A new documentary entitled ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, Gavin Friday’ will be aired on RTÉ One on Tuesday April 6th, at 10.15pm.
Featuring interviews with former bandmates Guggi, Dik, Dave-id and Strongman, Bono and The Edge of U2, journalists Peter Murphy and John Kelly, film directors Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan, as well as Gavin’s mother, the documentary tells the story of the man, his music and his enduring friendships and collaborations.
‘Ladies and Gentlemen, Gavin Friday’ was directed by Ian Thuillier and produced for RTÉ by Midas Productions .
The documentary will be available on demand for 21 days on RTÉ’s online player. (Irish viewers only due to geo-restrictions.)
Ladies & Gentlemen, Gavin Friday (RTÉ One, 6th of April, 10:15pm)
A great name, catchy songs and instant acclaim has made four-piece The Cast Of Cheers a band you will be hearing much more of in 2010. In early February, the band quietly released their debut album Chariot for free download on Bandcamp.com. Less than a week later, they had received attention from music blogs like Nialler9, Ragged Words and The Irish Times with many exclaiming, they will be your new favourite band.
The title of the record Chariot, is indicative of both their music and the pace at which the band have set themselves. A fully-formed 33-minute blast of post-punk, looping rock riffs and tightly-wound songs, it has lodged itself firmly in the mind of all that have heard it. Think a mix of Battles, Foals and Death From Above 1979 where danceable repetition fights with heavy rock drums, big bass sounds and intricate guitar work.
The four members of The Cast Of Cheers have previously been involved in bands such as Abam, Jukebox Hymn, and Lazybug. The band's lead singer and guitarist Conor Adams wrote the album in his attic at home before getting together with drummer Kev and bassist John to play the songs in Kev's sooundproof shed. The album was recorded with Mick Richards from October to December 2009 in Blanchardstown, Dublin and was mixed by January 2010. Conor's brother Neil joined the band on guitar shortly afterwards.
The band wasted no time getting the record out to people in February and the reaction has been overwhelming since. Within three weeks of release, the band played their first ever live show to a clearly burgeoning yet already hugely enthusiastic fanbase and already have their sights set on more shows in Ireland, the UK, Europe and Japan.
Lyrically, Chariot deals with themes of heartbreak and an end of the world dystopia. Conor was listening to the likes of Bloc Party, Justice, Thingy and Ireland's increasingly vital alternative scene with bands like Adebisi Shank and The Vinny Club while writing the album. He was also inspired by post-apocalyptic games like Left For Dead 2 and Half Life 2 and similarly-themed books like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Max Brooks' World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War in addition to works by the author Haruki Murakami.
The Cast Of Cheers have already set a galloping pace in the first few months of 2010 and look set to become the new favourite band of many more if they continue at such a blistering speed.
Vyvienne Long, renowned for her cello playing with Damien Rice released her long-awaited and mesmerizing debut album, Caterpillar Sarabande over the weekend. Vyvienne has just finished a pre-release tour of Ireland.
The current single is “Tactless Questions”. Vyvienne released the “Birdtalk” EP in 2006 and a single, “Happy Thoughts”, last year.
Delorentos played an incendiary show to a packed audience in the Academy, Dublin over the weekend and the band recently released a new single “You Say You’ll Never Love Her”.
The current album, You Can Make Sound has just been released throughout Europe. It charted at No 2 in the Irish Album Charts and was voted Album Of The Year on Entertainment.ie
The band are currently confirming live shows and festival dates around Europe in support of the album release. In addition they have lined up shows in Ireland through April, June and July.
Perfectly formed Irish label Any Other City have just released a 4-track sampler. The label who offered the world the first music from the delightful Villagers is showcasing wares from bands who will all be a mainstay of the label’s releases in 2010: New Amusement, Hired Hands, Hello Moon and Feed The Bears. Listen with interest…this could be the start of something big! www.anyothercity.com
Love:live music, Ireland’s first National Music Day, takes place on Friday April 16th and is coordinated by Music Network in association with RTÉ lyric FM and supported by the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism. In recognition of the influence that music has in our lives, everyone is invited to join in this celebration across all types of music: from big bands to buskers, hip hop to Bartok and everything in between. In this, the inaugural year, there will be lots of free live music events in cities and towns across the land as well as two flagship events in Dublin and Limerick. To find out about events in your area, or to register your own event, visit http://www.lovelivemusic.ie or call 01 671 9429.
