State Magazine

Snow Patrol and Richard Hawley among acts for RTE’s Other Voices – tickets out soon

Conor McCaffrey — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:30:22 +0000

The eighth series of RTE Two’s Other Voices live music show is being recorded next month, with Snow Patrol, Richard Hawley, The xx and The Temper Trap among those pulling up a pew for intimate shows in St James’s Church in Dingle. The full line-ups have yet to be announced, but it promises to be another rock’n'roll communion at the chapel, with shows running from Saturday, 5 December to Wednesday, 9 December inclusive. BBC Radio 1 DJ Annie Mac is the presenter for the upcoming series.

Tickets are €35 and on sale on Monday, 23 November at 9am from tickets.ie. As there are only 60 tickets per night available for each night, it will obviously sell out straight away, so set your alarms. Booking is limited to two tickets per person and a maximum of two nights per person. If you’re lucky enough to get a ticket, you might see yourself on TV when Other Voices is broadcast in early 2010.

Rihanna to showcase new album with online gig

Conor McCaffrey — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:53:24 +0000

Snapping at the platform heels of Bono and co’s YouTube gig last month, R&B poster girl Rihanna is planning her own live streaming concert for fans on 16 November. Rihanna will be showcasing tracks from her new album Rated R via the Nokia website, before the record’s release on 20 November. And while U2 chose sun-drenched California for their global web show, Rihanna’s streaming from a ’secret London location’ – she might need her Umbrella.

To sign up for the show, just head to http://www.nokia.com/rihanna.

Hot Chip to release One Life Stand in February

Niall Byrne — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:05:17 +0000

Hot Chip will release their fourth album One Life Stand on February 5th (IE) and 8th (UK), it was announced yesterday.

A press release describes the album as “a full blooded leap into the unknown” and one that is “more cohesive and more soulful”. One Life Stand apparently draws inspiration from UK funky, soul music, modern R&B, Northern Soul, Gospel, Golden Age Electronica, House, the sounds of Arthur Russell, Prince and Theo Parish.

The album is available for pre-order now from Hotchip.co.uk and you’ll get a free MP3 of ‘Take It In’. Hopefully an Irish date will be announced soon.

FEBRUARY LIVE DATES UK
12th – Glasgow O2 Academy
13th – Edinburgh Picture House
15th – Nottingham Rock City
16th – Leeds O2 Academy
18th – Newcastle O2 Academy
19th – Manchester Academy
20th – Birmingham O2 Academy
22nd – Bournemouth O2 Academy
23rd – Bristol O2 Academy
24th – Norwich UEA
26th – London O2 Brixton Academy
27th – London O2 Brixton Academy

Annie Mac, Benga, Ou Est Le Swimming Pool tickets

Niall Byrne — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:54:10 +0000

The last time Annie Mac Presents rolled into town, State left with shattered ears and near-tinnitus. Well, we’re a glutton for punishment especially when it comes to the Annie and friends providing us with beats. This Thursday night in The Academy from 11pm, we’re going to do it all over again with Annie, dubstep’s finest Benga and hotly-tipped Ou Est Le Swimming Pool and you can come along too.

We’ve got three pairs of tickets to giveaway and all you’ve got to do is answer the following question:

What is the name of the TV show that Annie Mac co-presents with Nick Grimshaw on BBC?

Answers on a digital postcard to giveaway@state.ie with your full name and Annie Mac in the title. Winners will be contacted by noon on Thursday.

When Under Ether – A new RTE music TV show debuts tonight

Niall Byrne — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:53:43 +0000

The curiously named When Under Ether (after a Polly Jean Harvey song title) debuts tonight at 11.50pm on RTE Two.

It’s the first of a six-part video-based alternative music series which will broadcast on Tuesday nights and presented by former Nightshift presenter & Phantom 105.2 DJ Michelle Doherty and musician & former Nightshift producer Elton Mullally.

The show covers all aspects of the alternative music scene, with a keen eye on homegrown talent. It will feature a dynamic video playlist, band interviews, live performances, and a comprehensive guide to gigs and cultural events nationwide.

Featured artists in Episode 1 include: The XX, Arctic monkeys, Grizzly Bear, Super Furry Animals, Ann Scott, Health, and Talking Heads.

