[ Label Spotlight ]

Gone are the days of labels they said. Not. Take a walk into any record shop. Unless you know your labels, you're going to be digging for awhile. These days, if you're attached to a label, that means you share their musical sound, and quality. I have to admit having only began my record collection this year, That I did find myself a little lost digging through all the 001's,2's,43's etc. but the sense develops quickly and now I'd like to mention a couple of small labels that I have been following recently.

[ Festival Guide 2013 - Part 1]

Part 2: http://elektrobankmusic.blogspot.ie/2013/04/festival-guide-2013-part-2.html

It's every body's favourite time of year again, festival season is upon us finally! ( Those of you reading from my home planet of Ireland, will be especially relieved after a disgusting six-month long winter.)

This year is perhaps the most diverse of festival seasons as all of the large festivals seem to have mated and spawned at least a hundred baby festivals each. My festival calendar is unknown as of yet this year as in two-weeks time I will be moving to Berlin, so will be focusing much of my energy on the mecca of Techno for the summer, but I am hoping to get to Dimensions, Melt! and at least one festival back home, be it Body & Soul or Electric Picnic. As the list of festivals is so long this year I'll break it up into a few easy categories for you, Irish, UK, Europe, and I think Croatia deserves its very own section this year as the new place to be for Summer 2013.

Life Festival, Belvedere House & Gardens, Co. Westmeath. 

When:   24-26th May 2013

Tickets: €136 + Booking Fee
Info: http://life-festival.com

Perhaps this year's top contender for electronic music in Ireland and the one thing that has me kind of disappointed I won't be in Ireland for. The last time I visited this festival in 2010 & 2011 it was mostly psy-trance based. To most people, psy-trance is a dirty word, however my roots in Galway set me up for an occasional enjoyment of the Genre.

In previous years, house & techno were in-between genres for the festival, and I fondly remember seeing Vitalic in the Big-Top in 2011, and perhaps one of my favourite memories of my life so far was of course Ricardo Villalobos's set on the Saturday in 2010 beside the lake, with an astoundingly weird temperature for Ireland of about 27 degrees Celsius. Jesse Somfay's track, Small Pebbled Forest always reminds me of this moment. <3

Line Up: Groove Armada DJ Set, Seth Troxler, Laurent Garnier, Modeselektor Live, Amon Tobin Presents Two Fingers (DJ Set), Booka Shade Live, Kerri Chandler, Karenn, Boddika, Floating Points, Krystal Klear, Toby Kaar, KiNK, Bicep, GMS Live, 1200 Mics, MMOTHS, Truss/MPIA3, Midland, Captain Hook, Frank B, Icicle, Sunil Sharpe, Ben Pearce, Calibre, Funkineven, The Cujo Family, The Hot Sprockets, Raglans, Alexander Nut, Fatima, CLU, Goth Trad, Looney Moon, Recs, Biome, White Collar Boy, All City, & many many more... 

Body & Soul Festival, Ballinlough Castle, Co. Westmeath.

When:   21st-23rd June 2013
Tickets: €139 for a weekend ticket or €55 for Sunday Only
Info: http://bodyandsoul.ie/ 

Across the lake from life we have the Body & Soul festival, which is in its early years having made its debut at Electric Picnic as a healing area within the festival. 

You can still catch it at Electric Picnic in September but, if you'd like to have a full 3 days of the Body & Soul experience then it's advised you check it out here. I have yet to attend the festival but have had many friends give positive feedback, so it is most definitely on the agenda this year should I get a free weekend away from Berlin. 

Line Up: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Public Image Lt, Fuck Buttons, Kurt Vile & The Violators, Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires, Solange, The Congos, Pantha Du Prince, Mmoths, Willy Mason, Jon Hopkins, Wallis Bird, Breton, George FitzGerald, Kate Boy, Iron Curtis, Almighty Sion, Forrests, Adultrock, Monto, Ryan Vail, Fish Go Deep with Live Vocals by Tracey K, plus many more TBA...

 

Electric Picnic, Stradbally Estate, Stradbally, Co. Laois. 

When:   30th Aug -1st September 2013 
Tickets: €189.50 or €149.50 if you've been 3 times previously & have proof!
Info: http://www.electricpicnic.ie/

Ah Electric Picnic, there's no real way to describe it to those who haven't been. Like a child of Glastonbury it truly is place where you just have to get lost and see everything it has to offer.
Most of my memories of 2011 were of sitting inside a felt covered deer sculpture for the weekend and wondering why the hell I was at yet another festival having just arrived home from Reading Festival the previous day.

Nonetheless Electric Picnic will always be one of my favourite festivals no matter how many others I will see. It's kind of like a fairy tale, with plenty of 'fairies' hanging about alright. Go and see for yourself... for those looking for more of an electronic edge, this is just the initial line-up and there will be plenty more dance acts announced in the coming months.

Line Up: Arctic Monkeys, Bjork, Fatboy Slim , Franz Ferdinand, David Byrne & St Vincent, Polica, Chvrches, Eels, Disclosure, Warpaint, Hurts, Baauer, Tiga, Clinic, The Knife, Wu-Tang Clan, Hudson Mohawke, Mount Kimbie, plus many more TBA...  

