Halves – Playing with each other in the dark
Last week I accompanied Halves on their mini-tour of the west with Subplots. Much fun was had, apart from the rolling backwards down a hill with a car full of gear fiasco, and a tiny bit of video footage was shot. Lights were for the most part kept to a minimum as is now standard at a halves gig, but here are some stills from the footage I shot at the Pavilion in Cork, which may find it’s way into a project somewhere in the future. The lads are ending the tour in Whelans tonight (Sat 22nd) so do pop along if you’re free…
There’s something insincere in every sentence…
I haven’t been on this for a while. Not because I’ve nothing to blog about, but because I’ve little time to blog at the moment (will hopefully change soon). However, there’s a few things coming up over the next few days which I thought I’d throw down.
Two of the very few bands I thoroughly enjoy seeing play live at the moment are making their way to a stage near you (if you live in Dublin) on the 13th and 14th.
First up is Trails. – http://www.myspace.com/trailsloveyou
A great band who don’t play live enough. They take to the stage tomorrow (13th) in Eamonn Dorans. I’ve no idea of the times and not sure who the other bands playing are but it’s worth the price to see trails play their instrumental wall of noise for at least 30 mins.
The next night, Subplots take over Whelan’s (Main Whelan’s) to release their new EP ‘We carved our names in glass’, which goes on release the next day. Two of the songs from the EP are streaming on their myspace at the moment so head that way and check them out. There’s an interview with Phil ‘Harmonic Choir’ Boughton up on drop-d at the moment as well with the wonderful Adam ‘made a fool out of himself in the project pedal comments’ Lacey, talking about the release and the band in general. 
Go here: http://www.drop-d.ie/article.php?article_id=701
Head to the gig bright and early to catch ‘Kill Krinkle Club’ as well (see below posts for horse head madness). There will also be 1/4 (1/5?) of another Irish band jumping up on stage with the ‘plots for a couple of tunes to help them replicate some of the recordings live. Buildings is magic. Let’s hope they play that.
www.myspace.com/subplots
Cars in Walls, plans in ruin…
Last week at Club AC30, Dry County played their last ever Dublin gig under their current moniker. Opening up on the night was Cork/Bath band ‘Cars in Walls’, who played a schmantastic set. (A special kudos to their drummer for his moves on the dancefloor during the eclectic’s set afterwards). Cars in Walls are (in their words) “pulling a dry county” and are about to disappear from the live scene for a while as they delve into recording madness for their debut album. Before they go, you can catch them at the ‘Irish Green gathering festival’ in Wexford along with some other decent acts, aaaannd some woeful ones. Here’s some pics:
In other news, the aforementioned deadly holiday I was going on has been ruined more than slightly. Due to a lack of ticket sales, Transmission festival in the Fortress of Kufstein has been cancelled. There will be no Efterklang, Mogwai, Why?, Cornelius, Halves, Parachutes, Stateless, The Jimmy Cake, and more. Mega mega boo. Since this has only been announced 2 FRICKIN’ DAYS before the trip, we tried to think of an alternative plan, since flights are still booked etc. A detour to Roskilde has shown to be far too costly so the plan is to go to Munich, do stuff, get to Vienna for the Sigur Ros gig on Tuesday, and get our flight home. Nice and spontaneous in a way…
Get tickets for Dalek (playing a ballroom of romance gig in ALT in November.
Go to Analog for Efterklang and pirate madness in a few weekends time also.
That is it.
Sounds and visuals from the past and in the future…
From the past:
A few weeks ago, Halves released their second EP ‘Haunt me when i’m drowsy’. I pestered them for the day and spied on them at night. Here is the result. Expect some out of focusness, some blurriness, a lot of instruments, some guest appearances, a near banana kiss, some cello waving and a lot of smiles:
For the HD Version, go directly here.
In the future:
A little trip is planned, taking in a lot of gigs. I’m liking it as my summer holiday so far. It goes a little something like this:
July 3rd – Halves and Milosh – Innsbruck, Austria
July 4th – Transmission festival (Kufstein Austria) feat: Spiritualized, Stateless, Halves and more…
July 5th – Transmission festival feat: Mogwai, Parachutes, Iambic2 and more…
July 6th – Transmission festival feat: Cornelius, Efterklang, Why? and more…
July 7th – Gig free!!
July 8th – Sigur Ros, Amiina, Yeasayer, The Kissaway Trail – Vienna, Austria
july 9th – Homeward bound…
Bye bye bank account…
The Notwist, Halfset in The Button Factory.
‘The Notwist’ played here on Saturday to tour their new album, ‘the devil, you + me’. A great gig, complete with wii controllers galore…
I saw them last year, but preferred this performance quite a bit, not least because I managed to bring my camera to it this time. Songs were great (what was the name of their second song anyone?? – NIN-ish…)
Can’t wait to here the new album.
Support on the night came from Halfset but I only managed to get one or two shots of them before feeling incredibly self conscious in front of the rows of people seated on their arses in front of the stage.
Also, check out the new Sigur Ros album which is streaming from www.sigurros.com There’s a load of videos as well. Nice.
Project Pedal
I just stumbled across this today. Project pedal is a vlog following a handful of people making a documentary and their ‘main cast’, two cyclists as they pedal their way across America, west coast to east coast.
