HWCH #1 – The Bands

State and Analogue have already done pretty good write-ups of the various different bands they saw over the weekend so I’m going to try and keep this pretty brief.

“Hola Hola Hola, Oatmeal and Granola”

Yeah…this is probably not safe for work. And if you’re a woman it’s gonna be rather offensive, but in a reasonably amusing and ironic way – I hope!

Breakfast – Le Le

LeftMyName found this song on a blog the other day and insisted that I listen. When I heard it first, I pictured in my head some misogynistic lecherous rapper, perhaps with a grill on his teeth with the word “Breakfast” made out in diamond studs. I imagined that while he was recording it, he was oiling up some woman’s jiggly ass – because that’s just what he does.

It turns out Le Le are a French/German pop outfit and the rest of their output, judging by their myspace, is your typical synthy europop-rap with some soul influences. ‘Breakfast‘ seems pretty different to most of their rest of their work. It is also comedy gold. To me, the voice sounds like a mix between Chapelle doing Rick James (bitch!) and Jemaine from Flight Of The Conchords. The conscientious part of me is, of course, appalled by the guys blatant objectification of women, the debasement of the subject to little more than food for the man to devour and other such feminist-literary criticisms. But that’s why it’s so good.

There’s also a video. Voila:

A Few More Points On Eurovision – Just To Get It Out Of My System

I haven’t written here for over two weeks so I’ve got plenty more I want to write about, but it’s on my mind at the moment, so I have to exorcise these demons now.

1. Referring back to what I said in the previous post about stuff that’s different, I’m loving the French and Spanish entries. The french one is the first entry from France in English, but it’s a great pop song. It’s not a cliched ballad, it’s got this great electro-Beach Boys feel to it and you just gotta dig the facial hair and sunglasses.

Spain on the other hand are going for the quirky thing, allegedly taking inspiration from Dustin. The links to Dustin go further in that they seem to have formed an alliance and Dustin even appeared on the guys show! But it’s catchy, it’s got dance steps and it’s got the word Robocop. What more could you want?

2. Eurovision presenter’s somehow always manage to find new ways to look and particularly SOUND stupid. Two of them ACTUALLY said “See you later, alligator.” Live on air. In front of an entire continent. Not ironically. And to think we’re in a union with some of these people.

3.      ….I had more…but I forgot them! If I remember and they’re worth writing, they’ll be here eventually.

I Don’t See What The Fuss Is All About

Over a week since the gig, but I’m only catching up on my blogging now, so I turn my attention to Crystal Castles. Obviously, Jim Carroll, Nialler and Una have written about the Dublin gig already and to be honest my experience was pretty similar. But I went to the gig with almost total ignorance. I had listened to their stuff on MySpace and remember thinking it wasn’t too bad but it didn’t stick in my head. I hadn’t even planned on going to the gig until a few hours before when Mechnoid rang me.

Like the Dublin gig, a huge part of the audience at Cyprus Avenue was made up of painfully young, painfully hip, painfully hair-styled teenagers, replete with aggressively asymmetrical fringes and sleeves of glowsticks. Having something of a distaste for large crowds of people (not in a phobic/hyper-ventalating/the-walls-are-closing-in sort of way; more of a you-people-are-annoying-the-fuck-out-of-me/stop-acting-like-idiots kind of way), the crowd of indie-chic teens didn’t bode well.

But I soldiered on.

Yay, gigs!

Y’know, considering the name of the blog is Stereotyping, I haven’t really been writing about music much lately.

There are a good couple of gigs coming up in the next few weeks and months that I really want to go to. Not sure if I’m going to make it to all of them but dammit! I’m gonna try!

- Ham Sandwich are supporting Sultans of Ping on Saturday in Cyprus Avenue. I haven’t managed to see the Meteor winners yet and to be honest I’ve heard very little of their music. Unfortunately, I don’t think I could be arsed paying 18.50 to see them seeing as I doubt I’ll stay around for the Sultans afterwards. LUCKILY, they’re playing a solo gig five days later on the 13th for 8euro in Cyprus! Sorted!

- The UCC Live Music Societies Battle of the Bands final is on the 12th, again in Cyprus Avenue (they’re doing well for themselves this month!). I was the head of the LMS last year and I know how stressful the Battle of the Bands can be but I always enjoyed the final – the atmosphere is great, the bands are usually very good and it always seems the bands that make it to the final go on to thrive in the music scene in the city so it’s good to see them starting off.

Chiptune / Gabber

Slowly, the blogging engine builds steam again. I’m determined to make an even greater effort to maintain this blog with some semblance of regularity. Think of it as a Lenten pledge but in a thoroughly unbelieving and a-religious way. Part of the problem I think is that there seems to have been something of a lack of good gigs going on in the Second City lately. That’s not to say there’s been nothing going on – we’ve had Blood Red Shoes, Super Extra Bonus Party, We Should Be Dead … and other stuff too, but I didn’t manage to make some of those gigs and wasn’t massively impressed by others. There’s been a few locals around the place too but all of these gigs just seem like brief sparks in an otherwise dark and disheartening January in Cork.

This Friday sees DJ Scotch Egg to Cork. I’d never heard of him before so I decided to check him out in the hopes that he might be worth going to (thanks to a word of endorsement from Niamh at UCC Campus Radio) and let me tell you, he definitely looks worth going to.