Dave Geraghty is interviewed having just released his excellent second solo album “The Victory Dance”. Delorentos are live guests performing brand new single SECRET.

Dieter Moebius – Kram

Adam Lacey — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:17:33 +0000

I find it hard to get my head around the fact that a man older than my father made this record. Born in Switzerland in 1944, Dieter Moebius was an art student in Berlin and Brussels where, whilst moonlighting as a cook in 1969, he formed Kluster with Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Conrad Schnitzler.

When, after three albums, Schnitzler buggered off to pursue solo projects, the remaining pair modified the name to Cluster (musicians, eh?), began an ongoing collaboration with Michael Rother of Neu!, formed Harmonia, recorded some seriously groundbreaking electronica and Krautrock (around the time Kraftwerk were about to go global with ‘Autobahn’) and participated in some legendary ambient sessions with Brian Eno. Phew.

Kram (meaning ‘stuff’ or ‘odds and ends’), Moebius’ fourth solo effort, is an uneasy ride from the off. The aptly-named ‘Start’ begins with some synths spluttering into life and you could be forgiven for expecting some pleasantly trippy ambient offerings in the post. But that’s as far as it goes. Dieter is about to flush your head down a delectably nightmarish electro-toilet of clunks, thumps, whirrs, chatterings and clatters.

Three minutes in and it’s as if the amphibians from Paul McCartney’s famous 1980s Frog Chorus decided to spend the intervening downtime injecting liquefied MDMA into their eyeballs at a bunch of ill-advised Teutonic basement parties and have returned with a track they cobbled together one night at a questionable mate’s house. The frogs are in there but the lights are not on and they’ve eaten the bulbs..

Next up, ‘Komit’ has that wonderfully distinctive Kraftwerk taste to it as it chugs forward like an analogue train en route to a destination many miles south, deep in the Bavarian forests. The flatulent squelch of ‘Womit’ proves a spectacular beauty on headphones, all reverberating notes and cacophonies of chirruping aliens in the background, while tracks like ‘Steigert’, ‘Lauert’ and ‘Rennit’ bring Aphex Twin at his most uneasy to mind, or the generally-uneasy-anyway Autechre.

This album is full of deeply textured pieces with more going on than an entire chart top 20 in HMV. It is bold, inventive electronica – a work more of totality than of individual tracks – that often threatens to break out the abstruse melodies into fully-formed sonic birds and let them soar away.

Instead, Moebius’ brief seems to be the creation of an intense soup, full of rich ingredients, but one that makes you work to taste them all, to let yourself go, to adjust your palate, or let it be adjusted, accordingly. The timelessness of the sounds means this could have been made 30 years ago by the same man, or even 30 years in the future, testing, jarring and enthralling whilst leaving any keenly-listening canines with a hefty dose of the heebie-jeebies.

As the album (it could nearly be classed as an electronic symphony given the progression, drive, discipline and atmosphere) draws to a close we get the penultimate ‘Schwitzt’, whose ominous 8-bit horror vibe could comfortably soundtrack a film where some moody teenager must play a Nintendo Gameboy Advance in hell, ad infinitum, as the Dark Lord watches over his hunched shoulder, mocking his shortcomings when faced with Big Boss number five in Mega Man.

Concluding with ‘Markt’, Moebius does not offer any easy answers as to what you have just heard. Wicked woodland animals, soul singers, zombified percussionists and a smorgasbord of odd sounds and repetitive bangings clamber for your attention, leaving one on edge, unsure of what exactly has just happened and urging you to hit play and repeat the journey again immediately.

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The Leisure Society – The Sleeper

Darragh McCausland — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:48:55 +0000

Nick Hemming (AKA The Leisure Society) was either very astute or having a Mystic Meg moment when he named his debut album The Sleeper, as its success has followed the textbook trajectory of sleeper hit. Barely noticed on its initial release, this pop flecked folk album has trundled quietly along and gathered enough moss to merit this reissue with a bonus disc. Now, with an Ivor Novello nod for micro-anthem ‘A Matter of Time’, heavy MTV rotation for the single ‘Save It for Someone Who Cares’, and a head-scratching 3/10 review in the NME, The Sleeper will hopefully reach the audience it deserves, because it is certainly one of the finest albums this year, and worthy of type of attention heaped Stateside on your Bonny ‘Prince’ Ivers and Grizzly Foxes.

