‘The experience [of Electric Picnic], when recounted second hand, never fails to sound like a slightly grubbier, slightly ‘artsier’, weekend health-spa retreat; naturalistic chill out zones, organic Fair Trade snacks, clean toilets, and a general ‘positive atmosphere’; indeed the whole thing is like a temporary realization of the contents of multiple broadsheet weekend supplements.’
– Mentasms, via Eoghan. love it!
So I went to the Crystal Castles gig in the Andrews Lane Theatre (now rebranded “ALT”) on Tuesday night.
It wasn’t great… I’ve been loving the album, so I was really looking forward to the gig. But the live format was a bit meh, as Nialler noted — their set was a measly 25 minutes long; the sound was a mess, making it hard to make out which tune was which; quite a few of their best tunes were AWOL, such as “Untrust Us”; and there was no encore. On top of that, the support DJ was shite.
Still, the gig was cheap — 13 squids, and the support band Ugly Megan were quite cute. And — megabonus — I finally got to meet up with Nialler in person! ;)
One thing that was a little disconcerting was the age/fashion profile of the crowd. It was overwhelmingly full of hip, angular-haircutted 18 year olds — much more than any other gig I’ve been at in Dublin recently. This has thrown up some great threads at On The Record and UnaRocks… plenty of old indie rock fans gnashing their teeth about these mysterious youngsters suddenly appearing at a gig, when they haven’t been seen before “on the scene”.
There’s an easy answer as to why this happened — there aren’t many bands playing Dublin on the nu-rave end of the spectrum. The Dublin gig scene is still pretty rockist.
May 16th — mark your calendars!
This is turning out to be a pretty busy month…
It turns out that no less than the fucking Chromatics will be playing at Andrew’s Lane Theatre on 24 April.
This would be all well and fantastic — except that’s just two days after Crystal Castles play the same venue. wtf! Unfortunately I’ve already got my Crystal Castles tix — and I’m looking forward to that gig anyway. But I would have loved to hit both, and it’s just not possible with only 2 days between ‘em.
So, went to see Holy Fuck in Whelan’s on Thursday.
It was in the company of a (very) pregnant friend, which assured us early access to the upstairs level, with seating. Maybe I’m getting old (maybe?!), but turns out this was great stuff — seats! no queues for the bar! no queues for the jacks! a great view of the band! Really, I must go to more gigs with pregnant ladies. Not very rock and roll, but there you go.
The Fuck have a very impressive range of crappy Bontempi toy keyboards — we counted 11. Great array of effects pedals and custom electronic noise boxes, too. Reminded me of Black Moth Super Rainbow a little. The only thing that let it down was a little lack of volume — it could have been louder. still – good gig! recommended!
Also, I came across an interesting idea — Fustar is running a “Dreadful Thoughts Story Club”, an intriguing kind of interweb-based mini-book-club project revolving around horror short stories, and as part of this, Niall Munnelly set up a collaborative mixtape as described here. Here’s the results so far: Dreadful Thoughts Muxtape. (including Suspiria and Wendy Carlos tracks from yours truly.)
I love the idea of a collaborative mixtape run through Muxtape.com, very nifty.
Finally — occasional Undersea Community contributor Eoghan is now blogging about serious stuff over here at The Colour of Memory. Go subscribe.
There are good bands in Ireland.
That’s it. I’ve said it.
I feel better now.
The Jimmy Cake are the Kevin Bacon of the Irish music scene, except you are typically just one degree of separation from them. This track is one of the highlights of their new album, Spectre & Crown.
God Is An Astronaut are another one of my favourite local acts. They are from Kilmacanouge just outside Bray. Pure mad epic & slick post-rock.
