A brand new Irish festival kicks off in West Cork this May Bank Holiday weekend with The Altered Hours, Chaz Moloney, Major Feen, Nixer, and more.
The inaugural Anam Cara Arts weekend gets underway today down in scenic West Cork. A unique event that isn’t just a festival in a field, Anam Cara is an intimate, invite-only event capped at around 300 attendees, sporting a stacked line-up of bands, DJs, and performers over the three days.
Anam Cara, which still had a few spaces available on Friday morning, operates as a non-profit arts collective, so rather than buying a ticket, members sign up and pay a fee for the weekend, with all funds then being returned to the collective to invest in the festival’s future.
For a small capacity, the line-up is chock-full of some of Ireland’s best. Alternative shoegaze outfit The Altered Hours will take to the stage along with Kerry DJ and producer Shee, Limerick trad-punks Major Feen, Cork-born and based DJ Charlotte Walsh, synth-driven post-punks Nixer, UK cult queer electro artist Lynx and plenty more across the inaugural Anam Cara weekend. Check out the full line-up below:
We want an atmosphere of relaxation and playfulness to mingle with your yearning for partying and the wonderfully strange. Imagine if the Willie Clancy Festival and All Together Now had a baby – and that baby was raised in Mount Doom under the patronage of Sauron, the all-seeing eye.
One of the most beautiful aspects of Anam Cara is that you – the attendees – have an integral part to play. We want your personality and creativity to shine bright throughout the weekend, and we’ll do everything in our power to make that happen.
We’ve planned stage-specific outfit themes, oddball challenges, and the exploration of peculiar and eccentric spaces that will live long in your memory. Anam Cara is an intimate, invite-only event for approximately 300 people. We don’t just want to break the ice – we want to melt it away, so you can be entirely yourself while making real connections and true friendships.
Anam Cara Arts takes place in West Cork along the May Bank Holiday weekend, from May 1st until May 3rd. For more information, check out Anam Cara Arts on Instagram here.
Cathal Ryan is a music journalist based in Limerick. With Nialler9, he writes gig guides, occasionally covers releases, and has interviewed bands, including the Lambrini Girls and Gossip’s Beth Ditto, for the site.
Outside of Nialler9, he has covered festivals and interviewed the likes of Joel Gion, DIIV, Biffy Clyro, The Murder Capital, Pretty Happy, alongside others. He has played drums all around the place too.
