New Animal Collective Is Album Of Our Lifetime

Probably no point in ever listening to anything else. More news here:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCf90i6SDlY]

Supernova Scotia

Electro-pop from Kilkenny? That’s what Supernova Scotia provide. It’s catchy, quirky and light on the vocals. David Sheenan is the man behind the music, and with a little help from his friends, especially Jazz Panda’s Neil Quigley (who’s own lovely song ‘Chritmas Eve’ is destined to be pillaged by mobile phone marketing execs), he records and perfoms live.

Tracks such as ‘Bad Party’ and ‘Tron’ remind me somewhat of Soft Cell, while at the more instrumental end of things, between ‘Oxen’ and ‘Boredom Abroad’, Supernova Scotia’s obvious talent for making great little electro-pop gems shines. They just go to show that as more and more young Irish electronic artists emerge there is no dilution of quality. In contrast, home-grown electronic music is currently blooming and with the endeavours of such acts is becoming a stronger genre by the day.

Supernova Scotia – myspace

May Contain Traces Of Pitchfork

This will in no way alleviate the suggestions that Analogue writers do nothing all day but tug their chains to Pitchfork (now made easier with the porn-like indulgences the TV stations allows us), but OMGZ, have you read El Guincho‘s ‘Guestlist‘ feature? Observe:

“I played in a place called CrawDaddy yesterday in the Antics, a night run by a super nice guy called Dave in Dublin. There was a super-good energy in the place, you could tell the kids were there just to get really into whatever sort of music just because it was played live, and the crowd went nuts at the end of the show. I think we all had a really good time. And then we went into this house party at 3 a.m.”

Not quite as big a scoop as the mention of our Radiohead article, but isn’t a bit obscure that hip Americans (they do exist, you know) will henceforth think that next time they’re in Dublin this “The Antics” place is brimming with uber-cool El Guincho loving types and they must pop along to see how the Dublin scene rolls? But then, for all it’s tired Kings Of Leon fests and NME overindulgences, I suppose Antics is as close to an all-inclusive indie night as we have to offer. One room for the Topshop/man fiends, one for the electro-inclined, and the smoking area for the rest. And of course, the odd coup like El Guincho to remind the disillusioned why everybody else in their entire stratosphere end up going back to Crawdaddy every Wednesday night.

Monde Yeux Minterview

Happened to happen upon magnificently hip Stockholm sixpiece Monde Yeux, in Grafton St the other day. The lads were making such a fine racket I had to grab a mini-interview. Like a more coherent Making Dens, Monde Yeux’s debut album, Naked Girls, written over a summer in Dublin, is a hodge podge of Frames like post Folk, Adam Greenesque Chanteuse, and melodic ColdWar Kids style indie. Definitely worth a listen. Considering the Depp like face beauty of the bands lead singer, Jack, merely the prettiest of a band rivalling a youthful Jam for statusquery; and the bands catchy electro-folk sensibility, Monde Yeux may well be the Swedish Beirut. Deal with it.

We Be Rollin’. Dey Hatin’….

Look! It’s around about 6 o’clock and we’re getting ready for a night of fun times.
Let’s listen to some music to get us started. In fact let’s listen to some remixes of M.I.A. That’s the reason that music was invented, right? Especially the Holy Fuck remix. We all agree that it’s delightful. We don’t all agree on Battles though. Bren only likes the Fourtet remix of that one song that he knows. That’s ok. We weren’t going to listen to Battles anyway.

Gareth, the technological genius that he is, discovers a timer on his camera. What larks! We cluster, we jump, we pose- akin to skinnier, more beautiful people that we see on television shows. We amuse ourselves wonderfully.

Gosh, it’s 7.15 already. Let’s put on our walking shoes and head to Harcourt St. It’s quite sunny out. We put on our sunglasses. We keep our sunglasses on for probably too long.
We see a big line outside Tripod. We don’t want to wait. We loiter on the street corner instead. We imagine that we are in the Velvet Underground. We are not actually in the Velvet Underground. Eventually we join the queue. We are still wearing our sunglasses. If we weren’t us, we’d hate us. Dan notes that ‘we are us, and I hate us’. He doesn’t mean it really though.

Into the venue we go! Except we are split up. It’s very upsetting. Then we are reunited. It’s bliss. We squash around a table and share chairs. It’s mildly uncomfortable but very companionable. The MC is the worst comedian known to the Milky Way. He operates on the Pythagorean Principle of a squared= b squared + c squared. (B standing in the case for Volume, and C for Coarseness- A naturally representing Humour). Clever chap, eh?

