Supergroups1.5
More endlessly astounding sounds being birthed in the Emerald Isle are...
From Dublin and with some very strong historical connections to Damien Rice , The Frames and the late Mic Christopher is the long standing female vocalist and composer of songs extroadinaire Lisa Hannigan. Lisa has often been thought of as the musical backbone behind Damien Rice's musical campaining over the last decade and she has been a major provider of lead vocals, guitars, bass and even drums on a number of tours for not just Damien, but a number of artists and also coluded with songwriters from both Irelands BellX1 and Snow Patrol for a number of tracks on a previously mentioned Oxfam 'Cake Sale' album too. In 2007 she parted company with Mr Rice and has given some long overdue attention to her own expert repetoire which resulted in her first solo debut album 'Sea Sew' on September 12th 2008. The album is awash with haunting melodies and vocals all underpinned with a strange yet subtle underlying sence of happiness.Available to order worldwide via Lisa's website we've also provided an extra link to a noteworthy more detailed review by one of Irelands founding rock cornerstones, Sir Eamon Carr of Horslips....
Lisa Hannigan On MySpace Review by Eamon Carr
Another Dublin musician with his roots tied to the busking community and trained in the hard knocks of life on the streets with no income options apart from his voice is James O'Toole of Aortal. It was that voice alone which carried him on a seven year tour of the world with just a guitar as luggage taking him from Dublin to India, South Africa, and nearly every town in between before finaly returning to the streets of Dublin to set up the classic rock band Aortal. The brief but exceptional history of the band so far has at times closely resembled a script from Spinal Tap with some band members (and especialy drummers,) tending to either spontaniously combust and vanish without warning or get themselves arrested and thrown into jail for the most puzzling of reasons...so in order not to tempt fate we decided not to reveal the names of the other current members of the band ( sorry Connor and Jay ...oops!). In spite of the many set backs Aortal are set to be a permanent fixture of Irelands top rock set and have already successfuly stunned many audiences with a strong array of outstanding performances and songs overflowing with insight and exceptional talent in every area of songwriting and delivery. As you'll soon discover, these songs have already marked out the vocals of James O'Toole's as being legendary....We've included their video debut 'In Light' with a few more titles to set your bodily seratonin levels ablaze via their MySpace profile with an album due for release at any moment. See and hear for yourself at......
More overpowering vocals - the kind of which will cause most label managers to have nightmares if they don't manage to sign them- are to be found bursting out of the mouth of Anna Devine, the lead vocalist of Little Nightmare. A debut ep in 2007 marked them out for special interest with a number of noteworthy tours and gigs being played throughout the last eighteen months. Their sound has been often been compared to...er, 'Eminefinevence', at times that may be the case - as Anna's vocals certainly match and outdo any current female vocalist worldwide with that awesome set of pipes, but musicaly it seems more like the 'Effinirrelevant' sound has been subjected to a nuclear holocaust as the little nightmare sound simply disintegrates and blows them away. If you would like to experiance the sound of 'Elpthesepeopleareevenbetterthanusance' being subjected to few hundred megatonnes of sonic nuclear annihilation and liberation, or perhaps if you are a record executive and would like to have alot of nightmares once they turn your offers down and sign a much better deal elswhere, then strap yourself in very tightly, turn up the volume on your speakers and get ready for the force of the shockwaves to hit you at........
*update* The bands final gig was on 20/12/07 but new 'nightmares' are to arise from the band in the form of various new artistic projects and solo works throughout 2009.
Have you ever wandered what would happen if Ska music was upgraded with a slightly more modern, or even a teen rock styled element? While many of the worlds 'top' producers seem to be an a quest to re establish fifties and sixties style in modern music (eg Marc Ronsons recent music making , video and 'fashion' enterprises combined also with one of his certain femle aquaintances extravagant 'is that the Canary wharf tower on yer head or are you just pleased to see me ? ' hair do's ) there is thankfuly, one Dublin band intelligent enough to drop the 'pretend' image and centre in on the music...Called 'The Upgrades' ( - as that is exactly what they've done -) they seem to be breathing new life into a genre that so many others end up faltering and becoming bogged down in. Currently touring throughout Ireland in between the many invites by other bands and international festivals to join them the world over, the Upgrades seem to be in the process of gathering an ever snowballing contingent of core fans wherever they play. Certainly a band to keep a sharp eye on and an ear to the ground for....and you can have a peek and listen here...
Another band to shake a few musical foundations with an astounding and mostly intrumental sound is Dublins 'Estel' . Tracks like Estels 'Mark' see Pink Floyds 'See Emily Play' colliding with Gongs 'Camembert Electrique', while 'Fun House' has so much jazzed up funk that you'd expect the late James Brown to suddenly asscend from his grave through a trapdoor in front of them just so he can 'get down to it' again too. Their back catalogue of tracks are all equally unique and captivating musical journeys that refuse to be restricted by any specific genre or tag ...apart from perhaps 'epic' rock. So if you'd like to have your sence of musical order scrambled before being taken on an epic roller coaster of a voyage throughout a stunning landscape of sound then visit Estel's MySpace page here...
Now it's not often that we ever include footage filmed on a mobile phone or webcam (and we did once promise ourselves that we'd never ever do that ) but in this one instance we decided that it would probably be a crime not to. Pat McManus first came to fame as a guitarist -he was already the nations fiddle champion - for the Irish metal band 'Mammas Boys' in the mid eighties, but, as you'll see from this footage Pat is not only no ordinary guitarist, he is also one of Irelands best kept secrets of the last thirty years. Currently fronting his new band, 'High Voltage' , Pats skills can't possibly be kept a secret for much longer as every time he brakes into one of those solo's where the guitar ends up being played behind his back, audience after audience has to be carefully hearded out of the doors following each show with eyes bulging out of their sockets and jaws dragging along the ground...it seems they're also often still found by venue staff the following morning with those same entranced expressions stuck on their faces standing by their cars in the car park and many are left in a catotonic daze for days afterwards. Lets face it no one expects to find a showman who can outdo Hendrix or Townsend for tricks , skill and speed playing in a quiet and secluded Irish country pub. For links to the official Pat McManus sites with info on tour dates, previous and future stadium sellouts, smelling salts and a forthcoming album release ....click the links on the right...
With a highly polished image and act to make most signed acts look just a little amateurish and by bearing a name that will make most people think of a former Russian presidents very big red blotchy birthmark, this small, talented and intensly hardworking underground band from Waterford entered the national 2008 Murphys Live competition and speedily used their guitars to slaughter and swiftly put every other act in the country to death. Gorbachov, after a party that seemed to last all summer, are now plotting to do something that their namesake never thought of doing while in office...ie - taking over the world...and the chances are that they won't meet with too much competition in the other 'Indie rock' nations either. Songs that would echo well in the current financial world of boom and bust will laugh their way hauntingly through the ears and consciences of the worlds greedy and seedy alike while the rest of the world can simply enjoy...
The occaisional naughty word combined also with the occaisional lyric that - if misinterpereted -could shock some and cause a riot in the vatican or even Craggy Island have meant we've awarded a red parental guidance notice...so you can expect to find all of your teenagers here clicking the links on the left!
Many more Irish supergroups from the independant music capitol of the world soon!
