Totally Dublin 134

NOVEMBER 2015 / FREE / TOTALLYDUBLIN.IE

I KEEP MY SAD FACE HID Send in the clowns

TOTALLY DUBLIN

#134

with THE SPOOK OF THE THIRTEENTH LOCK THOMAS MORRIS STRUT and THE LOBSTER

There is a theory about Dublin’s unique dining and bar culture, basically, it states that the citizens socialize in the kind of places where they feel most at home. The bar/restaurant is a place to meet and entertain like-minded friends and perhaps meet new ones, to drink, to eat, to talk, to enjoy music and art, to simply relax.

Centred in the heart of the city’s culture quarter, THE MEETING HOUSE is certainly that kind of place. It’s cosmopolitan but not at all exclusive.

It’s undeniably hip but also rather laid-back. It’s staffed by a knowledgeable team who cannot be described as servers, rather facilitators; the kind of people who obviously love the job but you just know have other irons in various fires.

Speaking of fires, the choice of Burmese Themed Hot Cuisine is a brave one, and it works. Their 999 menu is highly regarded as one of the city’s most exciting new menus. Fine dining cuisine served in a casual dining setting if you will.

November is a month of innovation at The Meeting House Dublin, as they add new plates to their evening menu and launch a unique new ‘Absolute Brunch’. New plates now available on the evening menu include Blackened Cod, TMH Pork Dumplings, Mini Asian Tuna Burgers, Chicken

The Meeting House, Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

Htamin Gyaw and Mussel Curry, with sides like the Asian Raw Chopped Salad. All dishes as always are €9.99.

This November Absolute Brunch will launch with a bang at The Meeting House.

The new menu will include brunch classics with a twist, such as Glazed Pork Belly served with Soft Poached Duck Eggs, topped with Burmese Infused Smoked Hollandaise Sauce, resting on Toasted Coconut Buns. TMH Bao Buns will no doubt be a menu favourite, with fillings such as Aromatic Smoked Brisket of Beef, and not forgetting our Veggie friends, Tofu, Asparagus and Wild Mushrooms. There will also be lighter options such as exotic fresh fruit salad, layered with infused coconut milk and freshly squeezed, exotic juices.

This new menu will include mouth watering new cocktails like ‘The Absolut Mary’ and “The Bacon & Egg Martini”.

Absolute Brunch will be available every Saturday & Sunday, noon until 5pm.

Plates come at at either €6.66 or €9.99

( as always with menu’s at The Meeting House) and are designed for sharing with your friends.

For more information about the new evening and brunch menus, go to, www.facebook.com/meetinghousedublin or www.twitter.com/meetinghousedub

Open Monday-Friday, 5pm till late Saturday & Sunday, 12pm till late

For Bookings call: 01 670 3330 www.themeetinghousedublin.com

CINNAMON AND VANILLA BLEND.

ION T I D E D E LIMIT

Totally Dublin

60 Merrion Square Dublin 2 (01) 687 0695

issue 134 to remembering There’s a song on Joanna Newsom’s new album, which has soundtracked much of my month, called Sapokanikan, which details the constantly erased and rewritten history of a city (in her case New York). ‘The event is only in print!’ cries the lyric sheet. It felt apt then that our lead feature should see us talking about the 1913 Lockout as recreated

by Dublin band The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock. That chat which lead us to consider the oncoming tide of political remembrances that are just over the horizon of the new year, and how the ideals of 1916 are easy to chime in with because it’s aspirational, a struggle for an independent nation state, but 1913 was more difficult to commemorate because it was trying to determine what kind of state we wanted, and ultimately how many of the exploitations of 1913 remain. It’s precisely why this process of remembering is so important, to keep the event alive in thought and art, and of course to keep guitar orchestras in business.

- Ian Lamont

Publisher and Advertising Stefan Hallenius stefan@hkm.ie (01) 687 0695 087 327 1732

Editorial Director 8 Roadmap Street view

12 What If

Community, Season 8

14 Nice Gaff

Bad master plans

16 Design Blueprints

18 Garb

Structural studies

24 The Spook of the 13th Lock Unlocked

28 Thomas Morris

He knows what he’s doing

32 The Necks Strut their stuff

36 The Lobster Stuffed with taco

Peter Steen-Christensen ps@hkm.se

Editor & Web Editor

72 Games A beginning

74 Artsdesk Mad mist

76 Print

Big Themes

78 Film

Secret Histories

80 Sound

Rocking inside your heart

84 Listings A to Z

#134

with THE SPOOK OF THE THIRTEENTH LOCK THOMAS MORRIS STRUT and THE LOBSTER

Contributors

Lauren Kavanagh laurenekavanagh@gmail.com +44 75 989 73866

Arts Editor

Aidan Wall artsdesk@totallydublin.ie

Fashion Editor

Honor Fitzsimons honorfitzsimons@gmail. com

Film Editor

Oisín Murphy-Hall film@totallydublin.ie

Literary Editor

Advertising Manager

Tagine machine

TOTALLY DUBLIN

Art Direction & Design

52 Barfly 62 Gastro

Send in the clowns

Cover photo: Shoot styled by Sarah Flanagan, photographed by Gerry Balfe Smyth.

