For the month of September, The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show on Today FM has promised to play a track by an unsigned Irish artist every morning.
If you’re in a band or are a solo artist, you can get in touch with the show at breakfast@nulltodayfm.com.
It’s worth noting the following pointers before submitting a track:
• Include a short biography (where you’re from, influences etc.)
• Attach one track in MP3 format (your best one!)
• Keep in mind that it’s a family show so no swearing etc.
• Ideally the track would be around 3-4 minutes long
• You can also post your CD entry to The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show, Today FM, Marconi House, Digges Lane, Dublin 2.
The Niall Toner Band have reached Number 1 in the USA Air Play Direct Chart. The group reached the top spot last week in the Bluegrass / Folk Album category which monitors radio charts in the USA.
The Niall Toner Band are an Irish bluegrass band from the Blackstairs mountain region of Ireland. The band was founded by Niall Toner in March 2001, with Clem O’Brien and Dick Gladney. The Trio perform a set of all original songs and instrumentals, and their unique sound is a rich blend of Traditional Acoustic Country Music and Bluegrass, with a distinctive Celtic twist.
The diversity of the band's set ranges from contemporary up-tempo Western Swing pieces like Mood Swing, to inspirational Gospel-style songs like Walk On Water, and the haunting Bill Monroe tribute, The Master's Resting Place.
The band will be performing at Sliabhnamon, Crocanoir Arts Centre this Thursday, 8th September, and on the main stage at the Johnny Keenan Banjo Festival in Longford on 24th September, before heading off on a series of USA dates at the end of the month.
ACADEMY AWARD WINNER MARKETA IRGLOVA ANNOUNCES IRISH TOUR TO COINCIDE WITH THE RELEASE OF HER SOLO ALBUM DEBUT – ANAR – OCTOBER 7TH ON PLATEAU RECORDS
Marketa Irglova, the 23-year old Academy Award winner and one half of The Swell Season, will be releasing her first full-length solo album, titled Anar, October 7th on Plateau Records in Ireland (it will be issued by Anti Records elsewhere by indie labels in the Czech Republic). Citing references ranging from Otis Redding, to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, to the soundtrack from Jesus Christ Super Star, Irglova pulled from numerous influences to create a delicate balance of ethereal vocals and expanding instrumentals on her 10-track debut, including the R&B influenced “Go Back” and heart felt song “Crossroads.”
It was just over three years ago that the song “Falling Slowly” from the film Once shocked the world by winning the Oscar. In the days following, a global spotlight was placed on Irglova after she was the first winner in the Academy’s history brought back by the shows host, Jon Stewart, to finish her acceptance speech. In the ensuing years she has continued to share in a series of high points that include releasing another record as The Swell Season, touring as a vocalist in Iron and Wine, helping prepare the Broadway version of Once and even an appearance on The Simpsons. However her most recent achievement, Anar, is easily the one she is most proud of.
Raised in the Czech Republic as a classically trained pianist and vocalist, Irglova had established a new relationship with music after moving to New York City, where most of the album was written. After spending time at an intimate art and performance room in Brooklyn called Zora Space, Irglova was moved to share her solo material and started experimenting with new sounds. She began to craft songs with her solo effort in mind, inspired by surrounding artists, musicians and fans from varying cultures. Anar became Irglova’s creative outlet in documenting and expressing the personal journey she has been on the last few years.
It was during a performance at Zora Space that Irglova was drawn to a painting on exhibition, “The Last Fall” by Iranian artist Nahid Hagigat. Immediately taken by the contrast of color – a crimson red pomegranate placed on a shining golden background – Irglova purchased the painting and in turn named the album Anar, which is the Persian word for “pomegranate.” For Irglova, the pomegranate, which is a fruit tied to fertility and abundance, stood as a symbol of the fertile land of creativity she began to explore after her move to New York.
The recording of the album took place in Chicago at Soma Studios with producer and engineer Tim Iseler, as well as, fellow New Yorker, Persian drum player and vocalist, Aida Shahghasemi. Irglova will be hitting the road with a band in support of Anar this fall. Stay tuned for tour dates to be announced.
