Ireland gig guide: New daytime clubbing event among this week's biggest concerts

We preview all of the biggest gigs taking place across the country over the coming days

By: irishmirror.ie

Sep 06 2024
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Ireland gig guide: New daytime

Irish music fans are spoilt for choice when it comes to gigs this week, with a slew of unmissable concerts taking place around the country over the coming days.

Ski Mask The Slump God

3Olympia, Dublin - Friday, SOLD OUT

Florida rapper Stokeley Clevon Goulbourne, aka Ski Mask the Slump God, got his start in rap after meeting the late XXXTentacion when they were both teenagers in juvenile detention.

Upon release, the pair met to hatch a plan to go on a home invasion burglary spree, but instead channelled the effort into rapping.

They started recording and formed the collective Members Only in 2014, soon becoming key figures in the underground, lo-fi SoundCloud rap movement, releasing many milestone scene mixtapes and EPs.

Six years after his former partner’s death, Ski Mask the Slump God is still exploring left-field sonic paths in hip-hop, leaning into noise, distortion, rapid flow and eccentric lyrics, while also releasing platinum records.

His second album 11th Dimension has come after a break of six years, and it’s a deeper listen than 2018’s STOKELEY, exploring his life and persona through fragmented stories told by distinct characters, with different personalities and flow.

It all adds up to a true cult figure, edging the mainstream with sold-out global tours like this.

Snõõper

Kasbah Club, Limerick - Friday, €17.45;

Workman’s Cellar, Dublin - Saturday, €18

In its purest form, punk evolved through necessity as a DIY, lo-fi subculture, before it was co-opted immediately by the mainstream.

But after endless band sellouts, mohawk cosplay and a gradual scale of decades of rubbish, from Green Day to Blink 182, it’s hard to find that DIY punk underbelly.

Then there’s the weirdo subgenre called ‘egg punk’, hatched online in the mid-2010s, heavy on satire, lo-fi recording and out-there humour inspired by Devo’s sarcastic nihilism.

Signed to Jack White’s Third Man Records, Snõõper are the quintessential misfit egg punk band — frantically paced, buzzing distortion, banjaxed electronics, outsider artist personas, with a manifesto on record to “go as crazy as possible for 30 minutes”.

On their debut album they don’t quite make it to the 30, blasting through 14 songs in 22 minutes, and their EPs are also full of 90-second jolts of weirdo noise that’s just gonna go off this weekend.

Tickets to Snõõper's Dublin and Limerick gigs are available via Ticketmaster.

Eno

IFI, Dublin - Saturday, Sunday & Tuesday, €15.50

At 76, Brian Eno is still refusing to grow old with any graceful predictability. Since 1970, he’s been adding high-concept ideas to whole strands of popular culture and art, as a musician, sound designer, visual artist and author, and through solo avant-garde art-rock albums, adding abstract synths to Roxy Music, collaborating with Talking Heads and David Byrne, and working with U2 and David Bowie on their most cherished albums.

He’s also a year-zero pioneer of ambient music, through his Ambient 1: Music For Airports, and numerous follow-ups.

Since the 1990s, Eno has explored the concept and evolution of generative music — music that is constantly changing and non-repeating, such as algorithmically controlled computer composition, random mixes, and his generative composition apps like Bloom.

And one of his greatest impacts on the internet era was when he composed the start-up music to the Windows 95 Operating System.

Such a consistently scattered approach has inspired this career-spanning documentary about Eno’s life, which is an art piece in itself.

Director Gary Hustwit has developed a bold, revolutionary approach to the cinema experience — a generative film that is different every time it screens.

Hustwit has spun the film from decades’ worth of interviews and archive footage, and each time it’s screened the narrative may change — one heavily skewed towards collaborating with Bowie, or one that features Eno’s visual art and more outsider work, with a random yet intuitive thread that suits one of popular culture’s most famous disruptors.

Tickets to all three screenings are available to buy in the IFI's website.

Day Fever

Academy, Dublin - Saturday, €15

Recently there’s been a realisation that clubland has left a generation behind, and that some people still want to go out for hours but be home at a sensible time.

Now, we’re not talking going to a gig and politely leaving after the encore and lights on at 10.30pm, but rather a proper club night, having a messy laugh and letting your hair down.

People dance during the "Day Fever" event at the club HERE at Outernet in London, February 10 2024 (Image: HENRY NICHOLLS/AFP via Getty Images)

DJ Annie Mac’s Before Midnight has been a huge success touring the UK and Ireland, playing banging electronic music, while After Eight in Dublin’s Pawn Shop also offers a midnight shutdown with proper DJ-curated music.

The 30+ Club is a cheesier project, more like the Coppers-style chart hit day out, for people who checked out of new music years ago.

Day Fever feels like something in between — not quite underground, but featuring a hint of good taste.

It’s curated by Jon McClure, of politically-charged indie act Reverend and the Makers, along with Line of Duty actor Vicky McClure and her husband, actor and filmmaker Jonny Owen.

While the 30+ Club policy feels like a cheesy country wedding, Day Fever is more 90s student disco — Britpop, Motown, 90s chart pop such as Spice Girls, crossover dance hits and other nostalgia nuggets.

As Owen says: “You can leave Day Fever, go have some food and still be home for Match Of The Day. Everybody wins.”

Tickets to Club Fever are available to purchase via Ticketmaster.

Arab Strap

Empire, Belfast - Wednesday, €27.50;

Dolans’ Limerick - Thursday, €31;

Roisin Dubh, Galway - Friday, September 13, €33.65;

Whelan’s, Dublin - Saturday, September 14, €33.75

Scottish act Arab Strap were over in Ireland less than a year ago for the 25th anniversary of their acclaimed album Philophobia.

For three decades, Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton have explored various sordid themes around self-loathing, sexual disasters, drugs, drink, poetic nihilism, and, indeed, philophobia (the fear of love).

This time round they’re touring their latest album and their second since a comeback after a 10-year break.

The gloriously on-point deadpan title gets it all out there right away — I’m Totally Fine with It Don’t Give a F**k Anymore — and it’s another dark trawl through minimalist strums, skeletal electronics, dirgy distortion and Moffatt’s half-shrugged miserabilism.

Not exactly screaming thank you very much Ireland gleefully, but a bit of cool standoffishness can be a welcome shift from the Olé, Olé, Olé, Olé a**e-licking.

Tickets to all four of Arab Strap's Irish gigs are available to purchase via Ticketmaster.

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