Like the American bands mentioned above, Hemming has crafted a folk album which borrows heavily on folk/pop tradition yet he has imbued it with a resolutely English flavour. It’s more Paul McCartney than Brian Wilson, more Fairport Convention than The Band, yet, because of the quality of the songs, it is never once derivative. Moreover, in a feat which is a huge rehabilitative move for the instrument, Hemming has managed to smuggle the flute into at least two songs on this record. As Sir Paul McCartney knows, this is no mean feat.

One reason, perhaps, for The Sleeper’s slow-burning success is the lack of filler on the record. There are songs here which are every bit the equal of the previously mentioned singles. ‘The last of the melting snow’s’ lamenting lyrics are carried by a heartbroken and pretty melodic swing from verse to chorus, and album opener ‘Give yourself a fighting chance’ will have Badly Drawn Boy fans jumping for joy at its breathlessly easy home-spun refrain, not to mention Hemming’s oh-these-are-just-things-I-found-in-the-shed use of maracas, washboards, and the banjo. A final word on a great album: if you are a movie fan and experience an aha! moment listening to The Sleeper, it is because Hemmings wrote the incidental music for the Shane Meadows movies Dead Man’s Shoes and A Room For Romeo Brass. In fact Meadows and actor Paddy Considine used to be in The Leisure Society. Good things obviously come in threes.

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Steven Tyler quits Aerosmith

Phil Udell — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:31:36 +0000

According to several sources, including the band themselves, singer Steven Tyler is no longer a member of Aerosmith. Although there has been no official word, Joe Perry told the Las Vegas Sun “”Steven quit as far as I can tell….he has had no contact with me or the other band members. Right now i’m adjusting to how we’re going to go on, Aerosmith is such a powerful band, I mean it’s like a steam locomotive. You just can’t disregard 40 years of four guys who play together as well as they do. As far as replacing Steve, it’s not just about that, it’s also four guys that play extremely well together, and I’m not going to see that go to waste. I really don’t know what path it’s going to take at this point, but we’ll probably find somebody else that will sing in those spots where we need a singer.”

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Fight Like Apes add second Dublin and Galway New Year’s Eve shows

Phil Udell — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:15:58 +0000

Following high demand for their first show in the venue, Fight Like Apes have added a second night at the Academy on Saturday 19th December. These unique Dublin Academy shows will see Fight Live Apes playing live in a specially built wrestling ring, which is being brought in especially for these exclusive gigs. Tickets are now sale now priced at €19.50.

The band will also be playing the Roisin Dubh in Galway on New Year’s Eve – tickets priced €20 / €15 for members.

Ham Sandwich – Whelan’s, Dublin

Kieran Frost — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:08:39 +0000

Hidden away from the world for the past few months writing their second album, Ham Sandwich have briefly reappeared to launch new single ‘Out Of The Darkness’ and reacquaint themselves with their live audience at their home from home. Marking their return with the now customary falling giant balloon and confetti shower, the first of their selection of new numbers ‘White Fox’ saw them joined by violinist Sarah and the appearance of Podge in pink and black striped shirt and matching shiny pants. Oh how we’ve missed them.

There’s a lot of unfamiliar material on show tonight, all of which suggests that album number two will pick up the pace of Carry The Meek, but of course it’s the likes of ‘St. Christopher’, ‘Words’ and an awesome ‘Click, Click, Boom!’ that set the place alight. Wrapping up with a version of ‘Never Talk’ that saw D’Arcy lay down his guitar and join Ollie on drums, before the band stride off stage and the crowd finish the song themselves.

As ever, the band’s songs are matched by their live performance, with Podge picking his parents out on the balcony and asking the audience to say hello, and demanding that Niamh Farrell watch her language. Her response – a tirade of abuse to make Malcolm Tucker blush. It’s great to have them back…

Photography by Kieran Frost

Video – Morrissey hit by bottle, abandons gig

Phil Udell — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:01:44 +0000

Only a short clip (via NME) but here’s Morrissey’s Liverpool show coming to an abrupt end after the singer was hit by something thrown from the crowd….