Tickets on-sale : Sept 5th 2011
Pepper Canister Church, Dublin
Thursday 3rd November
Tickets €20 and €18 (concession) + handling Fees from www.ticketmaster.ie
Triskel Christchurch, Cork
Friday 4th November
Tickets €18 and €15 ( concession) Online – triskelartscentre.ie Phone – 021-4272022
St. Nicholas' Church
Churchyard St., Galway
Saturday 5th November
Tickets €18 and €15 (Concession) On-Sale (plus booking fee) from www.roisindubh.net
Guests of the Nation, preserved and restored by the IFI Irish Film Archive, is presented with the world premiere of Niall Byrne's new orchestral score. The film, based on Frank O'Connor's short story of friendship between British soldiers and their IRA captors, is a moving anti-war film, which features early film performances from Cyril Cusack and Barry Fitzgerald. The film, an unseen treasure in the Irish silent film canon, will be brought to life with film composer Niall Byrne's powerful new score.
This programme also features the international premiere of Andrew Legge's new silent short film The Lactating Automaton with live orchestral score (by Liam Bates) and live foley performance.
Presented by The National Concert Hall, The RTÉ Concert Orchestra and The Irish Film Institute
Supported by Culture Ireland
Digital Media Sponsor: Thejournal.ie
Box Office: Tel +353 (0)1 417 0000 | Book Online at www.nch.ie (No Booking Fees)
Tupelo to play at All-Ireland Hurling Final in Croke Park this Sunday 4th September
Dublin based band Tupelo will entertain up to 80,000 spectators at the half-time interval of this year’s All-Ireland Hurling final between Kilkenny and Tipperary this Sunday the 4th September.
The folk-roots band were chosen for their widespread appeal after being seen at a number of music festivals around the country this Summer.
Their live show reflects the energy and heart of the great songs written by frontman James Cramer and the group have no resevations about showing their worth in front of the biggest crowd of their music career so far.
“We’re realy looking forward to playing at Croker and we have no fear of playing in front of 80,000 people because we have put years into getting to this stage and we intend to grab it with both hands .
There are not many bands who have the opportunity to play their own songs in front of so many people so we will enjoy it and make the most of it!”
“Don’t Let Go” is the first single to be take from their debut album and is receiving support from radio and press alike.
“an impressive musical backdrop that swells and soars” – Hot Press
“a record that gives off a delicious whiff of sepia” – MetroHerald
Crowdfunding has been growing in popularity over the past few years as artists are discovering new ways to engage directly with their audiences through online networks, and drawing on these fanbases to support a work not only on its completion but during the creative process. Websites such as Pledge Music, Kickstarter and IndieGoGo have attracted large numbers of artists and organisations overseas, and now Irish equivalents are growing through word of mouth of artists and their supporters.
Just six months ago, the crowdfunding platform, Fund It, was launched by Business to Arts, a not-for-profit organisation working to support resilience and transformation in the cultural sector in Ireland. Already, the platform has attracted pledges from the general public of over €215,000 and has seen 50 creative projects successfully funded.
Fund It allows creative ideas and projects with a specific fundraising target to be promoted on site for a defined period of time. The creators behind the approved projects promote the idea to their own network, online and through traditional media with a view to attracting pledges in return for creative rewards. With artists finding it more and more difficult to raise funds for recording, distribution and touring, the platform has been welcomed by a number of Irish songwriters and ensembles who have used Fund It not only to help finance their projects, but to raise awareness of their work and give something back to their supporters. The platform is being used not just by up and coming artists, such as Cork songwriter Sí who used Fund It to put the finishing touches to her debut album, “Great Expectations”, but also by those who have experienced both life as a signed and unsigned artist, such as Peter O´Toole, formerly of the Hothouse Flowers, who is currently running a campaign to help his first solo recording come to fruition.