SECRET FESTIVAL 2010-2012 MUSIC EXPERIMENT ON THE ISLAND OF ÖLAND SWEDEN
The Secret festival in Sweden are seeking musicians from five different countries to travel to the Island of Öland to participate in a unique festival concept. The residency is for a week with flights, accommodation and 500 euro pay taken care of by the Festival organisers. Two musicians from Ireland are now being sought to take part from the 27th of June to the 3rd of July 2010. It is an open submission for original musicians in the genres of trad, Singer/songwriter or instrumentalist. IMRO members interested in participating can email their info and website details directly to johnleocarter@nullhotmail.com Further information on the project is located at: www.myspace.com/theyellowboxoland and www.hemligfestival.se
Brief introduction to the Secret Festival concept Yellowbox in Sättra becomes a place where musicians during four days work together to find new musical arrangements. Participating musicians are introduced to the specific surroundings in order to be partly inspired by the place and also be informed about its unique qualities. Musicians from the region meet musicians from different nationalities and backgrounds. The group lives and works together over the three days. Participants will jointly compose a piece of music inspired by the place to be performed at the forthcoming concerts.
SECRET FESTIVAL A TRAVELING FESTIVAL
Instead of the festival been based in the same venue and in a place that the audience will recognize, the festival organisers want to host events at a number of locations. Yellowbox arranges transport for the audience to be driven to the chosen sites, where the audience is presented with a unique musical concept. During these days Yellowbox will present: o outdoor stages o Musicians from the region play with musicians from different nationalities and backgrounds o New Musical presentations o A youth workshop under the theme of sound and rhythm
EVENT ORGANISERS BACKGROUND DETAILS
John Leo Carter and Helle Kvamme have been renovating on a schoolhouse on Öland, a Swedish Island in The Baltic sea since 2004. Island to Island, Seesaw and Songsmiths has resulted in new exciting opportunities for Musicians and artists.
It’s all about the roots – we are what we are because of circumstance, upbringing, family environment and influence. For proof of this all you need to do is take even a cursory look at the career of Colm Quearney (aka Q). If his father had been a plumber then it’s likely Q would have tackled the intricacies of U-Bend technology rather than music. But Q’s father wasn’t into such work, and so it was that a young Colm grew up listening to blues and jazz, and checking out his dad’s nifty bass playing at Sunday afternoon gigs in various venues around Dublin.
Q says he had little interest in becoming a musician until he heard the guitar riff from Satisfaction (a song by a band called The Rolling Stones – you may have heard of them). “It sounds like a cliché,” he relates, “but when I heard it I just wanted to find a guitar to replicate it as quickly as possible.”
And so started a life’s journey in music: initially playing electric bass at the School of Hard Knocks, and studying double bass in the rather more refined quarters of the College of Music. “I was academically trained up to a point,” admits Q. “Conversations with my dad were always about music, and that informed how I approached the playing of it. I went on to forming bands, discovered the music of Jimi Hendrix, and then moved from playing bass to the lead guitar.”
In tandem with all of the above was Q’s experience in the early 1990s at the Ballyfermot Rock School, of which his time there he describes as a terrific experience, “a melting pot of people from different backgrounds with the same aspirations. It had a profound effect on me – being surrounded by people that loved music as much as I did.”
While at Ballyfermot, Q formed Dragonfly, a cultish rock act that imploded in 1994. Within weeks of Dragonfly splitting, he received a phone call from (then) Irish contenders Lir, whose keyboard player had left the band. There followed a time spent living the life of a rock star in a band that was on the cusp of potential significant success. Like so many before and after, however, plans for this Irish rock band didn’t work out. Every cloud, though, has a veritable silver lining.
“I learned how to be in a band, how to write songs,” says Q, “and of how hard it was to be in a band, and how much fun it was. The people that I worked with were likeminded, yet I never felt with Lir – as well as with Dragonfly – that I was doing anything that would ever be commercially viable. It didn’t matter to me, though, because I felt that would come later. I was working through a lot of music I was interested in and influenced by. It was a bit self-indulgent, perhaps, but it was also great fun.”
Yet the realisation that being in a band isn’t all it’s made out to be set in around the time when Q broke one of his legs in a football match. Putting his record store job (the first job he had since he left school) on hold for a few months afforded him the space to demo a batch of solo material he had been working on.
“The interesting thing about being in a band writing songs with other people,” states Q, “is that you’re not entirely free because you’re starting to censor yourself. In your head you’re going, ‘well, the guitar player won’t like that riff, or the singer won’t like this song, or the drummer won’t like that rhythm’.”
The penny, as they say, finally dropped: being a full time member of a band inhibited the flow of independent creativity. According to an intriguing theory of Q‘s, this is how bands develop those famous ‘music differences’, because they become so comfortable with each other that creative viability is, ironically, undermined by their close friendship. “That’s not unique. I’ve seen it happen in a lot of bands. So it’s great to be writing songs when there’s no agenda, when there’s no idea of who you’re writing the song for, or when you might be releasing it.”