Info on page 41.

Gill Moore print@totallydublin.ie

Poker face

I KEEP MY SAD FACE HID

Ian Lamont editor@totallydublin.ie (01) 687 0695

Pierrot

40 Fashion Shoot

NOVEMBER 2015 / FREE / TOTALLYDUBLIN.IE

Aidan Lonergan al@hkm.ie 085 851 9113

Gerry Balfe Smyth Killian Broderick Tom Cahill Ruairí Casey Lisa Cox Dave Desmond Leo Devlin Ollie Dowling Patrick Dyar Sarah Flanagan Ryan Kennihan Megan Killeen Luke Maxwell Aoife McElwain Peter Morgan Martina Murray Bernard O’Rourke Sharon Phelan Mónica Tomàs Daniel Simon Eoin Tierney What If Dublin Team Danny Wilson

Sales Executives Karl Hofer kh@hkm.ie 085 869 7078 Al Keegan ak@hkm.ie 085 8519112

Distribution Kamil Zok kamil@hkm.ie

All advertising enquiries contact 01 - 6870 695 Read more at totallydublin.ie Totally Dublin is a monthly HKM Media publication and is distributed from 500 selected distribution points. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or part without the permission from the publishers. The views expressed in Totally Dublin are those of the respective contributors and are not necessarily shared by the magazine or its staff. The magazine welcomes ideas and new contributors but can assume no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or illustrations.

Printed by Stibo Denmark Totally Dublin - ISSN 1649-511X

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HERE'S TO A CAFÉ CHRISTMAS For Christmas party bookings call 01 677 4567, email bookings@cafeenseine.ie or visit www.cafeenseine.ie

CAFÉ EN SEINE, 40 DAWSON STREET, DUBLIN 2

ROADMAP words Ian Lamont

Shop Vertov Vertov is a new online vintage clothing and costume jewellery outlet that’s being run by – full disclosure – former Totally Dublin Arts Editor Rosa Abbott. Full of carefully selected and always hand-picked items, Vertov features glam gowns from big names spanning from the 1960s to the 1990s. As well as sharp threads, the website also features essays on the brand’s inspirations, such as an excellent piece on the woman that Andy Warhol proclaimed as ‘The Queen of the Night’, Dianne Brill. To get shopping, go to www.shopvertov.com

Slaint

Slaint is a new brand just launched by Eoin Cooney of super-fancy men’s accessories. Their first two products, a holdall and a briefcase (on the way back, apparently) are both made of leather and – here’s the science bit – both include a unique inbuilt charging system for laptops (including MacBooks), tablets and phones, making them ideal for frequent travellers or James Bond type characters. Slaint are lining up local retailers for the new year, but until then you can find their gear at www. slaintbrand.com

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Pecha Kucha December sees the last of four seasonal Pecha Kucha nights that have been run throughout 2015 by Irish Architecture Foundation and Totally Dublin, with our Winter Edition taking place in the Sugar Club on Wednesday 2nd December at 7pm, with tickets costing €6.

Throughout the year, the events have seen a really incredible variety of speakers who have all dedicated their time and expertise to share knowledge and run the presentation gauntlet that is Pecha Kucha. For those not au fait yet with the format, speakers have 20 slides, each lasting 20 seconds – which adds up to less than seven minutes – to tell the story of their work, their process or anything else they want to pontificate on.

If you have missed out on the events there is something you do (besides making the next event!). Visit pechakucha.org/cities/dublin and you can view both videos and slide shows with audio of the presentations from this year’s events. Particular highlights include Dr. Matthew Jebb of the Botanical Gardens with his insight into the secret life of plants [1] ;journalist and broadcaster Manchán Magan’s investigation into the significance of gates and borders to Irish communities [2] ; Broden Giambrone of Transgender Equality Network Ireland telling the tale of his movement’s struggle for recognition [3]; Rosie O’Reilly of We Are Islanders telling us about her jar of culture (the bacteria kind) [4]; Douglas Carson of Carson & Crushell Architects’ showing us the inside of his house and how to make a park happen in the city [5]; and Dr. Lisa Godson’s fascinating history of the speculum as both an instrument of medicine and an instrument of power. [6] Lined-up for the rousing finale to the year’s events are: Aisling Rogerson of The Fumbally, John Mahon from The Locals, former Totally Dublin editor Daniel Gray, and many more. As usual, keep your eyes peeled to facebook.com/totallydublin and @totallydublin for ticket giveaways as the event approaches.