It’s not been a good week or so for Moz watchers all round of course…

Robbie Williams – Reality Killed The Video Star

Dave Donnelly — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:21:32 +0000

It’s been exactly three years since we last heard of Robbie Williams in any meaningful capacity. Then, it was the controversy over his single ‘Rudebox,’ one of the most self-evidently awful specimens of pop music in recent memory. The song earned its creator more mainstream exposure than his last album, 2004’s forgotten Intensive Care, had, but that’s about all it achieved. Putting paid to the lie that all publicity is good publicity, Robbie’s image took a complete battering. The similarly-titled album went briefly to #1, and he was praised in some quarters for his ingenuity, but most commentators (and consumers) saw Rudebox for exactly what it was: shit.

Robbie has long yearned to be seen as a visionary and an innovator, but Rudebox saw him branded a clown, an image he’d spent half his post-Take That career trying to shirk. In a further twist, he’d been broadsided by his former bandmates: the reformed Take That’s 2006 album Beautiful World easily outsold his latest, making a mockery of suggestions they could never do it alone. The most iconic popstars, however, have an uncanny ability to re-invent themselves in the public eye. Remember, Robbie Williams was, and still is, Britain’s most successful solo musician of all time – imagine if Madonna was British. And in that most Madonna-esque way, Robbie has managed to ghost back into the public consciousness with characteristic ease: nobody really noticed he was gone, but now that he’s back, he’s everywhere.

It would a bit much to call Reality Killed The Video Star a ‘comeback’, but it is at least a return to form. There’s always been a sense that Robbie’s happiest singing ballads, but his most memorable tunes have almost always come when he’s let loose and surrendered to the bombast: everyone can hum at least a few bars from ‘Let Me Entertain You’ or ‘Rock DJ,’ but who can honestly say they remember ‘Misunderstood,’ let alone own a copy? ‘She’s The One’ was the only one to really buck the trend, but only ‘Angels’ managed to be both a heart-rending ballad and ridiculously overblown, and it’s in the territory of the latter that Reality Killed The Video Star attempts to position itself.

The record was recorded with producer Trevor Horn, the man who brought us ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ from which the album’s title was derived, and first impressions are very positive. There’s an epicness to the entire affair that couldn’t contrast more with Rudebox’s cool sterility -ironically, a quality Horn’s own music is known for. Opening track ‘Morning Sun’ demonstrates the change in focus from the off. It’s more Oasis than Gary Numan, and one of several songs that (not coincidentally) calls to mind modern-day Take That, opening with Disney-style orchestration before adding jangly guitars and ‘Penny Lane’-style trumpets. ‘Bodies’ is an even bigger shock, as Robbie tries his hand at Georgian choral singing before wisely given way to a thundering synth-bass line. ‘Do You Mind’ is a glam stomper that channels ‘Let Me Entertain You’ and Pulp’s ‘Disco 2000’without capturing the brilliance of either, while second single ‘You Know Me’ boasts the sort of subtly melodic chorus Morrissey turns out every now and then, but whose chart prospects are similarly dismal.

Like Morrissey, Robbie’s eccentricities are well-known. Britain’s answer to Jim Corr claims to have seen three UFOs and thinks the US government was behind 9/11, but his lyrics on Reality Killed The Video Star are whacky in their own, entirely complementary, way. Robbie’s never shied away from the big topics, but here he seems committed to tackling 2 or 3 per song. ‘Bodies’ takes on issues of body image and the existence of God without ever saying anything about either. ‘Difficult For Weirdos’ might just be the most ham-fisted attempt to relate to “the youth” in modern memory, with lines like “I got my eyes made up / at the bus stop / by my girlfriend” and “He is a lesbian / But that’s OK.” ‘Deceptacon’ invites the listener to “Microwave yourself today,” but his post-apocalyptic vision of the world doesn’t sound quite as menacing as he probably intended: “All over Britain / We wait for permission / To join another queue.” V For Vendetta it’s not.

