November gigs

It’s November, maybe the perfect time of year for a gig. It’s dark outside early so it feels like appropriate gig time before you’ve even had your dinner, and the aforementioned darkness means you (if you’re like me) are often at a loss how to pass the time in the long evenings. It’s also cold enough that you don’t have to immediately remove several layers while at the gig in order to maintain optimum temperature. However, as every silver lining has a cloudy inner, there is often no suitable place to put your jacket at gigs, and if you keep it on you won’t feel the benefit when you go outside. That moderate inconvenience is worth it for all the other good aspects to the completely empirically measurable perfect gig time that is this month.

There are a few good gigs coming up in the next few months, some that I’m playing, some that I’m helping with some boring part of, and some that I’m missing due to playing other gigs. I don’t know where I’ll leave my jacket at any of them.

Approximately a day and three quarters away from the time of writing, Cork will be visited by some great noise people from places as far flung as Canada, Prague, and some place called Dublin.

Shadow Pattern and Meilt play in Nudes in Cork on Wednesday, and Unit 44 in ‘Dublin’ the next day. You can buy tickets for Cork here. And Dublin here.

Shadow Pattern plays excellent wide-ranging strange music. Often feeling like manipulated tape recordings, sometimes with off-grid rhythm, not afraid to get harsh but always feeling free moving.

This album, released by Adhuman, combines a lot of SP work and is a great listen. The liner notes say “Nathan Ivanco’s Shadow Pattern, based in Hamilton, Ontario, is a project for whom the term ‘under-the-radar’ is a cute understatement. Operating with scant regard for the cultivation of listenership or exposure, Ivanco’s work - both as Shadow Pattern and through his Hamilton Tapes label - usually manifests via subterraneously low-key tape editions that rarely if ever make out of his home country of Canada.” which should also get the point across that if you miss this, you may miss a very rare chance to see Shadow Pattern around here.

Similarly rare to get to see, Meilt, which is a collaboration between Dublin’s Dressing and Prague’s uoehre, may not be something we’ll get to see very often. Their recent tape on Krim Kram is excellent, a nice more-than-the-sum-of-it’s-collaborators noise album, plenty of clattering, scraping and atmosphere.

Then, on Sunday, there is Evicshen with Amanda Feery and Declan Synnott

Evicshen’s name is many places, including buried in the credits for the photoshoot for some billionaire singer/music entertainment conglomorate due to some accidental borrowing of her inventive sound making ways.

I recently listened to this interview and loved it, great to hear about the level of depth in how she makes her own instruments.

Everyone I’ve spoken to about this gig has said they have no idea how an Evicshen set will work in the lovely small space of Plugd. There’s only one way to find out. That way is apparently to already have bought a ticket, as it’s sold out, but get on that waiting list if you don’t have a ticket already.

Amanda and I are supporting, we’ve made a set of new stuff which is a nice balance of both of our sensibilities. I had intended calling it ‘no brow electronics’ which I was to make a convoluted justification for, but enjoying how that sounds is all I’ve got so far. I’m really looking forward to playing. Don’t forget we’ve got one track available online from a collaboration we did several years ago for Spilt Milk Festival.

Speaking of Spilt Milk, we’re also playing there in person this year!

I always enjoy Spilt Milk, the large quantity of great people living in and around Sligo is a bonus. We’ll be playing on Saturday evening, with Theromancers, which is Ruth Clinton (Landless/Poor Creaure) and Natalia Beylis (Woven Skull).

The line up for the whole thing is nice and varied, and the poster is excellent.

(I stole this images from instagram, please forgive me for the dots and the arrows.)

You can get tickets here.

I’m looking forward to seeing Star of the Sea, Surge, Diarmuid MacDiarmada and Julia Louise Knifefist very much.

That same week back in Cork, Covers Blown, Dog OTU and Doctor Earth are playing Plugd.

The following week, Jason Kahn and Phil Maguire are doing an Irish tour.

That’s a lot of good stuff for the perfect gig month.

In other news, I’ve been listening to:
The Bad Breeding discography (a running soundtrack so good I’m sad to have listened to everything by them so much that I need to move on due to my own self-imposed rules).

This fundraiser from Moot Tapes, which I have a track on also. A nice, wide-ranging compilation, plenty of atmosphere, some fine drum machine oriented stuff, and one track giving good life advice via what sounds like a text to speech programme.

Robert Curgenven - Aegenesis

Expertly put together, precise as always, with extra grit and noise. Pure tones.

Katie Alice Greer - Barbarism

Dystopian DIY pop.

Hubert Selby Jr Infants - This Damned Mess

A very affecting pair of tracks reflecting on a year of genocide and the cycles of sickening feelings it brings up, all money from this release goes to Gaza Go Bragh.

I’m still reading as much Percival Everett as I can manage, now trying to track down all three versions of Telephone. That (the version I read) and So Much Blue are recent favourites, though every book of his I read is a current favourite.

I also finished the K Punk anthology, which was a much shorter read than I expected, I enjoyed the real time reactions, the moments of hope and passion, and the various music obsessions. That era of blogging feels a lifetime ago.

I read Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake on two legs of a long trip recently, I really enjoyed it, I can see how it might read as pessimistic, but I think the real thing to chew on is the ruthlessness of the main character, how power skews in her favour and what that means for the aims of her targets. I think the fictionalising of this kind of character with more and more information available on spy cops also gives a lot to think about.

Right so, see you at the gigs, if there’s anywhere handy to leave my jacket would you let me know? Thanks.