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ROADMAP words Ian Lamont

Bloq

Bloq is an Irish streetwear start-up run by Brendan Ennis and Simon Bastable who are launching their AW15 line, titled Collection 03 this month. Their trademark style is clean design and a monochromatic palette, which the founders believe ‘can be everyday wear, but also has the versatility to be that special piece in your wardrobe.’ The line features headwear (i.e. hats), as well as crewneck sweatshirts and hoodies. You can find their collection at the Bloq showroom at 6 Cumberland Street in Dun Laoghaire or on their website at www.bloq.ie.

Show & Tell

Cave Paintings

GrandSLAM

‘I have a horsey… neeeighh, neeighhh.’ If the pathetic words of Milhouse Van Houten are what come to mind when you hear the term ‘show & tell’, think again! Show & Tell is a oneday creative conference and design fair being put together by the team at Hunt and Gather in the salubrious surrounds of Smock Alley Theatre. There’s three talk sessions curated and hosted by Made It, Le Cool and our good selves, each focusing on the experiences of creative enterprises at varying stages of their careers from new start-ups to established heads.

Elsewhere in the theatre, there is a design fair with talented young things selling their wares, very handy what with the old Winterval gift exchange just around the corner. The event takes place from 11am on Saturday 28th November, with tickets costing €12 per session or €30 for the whole day.

Cave Writings is regular reading night set up by Dublin-based writers to showcase the work and talent of the city’s burgeoning scene of young writers (and for said talented young writers to meet and trade hot lit-scene goss, of course.)

Cave Paintings is a new project they are launching in an attempt to create better links between the writing and visual arts communities within the cities. For Cave Paintings, ten of the Cave writers are being paired up with ten visual artists ranging from painters to film-makers, with little other brief than to respond to one another’s work. in Molloy and Dowling’s Opticians on Kildare Street

Keen readers will have noted during our feature in the August issue of Totally Dublin about The Moth storytelling night that the events are actually all a competition building up to a grand final. And in November, the big day arrives. The Moth GrandSLAM takes place on Friday 6th November in the Sugar Club, the culmination of a year’s worth of StorySLAM events, where close to 120 five-minute tales of the desperate and bedraggled (and hilarious too) have been performed. This event will see the best of those pitting their stories against each other – with the theme of Fish out of Water – in an effort to become the first GrandSLAM champion of Ireland.

And we’ve got two tickets to give away at www.totallydublin.ie/competitions/showandtell

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The results of the collaborations will be exhibited between Monday 16th and Friday 20th November.

Tara Flynn will host the night 7pm on Friday 6th

To apply, go to rhagallery.ie/workshops/animated-

November on the Peacock Stage at the Abbey

drawing-workshop

Theatre, with tickets costings €18.

WHAT IF DUBLIN... words and images What if Dublin team

Last month at @what_if_dublin we queried how we could improve the sense of community in Dublin city. Outdoor screens where people could watch Ireland’s matches together, urban farms where communities could grow their own vegetables, and the restoration of neglected public baths along the coastline were just some of the suggestions we received.

When we think about Ireland, we think about the pub, which has long been the centre of the community. In the past they also acted as post offices, DIY shops and even morgues. Inside exists a place where people can gather and have a chat. However, these don’t cater for people of all ages or social groups.

What if Dubliners had more inclusive places to meet and engage? Places where people of all ages and backgrounds could have casual interactions without the need to spend money. What if there was more for teenagers to do?

There is a huge amount of vacant and underutilised space in the City. Could this space be used to enhance communities? Could we use these spaces to create community centres, parks, playgrounds, basketball courts, pools or even urban farms? If we provide facilities for teenagers to blow off steam, we will also reduce the likelihood of them getting involved in antisocial behavior. Communities could move closer together and actively plan their environment.

An example of this type of development can soon be seen at Cork Street where a local community has initiated a public park and play space, taking advantage of the large derelict site in the area. It will be open from May next year and will surely enhance the quality of life for the inhabitants of the area. With a sliver of land, the backing of the council and a pinch of imagination, you can really make a difference to a community.

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...FELT A SENSE OF COMMUNITY?

This month at @what_if_dublin we will be looking at the possibility of building up in Dublin. Get involved and send us your ideas. They could be featured here next month!

28TH OF NOV 10AM - 7PM

NICE GAFF words Ryan Kennihan

Last month an intriguing building emerged at the junction of Gardiner Street and Summerhill.

It’s not new however, but 30 years old. This particular corner of the intersection always seemed like an overgrown end of Diamond Park, and then one day the trees, hedges and creepers suddenly disappeared and in their place was left a modernist concrete bunker. The sign said ‘IDA Small Business Centre’ and if you would like to see it you had better hurry as it is about to be demolished.