Having your project approved and launched on Fund It is just the first step. With a tight deadline and an all-or-nothing approach, the artist or organisation is under pressure from the beginning to raise awareness of their project and meet the target they have set. “This forces applicants to be realistic about the money and budget they need in order to plan out and execute their project,”, says Emma O´Halloran, co-director of SoundSet, a string and vocal ensemble currently running a campaign on Fund It to bring some of the best string players in the country together for a special performance of Schoenberg´s groundbreaking “Verklärte Nacht” (Transfigured Night). “Groups that submit projects should have already worked on building up networks on various social media as that´s your main potential funders.” This equates to a lot of hard work for artists trying to promote their project and get people to back it financially before the Fund It deadline. “It is a lot of work, but the payoff is definitely worth it,” says Eamon Brett who was able to finish his collection songs, “Wires”, after running a successful campaign.
To help with the huge task of raising funds and awareness for projects, the rewards system allows the artist to be creative and offer something unique to a fan that would not usually be available when purchasing an album or concert ticket in a traditional way. Rewards include anything from your name on the album sleeve to a live gig in your living room. Nina Hynes, who ran a successful campaign earlier this year for her recording, “Goldmine”, currently in the making, had a whole range of unique rewards from a song played live by Nina for supporters via Skype to a personal singing lesson with Nina. Nina has been engaging with her funders throughout the whole process, acknowledging her supporters´ fundamental role in the creation of her album. The rewards also help to remove any misconceptions that crowdfunding is charity. As Candice Gordon, who used Fund It for the manufacture of her album, “Before the Sunset Ends”, puts it, “The album was worth the financing, and it just made economic sense to take pre-orders before incurring the cost of printing, leaving me to spend my savings elsewhere in the release.”
Aside from financial backing, artists are discovering crowdfunding is bringing them support in a whole range of ways, and introducing a brand new fanbase to their work. Artists are breaking down barriers with their audiences and in doing so, building a strong network of supporters who will help build their profile. To know that you have a team of fans behind you from the beginning is particularly valuable for independent artists working solo on a project. “The feedback and words of encouragement and help I received from funders as well as them actually purchasing was really overwhelming and positive” says Cormac O´Caoimh, who has just reached his Fund It target for the recording of his forthcoming album, “A New Season for Love”. Cormac sees crowdfunding as a viable option for artists and for future funding of the arts in general. “The more people who use it, the more common place it becomes, the more accepted it will become as a way to finance some great projects. I think when people get used to the idea and see how popular and valid a means it is of funding the arts, more people will fund other projects.”
Elavator, Soundset, Peter O´Toole, Rubashov and Morgan La Faye are all currently running campaigns on the Music page of Fund It. Check out www.fundit.ie to learn more about their projects and help them reach their goals.
Irelands finest exports,The Walls, are proud to announce the release of their new EP 'Bird in a Cage', the EP is available now and the band will be playing a Belfast show in October to mark the release.
The title track "Bird in a Cage" is available to download for free for a limited time from www.thewalls.ie.
The band will be playing in Belfast on
Thursday 06th October – The Black Box, Belfast
18-22 Hill Street, Belfast, BT1 2LA
Booking info – tickets from www.blackboxbelfast.com or in person at the venue. £12/£10 concession. Doors 8pm
The Walls
Having returned a few months earlier from a two-year label stint in London, The Walls
played their first gig in Bruxelles, Dublin, in 1998. Fronted by brothers Steve and Joe
Wall – previously of multi-platinum Irish band The Stunning – the band included new
members Carl Harms on guitar and keyboards and Rory Doyle on drums.
They set up their own label, Earshot Records (later changing it to Dirtbird Records)
and recorded and released a string of singles. Their debut album Hi-Lo was released in
May 2000 to brilliant reviews. One of the album tracks, Bone Deep, finally clicked with
radio and put the band on the map. Many of the songs have featured on a number of TV
series and feature films such as Dead Bodies, Goldfish Memory and the cult film On
the Edge, starring Cillian Murphy.
In 2002 The Walls were invited by U2 to play at their second sold-out Slane Castle show
after sending the band copies of their debut album. They played to a massive crowd the
same day Ireland beat Holland to qualify for the World Cup.
