DEAF ’09 Preview and some other tings

The line up for this year’s Dublin Electronic Arts Festival is nearing completion with the usual mix and match of music, art and happenings. It had slackened off a little bit in recent times until last year when it really felt like there was a buzz around the city with countless amounts of excellent gigs going on here, there and everywhere. This year the festival is expanding itself from the usual 4 days to a whopping 10 days, running from Thursday 22nd October to 31st of the month. This is the first year that it has been this length and I can’t help but feel that they are running a risk doing it like this. Ireland is currently in the middle of an economic shit storm and it’s impossible to avoid the fact that numbers in clubs are down recently. My main worry is that spreading the whole festival over a longer period, people simply won’t be able to afford everything that is happening and that some nights will suffer. I hope I’m wrong and that people dig deep and come out and support what should be a great 10 days.

The whole line up, day by day, can be viewed

Sunday sees a bit of an ol clash coming in the shape of some more elderstatesmen of the UK scene. This year sees the 20th anniversary of Warp Records and the flagship show for the festival sees Plaid headlining a Warp party in The Button Factory with a special classics live set. Tim Exile and Clarke also feature on the line up. A couple minutes accross the road in Andrews Lane Theatre sees the return of Luke Slater’s Planetary Assault Systems project which has returned recently with the Temoporary Suspension long-player on Ostgut Ton. I picked it up at the weekend and is definitely a return to form for Slater after all the aimless wandering into rubbish he’s done this decade. This is techno as it should be. I think I’ll be picking the PAS gig as the one to go to as I’ve seen Plaid before and also I hate The Button Factory. Earlier in the evening ISM faves Tr-One and Dublin Bus Disco‘s Louis Scully are teaming up for an all day disco fest down The Bernard Shaw which will be a decent, if contrasting warm up for later on.

Mid week is mostly given over to smaller events around the pubs in the city including a small bit of ISM action on the Wednesday 28th. Galactic Beat Club is a small mid week gathering in the Turks Head where I’ll be playing along side Keep Schtum and Scribble’s Tom Beary – who’s behind the

The main point of attraction for the 2nd weekend is the closing party – which hasn’t got a venue sorted yet – which as is the way with DEAF sees a Detroit heavyweight come in to round things off. This year it’s the turn of Aux 88 to close the festival with Mark Broom and D1’s Education (who we should be seeing more of on here soon) also taking part. If that wasn’t enough gig action for ya the one and only Theo Parrish also makes a return to our shores in October. The night before DEAF kicks off Mr Parrish will be making his Cork debut in The Pavillion on Wednesday the 21st. As if a 4 night clubbing assault wasn’t enough for me that week, I shall also be taking the trip down south for this too. Sure while I’m at it I may as well throw in my own next gigging action, courtesy again of my boys at Lunar Disko. I’ll be warming up for Sunil Sharpe, one of Ireland’s favourite techno Dj’s on Saturday 12th of September down at Kennedys. Sunil will be leaving his usual techno bangers behind and delving in to the world of Chicago and Acid for a special set. I’ll be on the Detroit and Chi-town house tip before hand.

Tieing in with that there’s a bit of ISM related vinyl action going on at the moment. We recently had a guest mix from Lunar’s Co-boss Barry Donovan and the latest from the Lunar label features another ISM guest mixer, David Vunk. The Dreams Ep also features Mark Du Mosch and is currently appearing,dissapearing and reappering on the Clone top 10. This is the best release on the label yet, with Vunk’s “Disco Voltage” and Du Mosch’s John Carpenter esque “Blanche Dreams” making me feel all fuzzy inside. Another former ISM interviewee, Speculator follows up the great debut on his W.T. Records with a 12″ from new boy Hunee. Tour de Force is the name of the ep and it simply rocks. Deep house, dubbier elements, vocals and a whiff of Prince all get thrown into the mix. Hunee – under the Hunch monikor – has also just released this on John Daly’s Feel Music imprint too. Mr Daly himself has been pumping out 12″s and remixs of late, the strongest of which is the acid soaked, trippy Spacewalk on Mule. Scott Ferguson – who’s our resident guest mixer at this stage – is about to drop a brilliant new 12″ on his Ferrispark label “Warehouse Dreams/S.O.S.A.D.” too.

And last but not least ANOTHER former artist who we’ve featured before, Reggie Dokes is continuing his awesome run of releases with his latest “Spectacle of Deepness” on We Play House which was mentioned in this post by Tom, which was for a guest mix from Red D, the owner of the afformentioned imprint (its like fucking Six Degrees of Seperation going on here). The reason I’m mentioning this is that Gmos also pointed in me in the direction of this article for y’all to have a look at. Ok, that’s enough for now!