Musictown Creative Director Leagues O'Toole introduces this year's installment of an event described as 'an essential inspection and celebration of the state of Irish music in 2023'.
After several years of enforced stagnation we have recently experienced a spring-like growth of new and fascinating music in Ireland.
Artists began performing again, many for the first time, organising DIY nights, meeting other artists, socialising, creating organic scenes and friendships, sharing information, acting as each others' audience and support system. It's always beautiful to observe culture blossom from the grassroots, but particularly poignant after a brutal debilitating pandemic.
And the more we observe the international travels of our great contemporary artists like Lisa O'Neill and Lankum and many others, the more inspired we become at home. And now we have an abundance of beautiful, original, weird, wonderful music, so much so, the city doesn't know what to do with it, where to put it, how to nurture it.
It's always beautiful to observe culture blossom from the grassroots, but particularly poignant after a brutal debilitating pandemic.
After a few years programming MusicTown, a platform aiming to reflect the diversity in music performed in Dublin, I realised there is no one format to represent that, it's a constant experiment to try and portray an ever-evolving landscape, almost impossible to fully document. It's a tired ol truism that culture is a reflection of society but an honest portrait is an evolving ever-changing one.
For a long time the music industry annoyingly compartmentalized music into rigid standards so as to market certain ideas, profile audiences and create a system based on popularity, largely to the detriment of the artist's own agency. But in recent times, younger audiences, less reverential to history, have dissolved those notions, representing their own diversity through the music they make.
MusicTown 2023
— MusicTown (@musictowndublin) June 21, 2023
We take over @ComplexDublin July 27th - 30th
11 shows & 30+ artists incl guest curators @crashensemble @DublinDigiRadio @ImprovisedMusic
MusicTown is a Dublin City Council Arts Initiative
Early-bird tickets on sale now: https://t.co/zTbdnkrKfg pic.twitter.com/luPqJtlfeY
This year we wanted everything closer, tighter, more concentrated. So we focused on one weekend, one location with the Complex in Smithfield with stacked bills of exciting artists of various generations. We tried to pin-point some invisible cognitive flow in the line-ups.
It's exciting to have artists at the top of their game but also at different stages in their musical journey, like Anna Mieke after her mind-blowing second album Theatre and Adrian Crowley, who is soon to release the tenth and best album (imo) of his illustrious career.
And then a duo performance from Eimear Reidy and Natalia Beylis, whose collaborative cello & organ album She Came Through the Window to Stand by the Door is the record I've listened to the most in 2023; it literally gives me air when I'm feeling claustrophobic. And a young powerhouse, Aoife Wolf is going to open that first show on Thursday.
I'm excited to see Junior Brother's full-band experience again. It's inspiring to me that young musician like Ronan Kealy is capable of having such elevated and ambitious music ideas even in the most difficult financial climate.
I'm excited see on that bill girlfriend., a band re-emerged post-pandemic with this strong serene sound, plus Paddy Hanna, who is constantly sending out brilliant pop missiles from the hills of Howth, and Elaine Malone, a charismatic performer on the verge of releasing a dense shimmering debut album this year. Also the largely unknown Pebbledash from Cork, who have a style and restraint beyond their years.
We have a very soulful day-time all-ages event on Saturday with three fresh and exciting new artists skirting around the crossovers of soul, jazz, R&B and club music, moondiver, Tomike and Qbanaa who is firing out infectious Cuban fused hits at the moment, not to mention our favourite DJ, feelgood city-pop queen Emmy Shigeta. In the evening Henry Earnest & Jenn Dreamcycles will perform their gush project, loaded with infectious hyper-pop jams.
The first single skydiiiving is incredible and I can't wait to listen to the whole album.
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Joining them is the masked theatrics of electronic producer ALYXIS, Cork beour-punks I Dreamed I Dream who I love and the brilliant alt-pop of Ria Rua.
The closing show features a real hero of mine, Paddy Keenan. I've never worked with him before despite my various projects through the years with traditional and folk figures from that golden 1970s era. We wanted Paddy to play on a bill with some younger artists who might view him as an inspiration, so we've got Iona Zajac, a brilliant songwriter original songwriter from Scotland, and Poor Creature, a brilliant new project from Cossy from Lankum and Ruth from Landless - Paddy himself will be accompanied by John Francis Flynn and Alan Burke, both legends in their own right of course.
We also called upon three entities that to us represent the adventurous spirit of programming and performance in Dublin today in the Crash Ensemble, Dublin Digital Radio and Improvised Music Company to curate line-ups. DDR have put together a fascinating unexpected bill with E the Artist, Ian Nyquist and Peist. IMC are launching their brand new venue, The Cooler, which is a godsend in Dublin, frankly. And unbelievably, Crash Ensemble are performing the Irish premiere of Philip Glass's accessible chamber masterwork Glassworks, which is hugely exciting, especially to see it in the tiny Gallery space.
As always I'm thankful to the DCC Arts Office for creating this platform and sticking with it even through some difficult years, and everyone who supports and contributes to keep this event going, in particular this year to tickets.ie who worked with us to achieve an effective booking system and help us keep ticket prices as low as possible.
It's a snapshot as I said, rather than a comprehensive portrait of music in Dublin but hopefully people will see something new they like and, importantly, meet new people.
MusicTown 2023 is at The Complex, Dublin from July 27th - 30th - find out more here.
