Mary, Derek and Dervla FTW!
Next time you’re DJing or playing tunes at a party, you know you’ll want this in your arsenal. It’s an audio rip of the Youtube video with the intro included. You’re welcome. The video that started it all off after the jump.
MP3: Crystal Swing – He Drinks Tequila (rip)
Song removed because I’d like to move on with posting music I actually enjoy. It was a silly post that got out of hand. I want this blog to be about positivity and this is not that.
Congratulations to Adrian Crowley for winning the Choice Music Prize 2009 for his album Season of The Sparks earlier last night. A surprised, shocked and humble winner he was. A video of Jim announcing him as the winner is below.
Afterwards, the And So I Watch You From Afar juggernaut which shows no sign of stopping played a not-so-secret show in the Mercantile on Dame Street after their performance in Vicar Street, which was by-far and away the best short set of the night.
Here’s a pic of Tony ASIWYFA on the stacks in Vicar Street: More..»
Above is the online-only PDF / issuu of State’s Faces of 2010 special (see also the mixtape). It was nice to see our collective work in magazine form again even though it’s only 31 pages. We’re proud of it. You can download a PDF here.
State.ie has been in operation for two years now. In that time, it’s become one of the bigger music sites in Ireland. In my mind though, we are only just beginning. More..»
Here are the ten for the Choice Prize this year. Delighted to see ASIWYFA get a nod as well as Julie Feeney and Valerie Francis in particular. It’s a pity there was no room for David Kitt’s The Nightsaver. I figured albums from BATS, The Holy Roman Army, Twinkranes and Patrick Kelleher were maybe a little too out there to all get on the list. I don’t get the appeal of Duckworth Lewis Method myself but sure there ya go. After being a judge last year (list below), all I can say is good luck and enjoy. Nine of these albums (with the exception of Laura Izibor) featured in the top 30 Nialler9 Irish album poll.
Spotify playlist of 8 of the 10 albums here.
A promo video for Una Mullally’s (formerly UnaRocks) new TG4 music show which airs from next Thursday the 14th of January at 11.45pm. There’ll be videos, live performances and interviews. Julian Casablancas, Grizzly Bear, The XX, Passion Pit, Delorentos, Marina and the Diamonds and Speech Debelle all feature. Programme one features an interview with Mercury winner Speech Debelle and live music from Valerie Francis and Delorentos.
One of the bands featured on the show, Sounds of System Breakdown are offering their latest single on their site for free download and it’s a good tune so why not? Here’s the radio edit, grab the full version from the site.
Before normal service resumes, a little bit of housekeeping..
Nialler9 won the Best Music Site at the Irish Web Awards 2009 on Saturday! Thanks to all who were involved be it in voting, judging, organising the thing (Mr. Mulley, Rick and co.) It’s the best goddamn web awards going. Sure where else would you get bags of crisps and rude t-shirts thrown into the audience? Great stuff. Full ist of winners here.
This weekend sees Hard Working Class Heroes kick off again and there are a number of things I’m involved in worthy of your time. As well as participating in the speed sessions in The Button Factory on Saturday from 10.30am – 1pm along with the people listed on the left here, there will be an interesting panels taking place in the same venue at 2pm. Media – Why The First, Last And Middle Words Are Online will take a look at the impact of online music coverage from MP3 blogs to music sites and how these websites affect bands. Chaired by Jim Carroll, the panel will consist of myself, Sean Adams (Drowned in Sound – the UK’s premier indie music site?), Anthony Volodkin (creator of The Hype Machine – seriously interesting dude), James Foley of the online music industry newsletter Record of The Day and Una Mullally (Unarocks, Sunday Tribune, Soundcheck) It’s a great mix of people so try and make it along if you can. (Free entry for anyone with a valid day / weekend wristband). More panels here.
Also later on that night at 8.30pm in The Twisted Pepper, myself and Una will be joining Jim once again for the 4th Banter discussion “Meet the new media cats” which will see us poking around in the Venn diagram between blogs, Twitter and the established media. Admission is FREE but please register your interest as capacity is limited. We’ll both be DJing in between the acts on the night in the venue there for HWCH. Playing in the venue are: Valerie Francis, Hunter-Gatherer, The Spook Of The Thirteenth Lock, Cities, Kyon, Yes Cadets, The Dying Seconds and The Holy Roman Army.