[ POGO: Resident Advisor at The Twisted Pepper with Andy Stott, Forward Strategy Group & more ]

This Saturday sees Resident Advisor's first ever party in Ireland! It's going to be a big one so I suggest you purchase your tickets in advance here:

Adv. Tickets & full info:
http://www.bodytonicmusic.com/events/3421/
http://www.residentadvisor.net/event.aspx?443174

Andy Stott [Modern Love, UK]
Forward Strategy Group [Perc Trax, UK]
Cut Hands (Live) [Blackest Ever Black, UK]
Sunil Sharpe
Barry Redsettaz
All City DJs
& more

ANDY STOTT BIO
Andy Stott is a DJ and producer from Manchester. Since his debut Replace EP in 2005, he has released four full-length albums, five more EPs, and several singles. Drawing inspiration from the usual dub techno suspects and fusing them with minimalist ideals and bathwater-warm melodies and textures, Stott’s tracks offer a deep home listening experience, as well as the requisite punch to make club floors move. Blessed with an ear for space and a knack for constructing tracks that are simultaneously smooth and rumbling, Stott neatly strides the axis between intelligent techno, dub techno and dubstep.

FORWARD STRATEGY GROUP BIO
Leeds & Edinburgh based duo Forward Strategy Group formed in 2008, and are seen as one of the most unique acts in techno today. Their lo-fi approach to modern techno & attention to textural detail has been one of the key inspirations for the new wave of industrial techno musicians.

Patrick Walker is resident and co-promoter of Unseen in Edinburgh, bringing the finest acts in modern techno to the capital. Smear has been resident at Leeds' legendary Detatched & Future-Past club nights in for the past 3 years.

FSG's work on their own label, and labels like Perc Trax and Stroboscopic Artefacts, not to mention their in-demand remix work for Zooloft, Bas Mooy, Perc & Justin Berkovi among others, has seen their records firmly planted at the front of many DJ's bags. Their new album Labour Division, their most diverse & accomplished work to date, has already garnered huge critical acclaim.

Their turbulent live shows have earned them cult status in techno clubs throughout Europe & beyond, and their marathon DJ sets incorporate house, industrial, synthpop and experimental music, all woven seamlessly into their trademark sound.

CUT HANDS BIO
Bennett founded Whitehouse in 1980, with a mind to creating "the most extreme music ever recorded". They succeeded. The group remained at the forefront of the experimental and noise scenes over the next 27 years, invariably creating controversy and stimulating debate with their choice of violent and sexual subject matter, before eventually disbanding in 2007. A specialist in linguistics and unconscious communication, Bennett now helms the mass hypnosis experimental project, Extralinguistic Sequencing, which premiered at Tate Britain in 2010. For Cut Hands, rhythm is his chosen weapon; on recently released album Afro Noise I - eight years in the making - he utilises vaudou and Central African percussion in radical new ways, generating a sound unrivalled in its physical intensity.

[ BEAT THE HOUSE DOWN! Pres. The Ladies Guide to House & Techno. April.6.2013 ]

I help run a once-monthly night in Galway, Beat The House Down. Last Saturday (April 6th) we put on an all girl line-up, featuring Kelly 303, Lisa M. Wright, Myself and Karey Mc Hugh of S2K. The night couldn't have gone any better if i'm honest, I like to think we definitely proved to a few non-believers that there lot of talented female DJs out there too. We even had Galway local, 'Bongo Brian' playing alongside for some of our sets.. which actually sounded a lot better than you might think. I've uploaded my set to soundcloud so you can have a listen here;

Some photos as well courtesy of the lovely Karey Mc Hugh who provided the CDJ 2000's on which we played. :)

 

[ Life Festival Voted #8 in RA's Top 10 Festivals Taking Place in May '13. ]

08. Life Festival
May 24 - May 26
Belvedere House & Gardens
Mullingar, Ireland

Life Festival takes place at one of Europe's most unique venues: Belvedere House, a sprawling manor constructed in 1740. Its gardens have hosted dozens of DJs and live acts in the past few years, and in late May will welcome Seth Troxler, Amon Tobin, Modeselektor and a slew of other artists for Life Festival's eighth edition. Most of the other acts appearing hail from the UK and Ireland, with Karenn, Floating Points and Sunil Sharpe all confirmed. International names include Kerri Chandler, Bulgarian live act KiNK and the big room house of Berlin duo Booka Shade.

RA pick: Pump your fist to Modeselektor's live show.

Delighted that Life Festival has finally made it onto the international map. I first visited this festival in 2010, and am still reeling over great and hilarious memories from that weekend. Friends of mine have been going since the early days, which used to take place in Gort, Co. Galway, and while it has definitely changed from the wonderful hippy/psytrance vibe of the old days,  this years line-up does anything but disappoint.

And now i'm even more disgusted that i'll be missing it.... *Sigh

I'll just have to live vicariously so. You can read the full RA: Poll here;

http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1812