In February 2004 original member Carl Harms left the band. They recruited bassist Jon
O’Connell who had just two weeks to learn all the songs before a two week tour of the
new EU accession states, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
For the next album they went to Studio Black Box in France to record with producer
and ex-The Frames guitarist David Odlum. The band loved the sound of recent albums
by Wilco and Kings of Leon and they concentrated on capturing the magic of a great live
performance – four guys in a room doing take after take and trying not to lose the soul of
the music in the process.
In Oct 2004 they released a taster, The Drowning Pool EP. Drowning Pool, a blistering,
spleen-venting, blues explosion, two minutes fifty two seconds in length, took people by
surprise and divided opinion – exactly what the band wanted. They supported Bob Dylan
to a capacity crowd in Galway that summer and played a storming set that showed there
were changes afoot in The Walls sound.
By March 2005 the album was finally finished. They called it New Dawn Breaking after
the final and longest track on the record. The album went straight into the Irish charts
at No.5 in the first week of June 2005 and has since reached gold status in Ireland.
Passing Through, the second single taken from the album, was one of the most played
tracks on Irish radio that summer. The album also featured the band’s biggest song –
To the Bright and Shining Sun – with that infectious guitar riff which helped The Walls
become a household name when it was used on a major TV commercial two years
previous.
In order to play the new album properly the band decided they needed an extra pair of
hands and Marc Aubele joined the band on keyboards and guitar.
In March 2006 they traveled to the United States where they played to packed houses
in New York, LA and Austin Texas as part of the SXSW Music festival and they were
invited by Nic Harcourt to perform a session on his legendary “Morning Becomes
Eclectic” show on KCRW in Santa Monica.
Over the following years the band played in France, the Czech Republic, Slovakia,
Austria and undertook their first ever trip to Australia where Crowded House offered
them lucrative support slots on their massive re-union gigs in Sydney and Melbourne in
2007.
The band built their own recording studio in Dublin and in 2008 they retreated into the
darkness to work on album number three. Work has finished and the album will be
released in 2011.
Steve and Joe took a break from recording to perform a set of new songs at the SXSW
Music Festival in Austin Texas on March 2010. The following June they released a
double A-sided single “Carrying the Fire” and “Phantom Power”, both tracks from the
forthcoming album “Stop the Lights” due to be released later in 2011.
A four-track EP “Bird in a Cage” will be released in Southern Ireland in March 2011, containing two tracks
from the album and two previously unreleased songs. The EP saw a host of Radio play including RTE,
Today FM playlisting the lead track 'Bird in a cage'.
After a successful run of monthly shows highlighting the best new Irish music, Future Bright returns this Thursday, 25th August with a top-quality line-up curated by the Irish music blog Harmless Noise.
Tickets are just €5 excl booking fee with excellent drink promotion on the night.
Buy tickets here :: http://bit.ly/qhk4hn
Doors 7:30pm, first band on 8pm sharp.
Headlining the night is new electronic producer in Ireland Toby Kaar who has made huge strides in the Irish live scene thanks to his big beats and clever melodies.
http://soundcloud.com/tobykaar
Low Sea blend shoegaze guitar with dreampop synths and gauzy vocals for a fresh sound unlike anything else in Ireland today.
http://breakingtunes.com/lowsea
Last Days of 1984 have only released on single River's Edge but are already winning high praise for their delightful 'Beach House' style of afrobeat and surfpop.
http://breakingtunes.com/lastdaysof1984
Bantum has received critical acclaim for his instrumental/electronic style over three free EPs, the latest of which is 'Slide' and has already been signed for re-release on the label Speaker Snacks.
http://bantum.bandcamp.com/
Finishing the night with DJ sets lined up from two vastly different acts in Logikparty and Le Galaxie, there'll be the very best in tunes from the golden age of disco and pop, the edgy point of post-punk and no-wave and everything between right up to the very best new Irish music today.