The building is beguiling in part because of its unexpectedness, but more so for its many ambiguities. From the Southern or Eastern viewpoint it has a muscular and austere beauty yet when seen from Summerhill it nearly disappears. It was built in the mid-’80s as part of the Dublin Corporation’s urban renewal programme to provide low cost space for startup businesses for the population of the newly constructed neighbourhood. Yet its design seems determinedly anti-urban, turning its back on the important intersection and refusing its obligation to make a piece of urban fabric.

One can imagine the type of city life the project attempted to engender with these small robust units that could provide for a hairdresser or a mechanic’s garage in close proximity, creating a lively and diverse pedestrian experience.

The sad irony is that this is exactly the type of city life that existed in this part of the city right up until the entire Georgian neighbourhood was demolished by the Corporation to allow for this and the adjacent buildings. This corner of the city is emblematic of many places in Dublin where centuries of slowly evolving small-scale development was abandoned in favour of largescale master plans. Here the misguided master plan, a veritable catalogue of ill-conceived planning concepts, eliminated an ancient city street, exchanged urban space for inward-looking

14

suburban cul-de-sacs, created numerous pockets perfect for anti-social anything, added in a bit of road widening, and most importantly it abandoned the small-scale pattern of the city for a series of large-scale structures constructed in the cheapest possible fashion. Unfortunately, in the ensuing decades these development strategies have become commonplace.

The loss of this IDA Centre is distressing not simply because of the disappearance of this interesting, unconventional building but because it represents the passing of a type of development that seems no longer possible.

Throughout the city, retail spaces in new developments are almost exclusively mid to large scale as developers prefer fewer units that can be let in longer term contracts to more established companies. The rents for these units are artificially high as they are determined not by market rates but by the high projected income used by developers to get the initial building loan. One need only look a few streets away to Smithfield to see the result – a decade of vacancy and a paucity of urban life. One need only look to the rest of the traditional Georgian city for its highly successful antithesis.

There are a number a bright sparks emerging throughout Dublin based on this bottom-up small scale creation of vibrant polis, Block T, the Fumbally Exchange and the Chocolate Factory come to mind. But the city needs many more buildings like this IDA centre, providing opportunity for individuals to make a living while making city life. Unfortunately the IDA centre is making way for the developer’s building du jour, an ultra high density seven storey student housing block with almost no ground floor retail space. The loss felt here has less to do with the quality of this building’s architecture and much more to do with the way contemporary Dublin is being made.

IDA SMALL BUSINESS CENTRE Architect: Scott Tallon Talker

Ryan Kennihan is an architect (rwka.com) and lecturer at the Dublin School of Architecture.

11 Upper Baggot St. D4

01 6687170

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Complimentary Prosecco Reception for groups of 10 or more Mon - Wed in December

DESIGN words Lauren Kavanagh

Colour outside the lines Colouring books for grown-ups are all the rage these days, as a fun form of creative therapy in this screen-soaked age of smart phones and tablets. Newest to the throng is the Vogue Colouring Book, 96 pages of illustrations to colour as you please. Vogue commissioned Royal College of Art professor Ian Webb to create the book, drawing inspiration from issues of the magazine from the 1950s. Cue reproductions of ballgowns and cocktail dresses from the likes of Balenciaga, Christian Dior and Chanel, as well as style tips from the era.

The Vogue Colouring book, available from amazon.com

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Design for kids

Campaign revival

Design It is an exhibition that aims to introduce children to design. The Ark commissioned five Irish designers to create new products for kids, teaching them about the processes of design by recreating each designer’s individual studio, using their sketches, photographs and working prototypes to reveal how they get from an initial idea to the final product. Some designers included are Leo Scarff, Snug and Print Block, giving the kids an idea of design practises ranging from textiles to furniture.

The exhibition is free in, and runs from Saturday 7th November to Saturday 16th January, from 10am to 5pm.

In 1959, ICAD published Campaign: the journal of the Institute of Creative Advertising and Design, which ran for just eleven issues, until 1963.

Focussing on graphic design, and Irish design in particular, it included contributions from Jan de Fouw, Bill Bolger, Giles Talbot Kelly and Jarlath Hayes.

Now ICAD, in association with ID2015, has announced that they are to publish issue 12, with a view to producing an annual publication from here on in. As well as highlighting great contemporary graphic design and advertising, the magazine will reproduce key texts and revive comment and issues raised in the original magazine.

ark.ie/events/view/design-it-exhibition

icad.ie

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GARB words Honor Fitzsimons

IT’S A CINCH Since the inception of the Roscommon-born designer’s luxury hand-crafted leather label in 2007, Úna Burke’s inimitable artisanal work has steadily grown in popularity to reach stratospheric proportions. Her avant garde style has gained fans in Rihanna, Lady Gaga and fashion icon Daphne Guinness, with her collections regularly appearing in Vogue, i-D magazine, and a special collaboration for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. We caught up with Úna just landed back in London after her Paris Fashion Week presentations.

