square/Market. How changed.
Tonight I went into Isoldes Tower. Grogans, which remains part of this narrative strikes me as a funny place, art work stick out on the wall, and you wonder how the bidding goes - I mean can I mount there? And if someone can stick a price sticker on the exit sign that's always a hint - I mean wasn't Jim Royles son's band inspired by such aluminum? I don't want to engage in cryptic blogging, so here's the insurmountable moment - d'others were in there. And after an Xmas of absorption in mindrot, there was the phone call summoning me back to the job. Out I goes, to Isoldes, in the end up - something to undermine the nowt.
Apparently, I look like an Italian squatter - which leads to a discussion about Czechtech with a Czech, and an immersion into the politics of multiculturalism in Dublin - because there ain't going to be a lot of it until the drink one is mellowed out. We leave and after a night of her trying to calm a boyfriend besieged by a guy claiming she was "working the bar for drinks" - we have a pounding as the harrassing drunk bloke gave the Italian - not a beating, but a cleverly placed punch in the face on the walk away from the club, not an invitation to fight - but a bang - a thank you very much man. The Italian boyfriend is pumping blood. I'd been talking to him earlier in the night. His dad had been in the Diaz school in Genoa when all of that went wrong, he was from the south of Italy and owt Berlusconi way needed to go down. We were chatting, hanging out, and I could see a fight brew all night.
Sure, I know - but aren't you exasperated too? "Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee.....DA PEOPLE" - sincerely have a drink problem, we all know that - but there's something more afresh going on than just pished ribaldry on the streets. The walls are closing in on us. Fucking hell, street violence needs examining - its the ultimate parameter, we are not well. A hidden injury of class it maybe - but we need to come to terms with the Tiger, cos we aint' doing well. Apparently in Maynooth someone is doing research into the rise in violence and the possible links to patterns matching economic data. That'd be interesting. After all I'd be sober tonight, were I not in work tomorrow.
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Monday, October 31, 2005
Fuck the Garda
Last night I had the urge to punch a cop but due to the consequences of such actions I kept my fists to myself took down their numbers and swore I would make a complaint. Yesterday after a twelve hour shift James myself and a few mates decided we would drink a few cans before going into the gig to save money. We were sitting by the Liffey on the boardwalk chatting away. Every time guards walked by we would hide our cans and they would walk by without taking notice. But the last time guards walked by we weren’t so lucky, they noticed James' can under the bench between his legs and kicked it over. Then they had us stand up to search for more cans. They were being a bit thick and we were being a bit cheeky so they Section 8'ed us which means you have to leave the vicinity immediately or they can arrest you, but not before they took all our names, birthdates and addresses. James was asking them under what section they had the right to take our addresses, since as far as we knew we only had to give our names and addresses but not birthdates. Due to our inquisitive and less then respectful manner towards these pricks they started to get a bit more rude. One was questioning James asking where he worked. Our mate was saying “don’t tell him anything” but I think both him and I were on the same page and wanted to show them how we had good “caring” jobs and were not doley scum like they assumed.The other guard was asking what part of America I was from, we had a hard time understanding that I was not from the states and had never lived there so instead of thinking ‘umm canada’ we decided to take a low blow and say so your from D4 then. He started to make fun of my accent and do a really bad American accent “Hey maaan” and so on. He was really pissing me off.
He then asked me where I worked, I told him a homeless shelter. He asked if it paid well, and then said that the homeless get paid well and was asking me how much they get a week, not in an interested way but rather in a manner where he could bitch about the homeless taking all the welfare money. When I asked why he cared he said that he works with the homeless aswell. Now this is were I get real snarky; I say to him “Oh right when you are beating them up and arresting them” oh course he went with it and said “yeah and I love it”
The blood is boiling!!!
While we walked off the board walk and onto the bridge there was this guy tapping, we warned him that he might wanna move on since there were two assholes heading his way that said they enough beating up and arresting homeless people. Low and behold the guards went right up to him and started to harass him. While they were doing that James went over with his note book and started to take notes. This actually shook them, one of them turned around took out his hand cuffs and started to run at us.
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Monday, March 07, 2005
The Only Place In Dublin Where Women Grope You
Labels: Out
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Thursday, March 03, 2005
Gotta Let You Go - Farewell Metropoliton
Last week the Metropolitan closed its doors to Dublin's clubbers, its brief tenure brought to an end by management who want to transform it into, as a friend so aptly put it, a "cuntin' Irish bar". Maybe Ireland's archaic authorities influenced their decision. Like the legendary Kitchen, the Metropolitan will one day be one of those you-should-have-been-there places, spoken of reverentially.
For me, the Metropolitan was the most underground place imaginable. Underground, not because it was a basement, but because it was left alive until this by dedicated enthusiasts: diehard vinyl junkies who still prop up the counters of record storesand people in dark recording studios who have day jobs and don't believe in major labels and huge advancements.
It was a large living room with a big ass bar and seats at the side, capable of holding only a few hundred. Sure, the sound wasn't always audible, the lighting was shit and the layout was appalling. And sometimes it might have seemed too iconic, too cool, too cliquish- but you could always find people with a passion for music, whether it be in Electric City or Refuge, who liked DJs you liked. Making friends there was easy, and it didn't always require gurning. You'd just sit at the side and invariably someone would come sit next to you and start chatting. The atmosphere was always affable and vibrant.