Hailing from Japan, but living in Brighton, DJ Scotch Egg is apparently – according to his wikipedia entry- is a “producer of chiptune / gabber music” which actually sounds pretty cool. What it basically means is he makes frantic, glitchy dance-type music with his gameboy, loop pedals and other such things. After the genius of Dan Deacon, I’m thinking this could make for quite an exciting gig. And after seeing video and hearing the myspace tracks, I’m all a flutter for what could be a class gig, this Friday (the 8th) in The Whiskey on Union Quay.

Dan “Motherfucking-Geekfather” Deacon!

I’m so fresh from this gig, my ears are still trickling little bits of blood.

The best gigs are the ones that reaffirm your faith in live music. They can be huge festival sets or a guy with a guitar in a room with 10 other people. In fact, they should not simply reaffirm your faith in live music, but in all music. The Dan Deacon gig in the Liquid Lounge has done just that for me tonight.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the great Crayonsmith first though.

I’ve been a fan of these guys for a while (or this guy, seeing as it mostly seems to be frontman, Ciaran’s project) and it was them the drew me to the gig. It wasn’t their best set, but they played a lot of new stuff which sounds really damn good. Towards the end, Ciaran’s mic stand began to lean over and then fall which resulted in all manner of hilarity. Well…not quite hilarity. And there wasn’t all manner of it. But it was funny all the same.

Stop looking at me like that.

They played this song: Scarytale

But back to Dan Deacon. I had never heard of this guy before. Only yesterday did I listen to one of his songs and it didn’t really grab me. But I decided to stay – having paid 10e, I wasn’t about to leave without getting my money’s worth. I was pretty surprised to find the guy I had assumed to be some sort of roadie, was actually Dan Deacon. Flatly put, Dan is a balding geek who’s just a little bit fat. But rather than setting up on stage, Dan set up on a small table on the floor and gathered the audience around him. All around him. Even behind him, where I took a position. I’m not going to go into every detail of his set here, that would take to long. It was a set, however, which was tragically cut short by Dan blowing most of the transformers in his equipment thanks to his massive array of effects peddles,knobs and switches and his amazing light show. Someone should tell Daft Punk that all you need are a few lightbulbs sticking out of your stuff and a green flashing strobe-skull.

Dan’s music has been described as electro shock, but I prefer to think of it as geek-rave. Here are a few examples:

The Crystal Cat

Wham City

Snake Mistakes

Being grouped around Dan gave the entire gig a completely different feeling than before. This wasn’t a gig in the normal sense, not in the way most of us were used to. This was something far more communal. We were gathered around this bizarre looking man, making bizarre noises and bizarre music. And we were dancing. The mp3’s don’t capture the energy of this guy’s music live – it’s so infectious. This photos might convey what I am saying.

We’re so used to watching bands on a stage. We stand in front of them, they play. They might interact. They might not. We forget how boring this can actually be until we something that breaks the mold. Even when it comes to an amazing stage show, with huge visuals and megatons of energy, at the end of the day, we still feel like spectators. Not so with Dan Deacon. Sure you’re still watching, but gathered around the mad professor and his equipment, it feels more like sharing an experience, presiding over an wild experiment rather than simply viewing a show. I am converted Dan, thank you.

Hooray For Humans in Cyprus Avenue tonight!

(This post is a bit late now, seeing as the gig kicks off in, like, 30 minutes, but whatevs!)

Hooray For Humans kicked off their national tour last night in Galway and tonight, they’re playing their first headlining gig in their hometown of Cork tonight. The gig is at Cyprus Avenue with Alps (of New South Wales) (or is that simply Alps Of New South Wales? StereoTyping has seen it written both ways in the last week.) and Cork trio, Elk. Tickets are €10 on the door. They play two more dates after that. Here are the details:

Dublin - Saturday, August 11 @ Eamonn Doran’s w/ Alps of New South Wales

Limerick – Sunday, August 12 @ Baker w/ Alps of New South Wales

 

In case you haven’t heard of them, Hooray For Humans are one of the catchiest and most exciting acts to come from Cork in a little while. Formed from the ashes of several other Cork bands (as so many good groups are) such as hardcore/technical-metal outfit My Remorse, as well as Waiting Room, ‘Humans have been getting a lot of attention in the 10 or so months they’ve been together. Even though they have yet to release an EP or album, they’ve been marked out by HotPress as one of the bands to watch out for in 2007, as well as winning the “Best New Act” in the Cork Independent Reader’s Poll. Hype like this doesn’t always bode well for a band, but the band’s material to date has but fueled people’s excitement. With a catchy, melodius electro-rock pop sound that was described in a text I received today, from who I assume was Alan (I didn’t recognise the number), as “love-metal/gaycore”, Hooray for Humans have brought a refreshing sound to a city that seems to overflow with metal and post-rock bands. The band have just finished up in the studio, recording their debut album with Ross O’Donovan (Cars In Walls, Waiting Room, Sideproject) and will be released by Out On A Limb later this year.

I’d love to write about Elk, becuase they’re really nice guys, but I’ve run out of time! Seperate entry on them another time. Check them out here though!

I don’t know diddly-squat about Alps (of New South Wales) but this is his myspace. Sounds good.

Afro