NEWS, REVIEWS, LISTINGS, MUSIC, ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, FASHION, STREET STYLE, EATING OUT, EATING IN, NIGHTLIFE, DAYLIFE, HETERO AND GAYLIFE, FILM, THEATRE, PARKS, SHOPS, PUBS, CLUBS AND HAPPY DUBS, WHAT’S ON, WHAT’S GOOD, WHAT ARE YOU UP TO?

TOTALLYDUBLIN.IE

Your work is renowned for its strict sculptural quality. When you are creating a piece, how do you relate it to the human form? What is the process?

I work directly on the human form and on the mannequin, so that’s how the pieces evolve rather than me starting out with a sketch. So I will play with my leather and develop construction techniques and bind those to the body. Everything is based around awareness of what women want to feel like when they’re wearing the pieces, so there’s threads of corsetry, and the functionality of corsetry and how it straightens the body; the back is straight, or the shoulders go back. The woman looks and feels proud and also gives an aura of strength. There’s a piece that’s almost like a Victorian collar, from SS13, and that makes the wearer almost raise their head. My process is very much conscious of the human form and what women want to feel like. I’m a woman and I know what we’re worried about and what we’re not worried about. When somebody’s fitting something on here, as sometimes we do private showroom appointments, I would suggest ways around what areas a customer is worried about.

Could you talk us through the concept for your latest collection? Or the themes that you find that you come back to?

There are certain things that always come through and then, in each individual collection, these different ideas will be interpreted in a different way or there will be different versions of the same end point. In many ways there is a great consideration for opposites, how good and evil, or black and white are necessary for each other to co-exist and the irony within that. Also, how a positive experience can become a negative, and a negative one becomes positive depending on perspective and how the human mind processes it. Then that leads us on to the human mind itself and my interest in psychology and how that always influences the concepts I deal with within a collection. I’m very much a people-watcher, I’m deeply interested in human behaviour and sociology as well as psychology. This leads us to military armour and how it is an obvious form of strength. It’s about empowering women and making a women stand tall and feel proud of herself, whether she’s wearing a bracelet from the collection or whether she decides to go a little bit braver and wear a belt, or if she decides to be even braver and wear one of the bigger pieces.

It’s about always finding the strong woman within, as there is always a strong woman within whether we are at the point in our lives where we show it or not, or more obviously than some.

But even if we hide it, that woman is very strong within and [my work] is representing that in a physical way.

Also my process being craft-based is part of a set of values that I have. Whether it’s a woman

wearing a piece or even a man wearing one of our bracelets – we even had [fashion designer] Philip Lim buy an art piece from us – the people that appreciate our work appreciate our set of values; which is to do with longevity, valuing the time and love and effort, physically and mentally, that has gone into something made by a human being not by a machine. These things are important to me as the designer and to the team working here, who are all working to the same goal with the same ethics in mind, so it’s very honourable. The process and design of the pieces are timeless, it’s not throwaway fashion, and it’s never supposed to be that. What I do is very much against that ‘fast-fashion’ movement that we have at the moment that isn’t good for the environment. I feel it’s miss-educating people, people aren’t aware of quality as much, they don’t care about it as much as they used to in the past.

I guess I’m kind of old-school in my thinking.

You studied MA Fashion Artefact at Cordwainers College, London. Do you see your work as being of the fashion world or art world?

I’d say I’m somewhere in between. I would say it depends on the piece, to be quite honest.

My graduate work I would consider art pieces because that’s what was most important to me when I was making them, I wasn’t considering the fashion aspect, I wasn’t using the body as a canvas, I was using it as a reference point. With the fashion collections I’m thinking about wearability and how its wearer feels and how the body straightens up and so on. For the Prosthetics exhibition at the Showstudio Gallery in Knightsbridge they stood alone. We constructed them in a way that they were bound closed and had pieces of wood inside of them. They looked ghostly and haunting, and I would have loved to use them in shoots but couldn’t because they were pieces that were apart from the body, and that, in essence, kept to the original concept.

What projects do you have on the go now?

Well most recently, a project that I was absolutely thrilled about was the project with Lexus. Lexus sent us their leather that they use in the interior of their CT cars and we made a dress from it and a shoulder piece. Every aspect of the project was fun, the making of it itself was challenging because it was a different kind of leather. It was a softer leather than what I would normally work with so it was difficult with some of the tools.

There’s lots of problem solving! On the day of the photoshoot for Guardian Weekend myself and my assistant went for the actual filming part, which was launched on September 5th on The Guardian’s website. There was fire and everything, lots of drama on the day! That project was really fun, and great to work with the people shooting it on the day, which very often we don’t get to do. Úna’s work is stocked at MoMuse in the Powerscourt Townhouse on South William Street, D2 and her work will also be exhibited as part of Portfolio at Solomon Gallery in the Westbury Mall, Balfe Street, D2. You can see more of her work on www.unaburke.com

GARB words Honor Fitzsimons

TOUCHY SUBJECT Recent graduate of NCAD and Future Makers Award recipient Mairead Fox creates intricate and tactile textiles which go hand-in-hand with a measured approach to proportion and colour, further displaying the intrinsic nature of craft in fashion design born out of Ireland.