If you liked techno, Electric City on a Thursday night was your club. No frivolous shit. Unaffected by the rise and fall of dance culture and its overpaid DJs and gimmicky records, techno has remained a constant heartbeat in the real underground. And the techno scene revolved around Eden Quay. All the DJs I liked had played in the Metropolitan at some point: Decal, Francois K, Dave Clarke, Ben Sims, Speedy J, Alter Ego, The Hacker. Some of these guys wouldn't send you an e-mail for less than 2,000 quid, but the entry fee would always be something like 10 euros. Refuge, hosted by the Bassbin crew on Saturday nights, featured the finest exponents of drum'n'bass and jungle in Ireland. It was always a chaotic affair, thronged with fervent clubbers wrestling for space on the floor.
Despite last orders at the Metropolitan, Electric City and Refuge live on. Electric City will continue their techno terror at the swanky Traffic. Regardless of EC's assurances of a "suitably relaxed door policy", whatever that means, I'd still envisage problems from the pricks at the door unless you're a regular or wearing designer gear. Refuge meanwhile have events forthcoming in the Shelter, one of Dublin's top venues, though how frequent they will be allowed to grace the venue with their presence remains uncertain. In spite of this, and other setbacks over the year, the true music underground experience survives and endures. Support it.
Cogsy
Labels: Guest Blogger, Music, Out
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Monday, February 07, 2005
Another damn thing about Doyle's
Furthermore, something is really going to have to be done about the Monkey Cunt behind the decks. A friend suggested the following solution: bring a sackload of bananas into the club and distribute them around the dance-floor. Then request "Monkey Man" by the Specials, which will be the cue for everyone to pelt the fruit at the DJ box, knocking the little shit out the window and onto the street below, where he'll hopefully be crushed by an oncoming bus.
Until such a joyful liberation transpires, my advice is to stay well away...
Labels: Doyles, Guest Blogger, Music, Out, Rant
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A Fibbers For Our Time
Doyles, sitting there quietly opposite Trinity, it took me about eighteen months of living in Dublin to realise the place existed, the wonder of discovering a house party full of particularly drunk Trinity students. Being drunk, that can be a great thing. Being sober, it can be disconcerting. Being stoned out of your bin, knackered and sleep walking, after six hours of meetings, it can be horrifying, fascinating and somewhat exhilarating but only if being snide is your thing. So some how we keep finding ourselves back there. There have been nights there where intoxicated with the glee of drunken pranksterism we've pilfered drunks galore, ran around pretending to chaw our jaws shouting 'woo....woooo' at timid looking types in an effort to get them dancing, we've swung from the lights (briefly), instigated dance floor sit-downs for 'one more choon (again briefly), found ourselves in such paralytic states of cider intoxication that drinking cans in public there was a sound idea and to be preached to all and sundry. Doyles is fun, but like most places in Dublin, it's intoxication rather than the venue that creates the atmosphere and all in all that means an anti social behavioural sort of night. So the promises have been made again, never to return. It reminds me of how three years ago, a few of us made a pledge after many nights of enduring nu-metal tripe in Fibbers that we would never return.
We returned about twice, pissed out of our heads of course and the victim of an old friends reluctance to go anywhere else. Past the surliest bouncers in the world, into that cavern of a club to be glared at by handfuls of teenagers all competing for a place in the most pissed off teenager in the world championship. It was real, 'fuck you I won't clean up my bedroom tantrums left right and centre on the dance floor, as angry Goths whipped each other with whirling hair and splashed sweat at each other. Fibbers was always for Goths and metal heads that had skipped the small town and were reaching for something different in Dublin. There's been a few occasions I've gone back in the last year, to be refused for lack of ID only to see brief glimpses of kids in Placebo shirts and Craddle of Filth gear running wild at the bottom of the stairs. Doyles is like that, it's the Fibbers of the trendy Bohemian set that feel no guilt about listening to a DJ that looks like a particularly lazy monkey spinning the same set list again, and again and again. Doyles is a smaller Whelan's, people are so impeccably dressed its fucking amazing on the one hand and disheartening on the other, the punters are clones of whatever NME rock band seems best situated popularly at the moment, Franz Ferdinand seem to lead the fashion stakes at the moment, hence loadsa sweep over haircuts, blazers and Converse a-go-go. As in Fibbers here's only one way to cope in there, copious amounts of drink and a hefty head ache in the morning, neither of which are positive. Make sure to watch out for the inevitable flying glasses, as the previously unconscious drunk at the opposite table flings there pint at you in a forgetful frenzy to reach the dance floor as the Strokes blare out. Pompously, I do worry about my generation, but only when sober.
Labels: Doyles, Music, Out, Rant, Society
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About Soundtracksforthem specialises in iconoclastic takes on culture, politics, and more shite from the underbelly of your keyboard. A still-born group blog with a recent surge of different contributers but mainly maintained by James R. Big up all the contributers and posse regardless of churn out rate: Kyle Browne, Reeuq, Cogsy, Chief, X-ie phader/Krossie, Howard Devoto, Dara, Ronan and Mark Furlong. Send your wishes and aspirations to antropheatgmail.com
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