Beautifully shot, with a great narrative and choice of music, this is well worth some of your viewing time. You can (and should definitely) catch it here:
www.projectpedal.com
Randomly enough, the first episode features a remix by Si Schroeder.
Tisch Premiere 2008, Best of IMRO showcase 2008.
This was my first time at one of the Tisch nights. Some of the videos done by the Tisch students in the past have been done really well (Grand Pocket Orchestra’s ‘Odd Socks’) so I had some hopes, though they remained sensibly around the medium mark. Unfortunately few of the videos impressed on the night but I’ve yet to figure out if it’s because I don’t like the music/band or not. I know this isn’t true in a few cases. The free pizza from Apache was discovered waaay too late, when all was on offer was a pile of rejected sweetcorn slices. (sad face here). I’m sure the videos will be finding their way around the internet very very soon so do keep an eye out.
And finally, I have found a spare minute to throw a few shots from the IMRO ‘Best of’ (yeah right) Showcase from the Village the other night. If I don’t have shots of every band who played up here then it’s only because I didn’t like the shot. Although there is a shot of Halves up there that I don’t like but I felt I’d throw it up anyway for the craic. Felt like a black and white, grainy moment… (I just realised that there are a lot of closed eyes here. )
Got my ticket for Transmission Festival this morning. This brings a bit of happiness in the face of such a slightly depressing blog. (See below post).
Transmission Festival Announced
Today saw the launch of the website for one of the continents newest festivals, and definitely one of the more interesting; Transmission festival. From the site:
“Combining live musical performances, visual art, multimedia installations, music seminars, and arthouse cinema, Transmission will provide its visitors with the complete aural and visual experience. Our aim is to make Transmission a personal and intimate arts and culture experience, not just for the audience, but also for the artists taking part in the event.”
Basically, this is the huge scale version of the ‘Analog Festival’ with similar acts such as Efterklang (woop!) and Johann Johannsonn. It’s also in Austria, and in a castle/amphitheatre thingy. Hells bells.
Other acts playing are Parachutes, Milosh, Mogwai, Tindersticks, Cornelius, Spiritualized, and Ireland’s very own Halves (pictured below).
The festival runs from July 4th to 6th and costs a mere €95 for the weekend ticket. Tickets are on sale on May 1st. My accomodations been booked for this for a while This makes me happy. Who wants to buy me a plane ticket?
Transmission Festival Site Here!
Music Videos
I’ve been on a bit of a music documentary / video buzz recently, rewatching all my favourites, and searching for more.
There are some great documentaries out there:
Flaming Lips – Fearless Freaks
Pixies – loudQUIETloud (which they are playing on pitchfork.tv for a week only). Recommended.
SFA – On tour, not sure of the name.
There’s a fantastic Blondie documentary that I saw last year some time as well, an unreleased Mogwai one that they played in the IFI some time last year but has not actually been released, DCFC/Low on tour. Last year also saw the Sigur Ros DVD on release but this made me want to go to Iceland more than see the band again, despite having great moments.
Foals Suck (as mentioned below somewhere) follows foals on their US tour and the best documentary I’ve seen of recent times.
My favourite recent music video is ‘Caravan’ by Efterklang (below)
It would be great if people can recommend some more of each, especially videos from Irish bands. There seems to be a massive scarcity. Lots of tripe on Channel 6 (who was the band who went around the house in wheelchairs?)
I do quite like the ‘Said Say It’ video by Cap Pas Cap, but only for a minute or two before the itch to move on takes over. The new Robotnik video is great and I really like the video for ‘About my temper’ by Panda Kopanda. I’m sort of stuck there though.
I’m sure I’m missing some real obvious ones so feel free to kick my blog arse. Maybe it’s just not the done thing in Ireland. After all, until recent years, who but Channel 6 would play videos from the Irish unsigned…
Back to watch Alan Sparhawk’s takeaway show…which kicks ass…
EFTERKLANG!!
Efterklang fully deserve the upper case and the !!’s. As a live band anyway. I went to see them in Whelans last year having been introduced to their music only a few months before (found them on myspace and liked the name) and walked away in a state of shock. No-one’s rantings and ravings about their live show before-hand could have prepared me for how good they were on the night. No-one…
It being my favourite gig of last year (with the exception of ATP vs the Fans) I was dubious as to whether or not I should/would go to the Button Factory performance, lest it completely and utterly ruin my memories of the ‘klang. Oh, how wrong was I. I nearly went to see them in Cork on Sunday but the exhaustion from a weekend of gigs and overtime crept up on me.
Here’s hoping a live DVD is on the way. My new Efterklang vinyl should be arriving here any day to complete my collection but a live DVD would be fantastic.
Anyhoo, I took a few shots. Stuck in one spot, I was pretty limited as to who I could shoot though (especially with a certain tall ‘cellis’ from a certain ‘halves’ band looming in front of me) but these ones turned out alright. There is one more apart from this but I’ll stick it up soon as it’s out of camera limbo. To wrap things up: Go and see these guys next time they play though. You most certainly will not be disappointed.
Go to their myspace at myspace.com/efterklang to download the live version of their new song ‘Mirror Mirror’.
Check out their video for Illuminant as well (slightly freaky) and also the video for their new single ‘Caravan’ from Parades.