They begin to present the awards. We don’t really care about the ones that we’re not nominated for. We still clap though. We’re very polite like that.

The recipient of Short Story of the Year wants to free Tibet. He said so in his speech. It wasn’t so much a speech as him shouting ‘Free Tibet’. He is very politically involved, but ill-advised. Tibet doesn’t want to be an independent state. It just wants autonomy. That’s what I said in my presentation on Tibet in my French class last Thursday. I would have gladly discussed Tibetan issues with the young man, but he left the stage very quickly. Presumably he was shocked by his own oratory skills.

As the ceremony wears on, we keep not winning things. Every time that we don’t win something, Bren goes for a cigarette. It gets to the stage where he even goes for a cigarette after we lose awards that we weren’t even nominated for. Our table gets very tense.

Thank goodness we won the People’s Choice Award. We get very very excited. Ailbhe and Conor jump a lot. Everyone jumps a lot. It’s like a scene from The Mighty Ducks. Had we thought of it, we may have started quacking.

We stop paying attention then. We wander around for a bit. There is music playing, and Ailbhe and Sarah-Jane have a dance. No-one else has a dance though. We are not impressed. We leave to find other places to dance. Ailbhe loses her shoes. She’s devastated. Then she finds her shoes. She’s very happy. We drink whiskey together. We are very glad that we are all friends. We tell each other this. It’s been a fine evening.

New, shiny, Irish and good

At some point last weekend I was crippled with a hangover in the back seat of a car hurtling through a twisty part of county Kildare. It was a humdinger of a hangover, the works. Like having your brain brutally mangled then scraped clean by an electrified spud peeler. I wasn’t really in the mood for audio stimulation, but then Tom, the dude who was driving put on a CD. It was quite pleasant, insistent and sparky in a sort of old C86 indie way, but with added bloopy bits. I asked him who it was. Turns out its a few Irish Lads who’ve started to make blips on the radar. They go by the name New Amusement. They have a fairly confident sound for a band just starting out, but wear it sorta lightly and scruffily. Maybe not all the songs on their Myspace page are as quite as strong as the one I heard in the car, Gone to Sea, but there is enough there to demonstrate some serious promise.

New Amusement

On the subject of new(ish) Irish talent, the Vinny Club is one of our weirdest kept secrets. He’s a dude who messes around a lot with the inside of old commodores and shit (I believe its called chip rock) and seems to live in a bizarre digital haven made out of 8-bit graphics and demented pictures of Hulk Hogan eating pasta among other things. The chip rock musical template always runs the risk of sounding two dimensional and gimmicky, and while one or two tracks veer toward annoying game-boy malfunctions, there are plenty of genuinely odd and properly satisfying sonic presents for your eardrums in Vinny’s CGA wonderland. Check it out.

“Vinny”?

Analogue wins People’s Choice at the Student Media Awards 2008

Thanks a million to everyone who voted, and congratulations to the Record and Trinity News both took home a boatload of awards.

Ailbhesaurus promises a photo blog soon. For now, here’s the team, high on victory juice.

Hercules and Gravy Anyone?

So I get back from my trip and I finally get my filthy paws on the Hercules and Love Affair EP. Oh lordy, it’s funktastic. I was a bit apprehensive at first when I heard Antony Hegarty would be doing a lot of the vocals. His voice is unquestionably unique but at times it can be grating and once in a while reminds me of a half dead dog moaning. However to the right sound and situation it can be perfect and chillingly haunting or dare I say it romantic. But the idea of putting Antony with some funk/disco sounded like putting stew on your cheesecake or something, I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel like it would work. Strangely with Hercules and Love Affair it does.

The EP is great. It has that sun setting on a tropical island feel. It is not time to get into your groove but the funk and disco beats will get your hips moving and be the perfect exercise and preparation for more gyrating later on in a night. It’s a funny little record in style, substance and tempo. The meshing of Antony’s voice to the calypso dance of Blind is em, strange? You Belong sounds like something you would have heard in the Hacienda at its height while the rest of the album skirts close to Studio 54 disco. Strangely my mother likes it, which threw me off a bit and I think that is the beauty of it. It IS strange in some respects but an admirable mix of the best funky sounds of the last thirty years.

Stew on a cheesecake? Or some poutine?