In 2001, these songs eventually found their way onto Q’s contrarily titled debut album, The World’s Not Round. Thereafter followed more songwriting, a sophomore solo album in 2004 (Bodyelectric) and, to a gradual degree, a switch from solo act to contributor/collaborator/co-conspirator with the likes of Mundy, Jerry Fish & the Mudbug Club, Pugwash and a plethora of other acts that required help from a nifty guitarist as well as someone who could find their way around a song. All of this creativity and work, reckons Q, built up its own singular head of steam that fed – directly and by osmosis – into his own songwriting.
As if that wasn't enough, Q was often delving into the roots of his own inherently personal influences by performing with unsung Irish blues heroes (and his father’s contemporaries) such as Pat Farrell, Jimmy Faulkner, Ed Deane and Noel Bridgeman in bands such as The Houseshakers and Left, Right & Centre. “I secured a work ethic and integrity from these people,” states Q, “that otherwise might not have been there.”
These influences notwithstanding (“playing with bands is a challenge, and your game has to be up to scratch.”), Q’s primary focus is his solo work. Resilient and resourceful, he has kept himself busy through downtime periods by building a studio (The Qube Analogue & Digital) from where he plots, ponders and produces.
Q’s new album, Root To The Fruit, sees the multi-faceted musician once again chase a sound that promises to blow you away. Unusually, it’s an album where the production (courtesy of Q) and the sound are elements of the songwriting.
“You can get the song right and the recording totally wrong,” claims Q correctly. “Have I got it right? Maybe I have and maybe I haven’t, but perhaps down the line I’ll realise I’ve created all these songs. Maybe I’ll look back when I’m not so close to it, and just enjoy the album.
“And it feels like an album, in the old sense of the meaning. The previous two albums, proud of them though I am, felt as if they were experiments. Root To The Fruit is an album I made that sounds like it’s going somewhere. The songs deserve to be there, there’s ebb and flow to them. They fit.”
Root To The Fruit is released on Strange Vibe/1969 Records. Q will be performing at the following venues throughout April and May.
Noise Control release their new single 'Take it', featuring Grammy award winning artist Shahin Badars' breathtaking Sufi vocals.
Electronic and rock with Eastern crossover, 'Take It' is produced by Noise Control along with the much sought after Dave Pemberton who has worked with the Prodigy, Orbital, Carl Cox & Motorhead. Shahin has featured on 'Get Up Get Off 'and the smash hit single 'Smack My Bitch Up' by The Prodigy for which she received a double platinum disc for her contribution.
Having built a reputation as one of the most exciting live acts you can see today, the band have also completed their debut album 'Our Life' scheduled for release early summer.
Dan Hegarty RTE 2FM: “It's official, I'm addicted to 'Take It' by Noise Control (Feat: Shahin Badar) – such a great tune!”
'Take it' will be available on CD and through all digital music stores.
Villagers have announced 4 headline shows in Ireland to co-incide with the release of the debut album, Becoming A Jackal, which is released by Domino in Ireland on 14 May.
Sporting a full band for the headline shows Villagers will play:
Wed 19 May Set Theatre, Kilkenny
Thurs 20 May Cyprus Avenue, Cork
Fri 21 May Roisin Dubh, Galway
Sun 23 May The Button Factory, Dublin (please note change of date – all tickets )
Villagers is the brainchild of Conor J. O'Brien, who has already toured Ireland, the UK and US and opened for Neil Young, Wild Beasts and Cass McCombs amongst others. Becoming a Jackal introduces us to Villagers’ vivid narratives, gripping poetry and melodic depth. Conor J. O’Brien’s clear and distinctive voice weaves a remarkable spell, delivering an album of rare, alarming beauty. From restrained to unleashed, from a whisper to a literal howl, Becoming a Jackal mutates, intrigues and beguiles in equal measure.
The lead single of the same name will be available on 7” from Record Store Day (17th April) and via digital download from 26th April. The accompanying, Ferry Gouw, directed video is available to watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg0UsO5SFb8
The full tracklisting for the Becoming A Jackal album is:
1 – I Saw the Dead
2 – Becoming a Jackal
3 – Ship of Promises
4 – The Meaning of the Ritual
5 – Home
6 – That Day
7 – The Pact (I’ll be your Fever)
8 – Set the Tigers Free
9 – Twenty-Seven Strangers
10 – Pieces
11 – To Be Counted Among Men
Villagers have just returned from performing at Canadian Music and the SXSW festival in the US. The full band will be supporting Wild Beasts in Ireland tonight (Cork, Cyprus Avenue) and tomorrow night (Dublin, Academy).