If we could start by you telling us a little about yourself?

I’m 22 and I’m originally from North County Dublin, in between Swords and Ashbourne. I’ve always wanted to do fashion, originally when I was in school, my main focus was to do fashion.

I didn’t really know much about textiles or making fabrics, really just doing fashion design was my end-goal. I applied for NCAD, did the portfolio year and, when I got in there, I started to explore other things like sculpture and art. When you’re in NCAD you start opening up to lots of different areas and then I found textiles which, for me, was something a bit more than just doing pattern cutting. I could stretch it out a bit more and see what else I could do, work with different materials and fabrics. The first year was a general year, doing different bits like weaving, but what I eventually went into was screen-printing and printed textiles which, for me, actually wouldn’t have been what I was exactly thinking about doing, but at the same time I couldn’t find myself settling in a different area. What I liked about [Textile Design] was that you were busy all the time every day, creating and making things, and seeing what to do with it then after that. That’s why I loved it, we were always working through

Blueprint Talks A talk series prese nte d by Indig o & Cloth X Making Sp a c e surrounding the curious and cre a ti ve throughou t the ye ar of Irish design 2015

9 E s s e x S t r e e t , Te m p l e B a r, D u b l i n 2 | i n d i g o a n d c l o t h . c o m · m a k i n g s p a c e . i e

a process. In fourth year we got to take what we had learned and use it in our own way which was really good.

What inspired your graduate collection?

The tile of my graduate collection was ‘Touch, Handle, and Interaction’, and really what I wanted to do was create fabrics that had a real touch sensibility and emphasise how you really wanted to interact with these fabrics. You know when you’re in a shop and touch something and you think ‘Oh, wow!’, or with knitwear where you want to grab it and it’s nice and warm! I’m really interested in that whole side of fabrics because I feel personally that everything has to have a surface – if it’s flat it’s not good enough, I want it to have a texture.

I found myself a bit stuck in Printed Textiles because everything was a bit flat and nothing was giving me that texture. I came across a technique called Expandex, which is a heat process, so you screen-print with the Expandex and then you process the fabric in a baker’s oven and what would happen would be the fabric would change and form into these different kinds of shapes. I developed that over the year, and what I learned was that I was working 2D to 3D, thinking of form, and then flat shapes, and then back to form. I would put very flat vector shapes on the screen to print – lines, and very uniform and sequenced patterns. So I screen-printed them, and I would use a lot of stretch and synthetic fabric like jersey so that the fabric would bulk up in different ways because of the elastic in them. I would put the printed fabric in the baker’s oven, so the different yarns would stretch and pull and create these pleats and different shapes. That was really fun. I would choose my fabric by basically touching everything in Dublin, feeling and testing them, finding out what worked, which was quite exciting because you didn’t really know what way it was going to come out and you just had to go for it.

For my colour palette I kept everything quite tonal, I feel that you pay more attention to the detail of something when you’re not really distracted by the colour. I wanted them to be very

systematic; blue against blue, amber with amber so that everything is very co-ordinated. I worked everything around four or five colours and everything spawned from that.

What really inspired all of my work was my photography. I’ve always had a really strong interest in photography. I would go out and take lots of pictures and when I looked at them, I’d see that there are photographs in the same colour or photographing the same kind of texture, so that there was always an order. That’s really what brought the rest of my collection together.

I focused on the blue, the beige, the amber, the white. It was really a direct response to me looking around my environment.

You can find out more about Mairead Fox Textile Design on on her Facebook page.

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FINEST WORKSONG 24

The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock bring the Irish worker’s story to life with the help of a guitar orchestra.

words Ian Lamont photos Killian Broderick

In July of 2007,

the first of two Analog Festivals took place in Grand Canal Square – a Grand Canal Square yet to have a Daniel Libeskind designed theatre shaping it no less – which featured free concerts from Cinematic Orchestra, Congotronics and a performance of Glenn Branca’s Symphony No. 13: Hallucination City. This work by the New York downtown avant garde no-wave legend boasted of a 100-strong orchestra of guitarists (though realistically, there were about 60 performing on that occasion) that were all locally sourced from Dublin and around Dublin, and trained in two crash-course practice sessions in The Factory on Barrow Street in the days before.

The performers arrived at those rehearsals with their electric guitars strung in extremely unusual fashion (for those interested, in three sets of unison notes, depending on what part you were playing) as the masses of group emails in the weeks leading up to the practice and performance had specified. And after much plugging and tweaking and ruffling of scores on stands, the amassed orchestra hit its first notes.

