Jim Carrollon music
It appears that changes in Dublin's docklands are not confined to the number of new buildings sprouting up everywhere you look. In July, the Martha Schwarz-designed Grand Canal Square to the south of the Liffey will host Analog, one of the city's most ambitious free music programmes in years.
The series of shows kicks off on July 13th with The Cinematic Orchestra, who will be accompanied by Ninja Tune regulars DJ Food and DK.
The following night, Analog will feature the acclaimed Konono No 1, who will be bringing their maverick buckwild street sounds of Kinshasa to Ireland for the first time. Support comes from Berlin's Tarwater, who will be plugging their excellent new album Spider Smile.
The series concludes on Sunday July 15th with the Irish debut of Glenn Branca's Hallucination City: Symphony for 100 Guitars. The New York composer will be recruiting local guitar slingers for the performance.
Gary Sheehan from Note Productions is the person responsible for booking Analog, which is part of the Down at the Docklands summer-long series.
"The idea for the series was about looking at where music is going," he explains. "Docklands is all about the reinvention of a place and all the acts deal in transformative music of one kind or another. You have Cinematic Orchestra, for instance, going from jazz into electronica."
Sheehan also sees other connections between the Analog acts. "Well, they all make noise of one sort of another. It's about bringing an analog signal into a public space. It's difficult to express the exact programming logic, but they are all innovative acts within their own idioms."
He says they were encouraged by the Docklands Authority to be "adventurous" in terms of programming for the 2,500-capacity square.
"I think the Docklands people have been very brave. They gave us carte blanche to create something interesting rather than just putting on a programme of nice, hugely subsidised art music.
"Given that the docklands are a new space, everything has to be at a very high level."
For those interested in attending the shows, you can register for tickets at www.analogconcerts.iefrom today
Future is free for The Crimea
One of the albums of the year so far is to be given away free. The Crimea, the band fronted by Dubliner Davey MacManus, will give away their excellent new album, Secrets of the Witching Hour, as a free download.
While the band released their debut album, Tragedy Rocks, on Warner Music, they see the move into a download free-for-all as a new business model which will help them boost their live audience and merchandise sales.It's an audacious move.
While many acts are happy to give away tracks as samplers for forthcoming albums (and there are even a few band-approved sites such as www.FreeIndie.comwhich give away large chunks of albums), The Crimea are among the first to come out and state that CD sales are not the be-all-and-end-all of revenue streams.
Get your copy of the album at thecrimea.net from May 12th.
Need free stimulation?
It's not just DJs who take control at the Red Bull Music Academy these days. Last year, local jazz musician Daniel Jacobson was the Irish rep at the week-long boot camp for musicmakers. This year, Toronto will host the long-running series, which has previously set up ship in Melbourne, Dublin, New York, Cape Town, Sao Paulo, Rome and London.
Irish DJs, producers and musos who feel they would benefit from a week of workshops and panels in Canada should head right away to www.redbullmusicacademy.comand fill out the relevant forms. Closing date is May 4th.
Seminal Steinski spins
Cut-and-paste pioneer Steinski will be hitting Ireland when the country is in the grip of election fever (or extreme ennui in some cases). One-time New York advertising executive Steve Stein's seminal productions, such as Lesson One: The PayOff Mix and The Motorcade Sped On, influenced thousands of turntabalists worldwide including DJ Shadow, Coldcut, Cut Chemist and Norman Cook. Catch Steinksi spinning in Dublin (The Pod, May 11th) and Cork (Liquid Lounge, May 12th). He will also be doing a Q&A on politics, music and technology at Dublin's South William on May 15th.