Cork songwriter, Barry Tierney, was announced as the winner of the 2011 IMRO sponsored Sean McCarthy Traditional Irish Ballad Competition in Finuge, Co. Kerry on 30th July. Barry took home first prize for his song “A Night in the Graveyard”.
Still only 22, Barry has been the recipient of numerous international songwriting awards including a win in the 2008 Festival4Stars International Songwriting Contest in the Country/Folk/World category for his song “The Rocketboy”.
Throughout his short career, Barry has toured the US and Europe sharing stages with artists such as Mick Flannery and John Spillane, and co-writing with top songwriters including two-time Grammy award winner, Alan Glass.
In July 2010 Barry’s single “Love Is Sweeter than Wine” reached No.1 in the Irish download charts and received widespread airplay throughout Ireland.
Barry is currently recording his debut commercial album with Christian Best (Mick Flannery Band), working with musicians like Freddie White, Wayne Sheehey, Pat Crowley, Hugh Dillon and Brian Hasset. The album, “London to Philadelphia”, is due for release in early 2012.
The dates, venues and line-ups have been announced for the 20th IMRO Showcase Tour. The annual tour shines a very bright spotlight on Ireland’s best new music talent. IMRO are proud to showcase Ireland’s most exciting emerging acts at the best Irish venues across the country. This year saw a record breaking response to the call for entries, with more than 600 submissions made from young Irish acts hoping to take part in the tour. After much serious deliberation, IMRO are delighted to announce the dates, venues and line-ups for the 2011 IMRO Showcase Tour.
The eleven date tour will take place between September 7th and 30th at various venues in Belfast, Derry, Athlone, Cork, Mayo, Kildare, Galway, Limerick and Dublin. Fifty bands will participate in the tour this year and the cream of the crop will be chosen to perform at the Best of IMRO Showcase Tour 2011 in the Workman’s Club, Dublin on Saturday October 22nd. The day-long celebration will see IMRO Showcase bands stage a takeover of the venue and the event will include multiple gigs, a number of all ages show, workshops, industry talks and much more.
Wed September 7th Belfast: Limelight & Katy Daly’s (with Smalltown America Records)
Amidships, Southern, runaway Go, Morning Claws, Seven Summits, Bright Falls & Bomb City 7.
Fri September 9th Dublin: Crawdaddy
East Island City, Rooftop Anthem, The Young Folk & The Fallen Drakes
Sat September 10th Derry: The Cellar Bar, Draperstown (with The G Sessions)
Rams Pocket Radio, Intermission, Mojo GoGo & Our Krypton Son.
Thurs September 15th Westmeath: Athlone IT, Athlone
Brain Washington, Nova Static, Henrietta Game, Marc O’Reilly & Bipolar Empire
Friday September 16th Cork: Cyprus Avenue
Zombie Computer, In Valour, The Empire Lights, Fingersmith & Bona Fide Federation
Sat September 17th Mayo: Bar Ritz, Castlebar (with Finbar Hoban Presents)
Pearse Mc Gloughlin, Fox Jaw Bounty Hunters, Race The Flux & New Sunset Hotel
Thurs September 22nd Kildare: The Late Lounge
Avalanche Ammo, Super Hanz, The P-Affection & Awake Young Soldiers, Sive
Fri September 23rd Dublin: The Grand Social
danielle harrison, The Hot Sprockets, Ghost Estates & I’m Your Vinyl
Sat September 24th Galway: The Roisin Dubh
Daithi O’Dronai, Rainy Boy Sleep, Junior85 & Milan Jay
Thurs September 29th Dublin : Crawdaddy (with Future Bright)
Cars Love Girls, Last Days of 1984, Bear Bones & Sound Of System Breakdown
Fri September 30th Limerick: Dolans
Dead Red Light, Jefl & Hyde, Moscow Metro, Tenaka & The Hip-Neck Blues Collective.
Fri October 14th Dublin: The Academy 2
Squarehead, Kid Karate
Sat October 22nd Dublin: The Workman’s Club: Best of IMRO Showcase Tour 2011
For details, music, links and more information, join us on Facebook (imro.ireland) and Twitter (IMROireland).