‘You remember that from the Branca orchestra*, the first time everybody played together, the hairs literally stuck up on the back my neck,’ explains Enda Bates one of the guitarists of The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock, the Irish band who themselves have put together a guitar orchestra for the purposes of performing a new 50-minute long work entitled Lockout based around the events of the 1913 Lockout, the industrial dispute over workers’ rights to unionise and protect themselves from exploitation.

The core members of the Spook of the Thirteenth Lock (Allen Blighe on vocals, banjo and guitar, Enda Bates on guitar, Ro Hayes on bass, Brian O’Higgins on Drums and Liam Caffrey on guitar) will have their ranks swelled by 13 extra guitarists when they take the stage in Hangar on Andrews Lane on Saturday 21st November to perform the premiere of Lockout.

The makeshift army is drawn mainly from the connections that Dublin music veterans will make, particularly as stalwarts of Portobello’s Ballroom of Romance Club, at which Allen’s former band Holy Ghost Fathers featured regularly. ‘We have a few people from Large Mound, like Mark Jordan who used to play with Si Schroeder, and Collin Morris who plays with Miriam Ingram, and Hugh McCabe who used to do that blog, Traces of the Real, full of long exposure photos. When you’re on the scene for a while you know so many guitarists!’ explains Allen. Enda continues, ‘That and through the Music and Media Technologies course [where Enda also teaches, in TCD], I have to say that I mined that quite a bit. A lot of guitarists come

*If you hadn’t already guessed it, I played in the orchestra that performed Branca’s piece myself.

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through that course and they would have some experience with scores and notation. Then there’s people who’ve played in other guitar orchestras, like Marc Balbirnie who played in Maynooth Guitar Orchestra. The logistics are complicated, but it’s worth it.’

‘I think we’d been thinking about doing this since the Branca thing, but seriously now for the last two or three years,’ says Allen, who is the singer and lyricist at the heart of Spook. ‘I think the cut-off point was June 2013, when we had really finished pushing our last album [2012’s The Brutal Here And Now], we thought it’s time to do something new. We had the first movement ready for the open rehearsal we had in 2014 and then we were thinking, how do we push it on? How do we broaden it out? Because we really felt like we were on to something worth pursuing. And we’ve been hard at it since then, whilst juggling everything else... all sorts of real life stuff going on.’

‘It just kind of dovetailed, the political anniversary and the idea of the guitar orchestra,’ explains Enda. ‘Talking about this industrial strife and workers, and then this idea of getting a big ensemble seemed like a natural fit in that regard. Collective action, big groups, you know?’ says Allen.

‘We had two open rehearsals with the full ensemble. Actually the first was a 14 piece arrangement, which we then decided to expand, and also we wanted to address the gender balance a bit, as it was 14 dudes,’ says Enda. ‘Not very socialist!’ continues Allen. ‘The second rehearsal was much closer to the finished product.’

Spook’s two previous albums, their self-titled debut and The Brutal Here and Now had developed from an initial blend of Thin Lizzy style twin-lead guitars, and the folkier material that touched on traditional music and ballads, though they stressed that they come from a background in alternative rock rather than trad, inspired as much by droning soundscapes of My Bloody Valentine, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Texan weirdists Lift To Experience. Lockout, however, is their biggest work yet and a departure from the structure and processes of their first two records. It came together through a huge combined effort of arrangement, research and logistics between, and the band have plans to record the work at the end of the year after its debut public performance.

Enda explains the process of its creation in terms of the musical arrangement: ‘We improvised a lot of material, jammed out stuff as a band. In the past we would have kept working that into a song collectively, whereas here we had a narrative, and we wanted to tell the story chronologically. We had this structure that we had mapped out with historical beats that we wanted to cover all the way through. Then it was a question of mapping the pieces we had to different areas, writing new bits for different parts, and then a circular process of myself and Allen working independently and then bringing pieces of work together and playing them as a band, feeding it back around like that. It needed more of an offline way of doing it, rather than improvising everything out.’

Combining the fiddly nature of the melodies of traditional music with the realities of a guitar orchestra was one of the challenges that they faced. ‘Broadly speaking there’s five groups of guitars, there’s four groups within the orchestra,

and then there’s the melody guitars which is us from the core band, and Mark Jordan, and we handle the fiddly, complex, fast, melodic stuff, because we’re rehearsing it a bit more. The orchestra is the harmonic background to that, so that allows you to get the fast detail in one group, and the slower moving harmonic texture behind that.’