Talking about strange mixes. In Montreal I was lucky (or unfortunate depending on your taste) to try their ‘delicacy” of poutine. Now this is a weird mix and I would love to know where the idea came about and what twisted genius thought of it. I am guessing that a certain intoxicating amount of alcohol was involved.

Poutine is made of three ingredients-chips, gravy and cheese. That may test some of you guys’ gag reflex but don’t diss it until you try it. I think I could make a lot of money out of it on Dame Street at 3a.m on a Saturday and Sunday night as the heaving mass of drunken zombies lurch out of the bars and clubs ravenous for a kebab or chips. Almost anything at that state of inebriation will be considered delicious. If you feel rank the next day IT WAS THE DRINK RIIIIII?!?!!

Conorworld in Canadialand Deux

To be honest I didn’t do much in Toronto. Hell, I didn’t even do the CN Tower, that wonderfully bombastic symbol of the city and until recently the tallest structure in the world. Toronto is a great city but I was left a bit unsatisfied. It’s a young city (It only surpassed Montreal in size and as the commercial capital in the 1960’s) and you feel that as you walk down the street. The buildings are relatively new and the people youthful. IN parts it is picturesque. The University quarter would give Trinity a run for it’s postcard perfect architecture and Queen Street West buzzes with great shops and vibrant graffiti. But overall you feel it is lacking something special. It didn’t captivate me like other metropolitan sirens like New York and Montreal, the two other cities on my itinerary this time. Nevertheless it was a thoroughly enjoyable place to be.

“Peaches was here last week”

That’s how my Toronto mates sold the Drake to me. The Drake Hotel, situated on Toronto’s hip strip Queen Street West is like its home city wanting to make a statement and that statement is to be the epitome of cool. Owner Jeff Stober has very much achieved that garnering acres of column inches in Canada and abroad for what is a beautiful retro-styled hotel. One could call it boutique with its 19 rooms all fitted in various 20th century styles but it is more than a hotel. This is one of the nicest hotels I have been to in style and service. Ok I only went for a few drinks and didn’t stay the night but the staff were impeccable in their fashion (understated cool) and talkative. The music in the background of the main bar switched from Matthew Dear to Dandy Warhols effortlessly. It deserves its accolade as a Bohemian Mecca. Open late it has a club that has a varied array of nights. Check out their listing on their website.

American Apparel-tastic!

I don’t get the mad ravenous craze that is American Apparel. Their clothes are a cross between that Eric Prydz video “Call On Me” and a 1980’s low-end hooker from the Bronx. Also their print ads are paedophilia-lite. But hey they make great hoodies. So it was after a drink in the Drake that I ended up in the Social. I have begun recently to garner how cool a place is by how many American Apparel hoodies I can count in a room (you’d think that it would be so un-cool to be wearing the same thing as someone else) and this place was swarming with them. The Social is a great bar. Minimal in its bare limestone walls and rough metal edges the music flirted from Boys Noize style electro to early 90’s hip hop and dance. In fact in judging from the style of people and the music it would be somewhere that someone like M.I.A would feel comfortable after a gig (in fact it is actually what she did after a recent gig). Surprisingly the drink was cheap too. $2 drinks before midnight was a great way to start a night in my opinion.

The Social
1100 Queen Street West
Toronto

That job in between becoming a pop star

Canadians are known for their social tolerance. This has created ample space for the gay community to flourish. Church Street in Toronto is the official gay village full of gay B+B’s to a multitude of saunas and leather clubs. However I was being conservative when I decided to meet a Dublin friend in the most famous (non-fetish) gay bar in Toronto, Woodys. It was a Sunday and we expected a quiet night with the ubiquitous drag queens singing dire Dolly tunes (we were not disappointed). As the night was closing I ended up talking to the bar man. Named John it transpired he was the bassist for local band Kids on TV. Being signed to Chicks on Speed’s record label you can kind of guess what they sound like. Irreverent rock with a twisted electro tinge courtesy of a trip down Peaches’ rabbit’s crack hole would be a good idea of what it is.

Their most noticeable song “Breakdance Hunx” contains the great lines “Surely you must realize you have market value/little blonde boy who break dances and suck cock” and the video is stupid but in a good way.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=tS5JooUzWBo]

Analogue nominated for 4 Smedias

Analogue has been nominated for Best Magazine, People’s Choice, Best Layout & Design and Best Website in this years National Student Media Awards. The results will be announced at a glitzy awards ceremony in Tripod on Tuesday night. Win or lose it’s quite an achievement to make it down to the last 5 in each category considering that none of us study any media related courses and that Analogue has only been in existence since October.

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