Finally, next week, I’ll be hitting CMJ in New York so expect some bits and pieces on that then.
Finally: here’s a Youtube audio of the excellent ‘Slow Life’, Grizzly Bear featuring Victoria of Beach House’s contribution to the New Moon Twilight soundtrack. A few more from Thom Yorke, Lykke Li and Bon Iver & St. Vincent after the jump.
The Holy Roman Army got in touch within 24 hours of the last MAP post going live. The band which were featured on 26 blogs across the world said:
Since yesterday we’ve been getting loads of listens from all over the world on last.fm, have developed a small but enthusiastic Norwegian fanbase, are collaborating with an Estonian experimental electronica group, and have been contacted by a music supervisor in LA. A good day for the HRA all in all!
Awesome! An Irish band is featured every month alongside 25 bands from across the world.
I can’t really write something today without mentioning MJ can I? You’ve had enough already probably. All I’ll say is that Bad was the first album I ever owned. I used to jump around the couches at home before dinner, attempting to do the moonwalk with the album blaring. Hearing the off-kilter almost strutting beat to ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ for the first time was probably the jumpoff for my interest in much of the weird stuff I’ve listened to since. His groundbreaking music video work made an artform out of a silly novel idea. For all these things, I am thankful and that is what should be remembered. This map shows you his influence on hip-hop. Rest in Peace.
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The cover of the new Beasties album. So there may be a part two? Yessir.
Beastie Boys were on Zane Lowe BBC radio show last night in a characteristically off-the-wall interview where they also debuted ‘B-Boys in the Cut’ from Hot Sauce Committee Pt.1 out mid-September, chatted about random topics as they are likely to do and gave an airing to ‘Lee Majors Come Again’. Listen to the interview and the ‘B Boys in the Cut’ in the full post and see the tracklisting for the album and the Hello Nasty re-issue. More..»
Aoife and the local entertainers Jon Strange the Magician and Johnny Deville, the cheesy Vegas comedian in Deville’s, Perth.
On arrival in Perth, our driver unwittingly paints a rather bleak picture of the capital city of Western Australia. Perth is a city with one and a half million people but as we enter the city centre, which is all tall financial buildings and clean streets, it seems like the entire work population is leaving the city for the suburbs where the majority of people in Perth live. The city is quiet by 7pm. The 3CD sampler of Perth music from the Western Australia Music Industry that welcomes us on arrival comes with the tagline “Music from the most isolated capital city on Earth”. Perth is also a super-chill place to be and that seems to extend to Western Australia as a whole – our taxi driver at one point, tells us WA stands for “wait awhile”.
That isolated sentiment was a negative that the city has now turned into a positive in recent years however as the city’s underground arts and music scene has kicked against capital bureauracy and cover band ubiquity to become one of the most active and coolest places in Australia for music. Culture may not be as visible as it was in Melbourne but in the suburbs and through cracks of the city, an active music scene is present with a lot of passionate people eager to make it become more salient. More..»
In which we sample a couple more of Melbourne’s venues and meet our new hero in the form of SPOD.
While we seemed to spend most of our time in Melbourne by taking in some amazing meals (the city is one of the best in the world for restaurants), a secret bar crawl (ditto for drinking), indigenous meat, vintage tours etc, we still managed to squeeze in gigs at night, on this occasion our gig was in The Tote Hotel in Collingwood. This two-storey venue and bar feels as revered as Whelan’s in Dublin to the locals here, with a rich history of alternative bands which have passed out on amps and joined the crowd in the sunken pit at the front of the stage. The pictures adorned on the walls tell us that bands like Fugazi and The Hellacopters have played here in the past 25 years.
In a city with a very young history, The Tote is steeped in it. The hotel is intrinsically linked to Festival Hall, a large venue in the city which we also visited this week. The story goes that an Irishman by the name of John Wren ran an illegal betting shop from the area called Totaliser in 1893 which is rumoured to house tunnels which run from the cellar of the bar to the bet shop. After making his honest illegal fortune, Wren put his money into entertainment and ending up buying the site that would later become Festival Hall in 1915. Now, a 5,000 capacity venue, it has been home to artists like The Beatles, Johnny Cash, Bloc Party and national electro heroes The Presets. Find out who our new hero is >>