The electronic elements embraced on Rudebox haven’t been entirely exorcised, though. Robbie’s appearance on the Pet Shop Boys’ 2008 single ‘She’s Madonna’ has clearly had a reciprocal effect on the singer. ‘Last Days of Disco’ pays homage to the British synth-pop boom of the mid-‘80s, sounding like a slowed-down version of the Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’ with the airy, multi-layered vocals of the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant. ‘Difficult For Weirdos’ is even more naked in its admiration of the Pet Shop Boys, while ‘Starstruck’ appears to be some sort of reverent tribute to George Michael’s ‘Fastlove’ era. None comes close to matching Rudebox’s unfortunately overlooked ‘Lovelight,’ but neither is there anything as terrible as Rudebox – musically at least. The majority of Reality Killed The Radio Star takes place in familiar territory, a competent retread of old ground, and some new. But history may not be so kind.

Fucked Up to re-record ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’

Niall Byrne — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:05:47 +0000

NYmag.com reports that Canadian Polaris Music Prize winners Fucked Up are planning on using the money from the prize to record a charity single.

Damian Abraham, the band’s singer told the Vulture blog:

David Cross, members of Vampire Weekend, TV on the Radio, Broken Social Scene, the GZA, Bob Mould, No Age, and Yo La Tengo are all confirmed. I’m still waiting on confirmation from Feist, Jarvis Cocker, and M.I.A. We wanted the biggest people we could get. If we could get a Jonas Brother on this, I would get a Jonas Brother.

Fucked Up – Year of the Pig

!!! drummer dies in New York

Phil Udell — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:51:17 +0000

!!! and The Juan MacLean, drummer Jerry Fuchs has died after an elevator accident in Williamsburg, New York.

Fuchs was at a fundraising party when according to sources at the party, he and a friend had attempted to leap over a gap between an elevator and the building’s fifth floor after a malfunction. He fell in the gap due to his clothing becoming caught on the elevator, falling down to his death. He was pronounced dead at 3:30am after being taken to Bellevue Hospital.

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Muse – The O2, Dublin

Hilary A. White — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:09:11 +0000

We last saw Muse live October 30, 2000. It was a stunning show from the then fresh-faced three-piece. No fancy visuals, laser shows or equipment, but by god did they pack their piss and vinegar that night – the set culminated with Matt Bellamy on all fours ripping the strings off his very-bruised plug in baby.

Things have changed. Muse are now one of the world’s apex rock acts. A guaranteed good night out in an industry that doesn’t do guarantees. Their cerebral arrangements charm classical buffs and dadrockers, yet they have the bite and bile to speak with Generation X.

Examining the stage before kick off, it’s not immediately clear what Muse have in store. Three skyscrapers stand before us. In front are two mic stands. No kit, no keyboards, no guitar racks to be seen. Then suddenly, everything is alive and the triplet towers are depicting images of silhouetted men traipsing up a stairwell before finally tumbling down. The huge pillars open up revealing a band member in each and the slinky glam stomp of ‘Uprising’, a highlight from new album The Resistance, is throbbing out. For introductions, it doesn’t get more thrilling than that.

And then it does. ‘New Born’’s mischievous intro melody brings the O2 properly to the boil. Bellamy is on his knees right up the front, writhing in those few fizzy seconds before that wonderous riff is peeled off. Webs of green lasers hop about in time with Chris Wolstenholme’s elastic bassline. The towers flash white every second bar of the verse. State no longer feels so bad about never having seen Pink Floyd live.

That, by the way, was three tracks into the set, and it never seemed to let up. Even the gentle picking of ‘Unintended’ was like an event in itself. Showmanship is not something that can really be taught, but Bellamy could probably have a go if the tunes dry up. Unlikely as this is to happen, the diminutive guitar and piano prodigy is a natural performer, possessed by some rock ‘n’ roll demon. He prowled around the stage, half punk brat, half rock god, hamming it up during the guitar hero moments – a barnstorming ‘Plug In Baby’ comes to mind – and attending to the audience on the far left and right of the stage. It’s enough to put a grin on any red-blooded person’s face.

Marc Carolan, Muse’s chief live sound engineer, once told me that the band reinvest huge sums of money into their live shows, ensuring that the very best equipment is sought out. It’s hard to see how they can improve from here, but then again, this was never a trio to underestimate when it came to breaking new ground. A strong contender for gig of the year.

Photo by Julie Bienvenu.

State Magazine

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