Longitude Festival’s lineup is pretty close in taste to the music featured regularly on this blog so with that in mind, here’s five of my must-see recommendations per day for the Marlay Park festival. There’s also a Spotify playlist of Longitude artists at the end of the post along with the site map and time table.
See you at my Longitude DJ set at 3:30pm on Sunday at the Red Bull Music Academy stage and later on that night at the Afterparty in The Academy. Check out the stage times for the weekend.
Just in time for Summah, it’s the latest podcast featuring a solo run from me (Aoife is a bizzy lady at the moment). 14 songs taken from recent and greatest releases this year and beyond.
On first listen, ‘California Analog Daydream’ from Vondelpark’s upcoming Seabed album is a surprise for a band who have sculpted some strong atmospheric electronica. But what sounds like a gentle straight-forward guitar tune, reveals itself in its subtleties to be a supremely engaged and well-constructed track. The psychedelic folk is augmented by gentler percussion and electronics. The track is actually a re-recorded take on a song from the English trio’s debut Sauna EP. On that release, the vocals were in the background but here, they are front and centre but as ever with Vondelpark, their melodic hooks (“to San Diego…”) sustain long after the track ends.
Lee Fields & The Expressions, Jacques Greene, Vondelpark, WhoMadeWho, Patrick Pulsinger, Martin Hayes, SertOne, New Jackson, Land Lovers, Donal Dineen, Trojan Soundsytem, The Bambir, Moscow Metro and the West Cork Ukelele Orchestra…
Body and Soul takes place in Ballinlough Castle in Westmeath from 22nd to the 24th of June, yes two weekends away. Tickets are €99 plus fees.
The full lineup also includes St. Vincent, Gold Panda, John Talabot, Shangaan Electro, Django Django, Little Dragon, Villagers, M83 and more.
Having never visited Eurosonic before, I assumed it was your usual music industry festival type-deal. Hundreds of bands and loads of industry looking for the next big thing. While the festival can fill that remit, the important part for me is the European focus. Over 250 bands from around Europe congregate in the city of Groningen, north of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and live music is the main attraction. Festival bookers and promoters are here to book acts for their festivals and the EU offer subsidies to those who book Eurosonic-featured acts.
Add in the work of the European Talent Exchange Program (ETEP) which encourages festivals to make a commitment to book the same act across a number of festivals in Europe (1359 shows and counting since 2003), the presence of 30 radio stations from across the continent broadcasting live from Groningen (including RTE 2FM’s Ian Wilson has been a long-serving member of the Eurosonic core group) and it makes the showcase event a must-do for bands, promoters and agents particularly.
This year, the spotlight country was Ireland and we were represented by 21 acts: Bitches with Wolves, Cashier no. 9, Emmet Tinley, Fionn Regan, Foy Vance, Funeral Suits, God Is an Astronaut, Hello Moon, James Vincent McMorrow, Jape, LaFaro, Lisa Hannigan, Mojo Fury, Rams Pocket Radio, Squarehead, The Cast of Cheers, The Minutes, Thread Pulls, Toby Karr, Wallis Bird and We Cut Corners. You can check out all the bands at Music From Ireland’s site who help organise the contingency with help from Culture Ireland. For a full report on how they got on at the festival, read my feature in this Friday’s Day and Night in the Irish Independent (/plug).
The Irish focus was the main reason I was there, as well as to participate in a media panel, but of course, I saw about 30 bands from Wednesday to Saturday, and here were my 10 favourite live shows of the week. (more…)
Following the recent closure of his long running Small Hours show on Today FM, Donal Dineen is currently taking a month out of broadcasting to spend some down time back at the drawing board, but watch out for collaborations with Myles O’Reilly in the new year as well as podcasts/pictures/videos/articles & Parish music on a new website in the spring and a photo exhibition in The Joinery in April/May.
Donal plays The Pavilion in Cork on 22nd December. Here are his favourite new artists of 2011:
The latest Nialler9 podcast is a bit different down to the fact that there are two of us. I joined Aoife for a change for the links between tunes. Besides that it’s business as usual with some enduring tunes from recent albums with diversions into folk, dance, electronic and Trinidad calypso via Van Dyke Parks and The Esso Trindad Steel Band.
Podcast artwork by 