‘Some of the things that we were musically interested in were playing with consonance and dissonance. So for example, the orchestra guitars are all tuned to this open C tuning, it’s CGCGCC, a lot of unison, which is a real trad thing too, keeping the major-minor thing out of it. We’ve always found that one of the really cool things about traditional Irish melody lines, is that there’s all sorts of ways that you can harmonise, even if in Irish traditional music, it’s one way a lot of the time. It also allows you to play with dissonance in an unusual way. We’ve always done that, but maybe relying on distortion pedals, whereas in this, every guitar has a clean tone, there are no effects pedals, but you can do very interesting things with dissonance then. Particularly during the “Bloody Sunday” section of the piece – the first Bloody Sunday was in 1913 – it gets very dissonant then, using cluster chords layered up among different guitars. There’s also sections where we’ve left it somewhat open, where the guitarists can finger pick their own pattern, but when you layer that up over 16 guitars, you get these rolling waves.

The start of the fourth movement, “The Mighty Wave”, that section is very much based around that.’

Aside from the musical bombast that the orchestra brings, Lockout also addresses a very politically complex moment in Ireland’s history.

I ask Allen, as the lyricist, how he approaches a piece of history like the 1913 Lockout. ‘A lot of reading! But there’s one reference in particular, which is Pádraig Yeates’ great Lockout: Dublin 1913 book which is part of an overall quadrilogy of books he did about the “Decade of Centenaries”. He recently released the Civil War one. It’s quite a tome, it’s very detailed and it gives a lot of inspiration. It’s the first one of the books he did. He’s a great guy and it’s very interesting to get a socialist history of Dublin, taking into account the conditions, and really setting the scene for everything that kicked off. It really gives a sense of the political complexities of the time. It’s a very interesting time because you have this Independence movement but you also have this well-established middle and upper class of a nationalist bent, who are very much eyeing up the change as a repositioning of power, rather than any sort of real change for the average people or the working people of the country. It’s a great book. There’s a few other references, there’s this actor, Ger O’Leary, who does these speeches from Larkin – well, more improvisations from the character of Larkin – and we reference one of his speeches in it. But mostly Pádraig Yeates.’

Although the band have touched history previously in songs like The Hare, the opening track from their debut album, this time the process was different. ‘This time around, it’s much more focused and the idea expanded to a much greater degree than in just one story or one song. I mean, we did touch on the life of Roger Casement in The Hare, and 1798 and other historical touchpoints, but this time around it

“Talking about this industrial strife and workers, and then this idea of getting a big ensemble seemed like a natural fit in that regard.”

was much more focussed and took a lot more concentration to do that. A lot of it was working with direct quotes, taking different ideas to tell the story while trying to be as faithful as possible.

I think the interesting thing about this is that it gives you the opportunity to tell a story from a lot of a different voices; so, for example, Jim Larkin himself, William Martin Murphy, the policemen, one of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, even individual rioters or union guys. It was a big story to tell, potentially, from a lot of voices, that gives a lot of freedom for doing different styles. There’s a lot of melodic singing there, there’s also a lot of spoken, or shouted, or intoned voices. There’s a lot more opportunity for experimentation than on the previous records.’

With 2016 just around the corner and the anniversary-overload that it entails, how do you feel about the representation of the anniversary as things that have simply happened, rather than something that we have learned from? ‘With any of these anniversaries, different political parts of the country will feel ownership,’ says Blighe, ‘and it’s very much one for the socialists and the Labour party, and they organised quite a nice day for the 1913 centenary celebrations. You have to view this as something led by Labour, and Labour as a member of the current coalition are pushing certain austerity policies.

So it’s a difficult one, because when you look at the level of poverty in the country, and the austerity policies being driven down, is it fair?

How do you contrast today with back then, where you have the influence of a business class too. The influence of Denis O’Brien versus the influence of William Martin Murphy, the like of that. There are a lot of common dimensions between Ireland right now and back then. There is a sense that conditions are deteriorating and that there isn’t a real recovery there. So it’s quite poignant to look at 1913 as being a genuine struggle between the left and right, where at least at a superficial level, the right won. While there were a lot of victories subsequent to 1913 by the labour movement, there really is a sense that things are turning back right now.’

‘It’s also interesting to see just how much focus there is on 1916,’ says Enda. ‘I mean, there wasn’t that much about 1913, and I think that’s quite revealing. I think 1916 is, perhaps, a bit safer to commemorate – because it’s a little bit harder to draw parallels with today and our current situation – than perhaps it is to commemorate the Lockout, where the industrial strife between right and left is very relevant for today, and maybe a little bit uncomfortably so for certain people. You look at zero-hour contracts, and the blacklisting that was going on in the UK until recently.’

‘Even Jobsbridge, Gateway, all these exploitational labour policies,’ says Allen. ‘I think it’s fair to say that 1916, the War of Independence, these are aspirational things about a new nation state, whereas 1913, or the Civil War, are really struggles about what kind of state that is. And now that we’re in that state, that’s why the 1913 and Civil War anniversaries are so important.’

The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock & Electric Guitar Orchestra will perform the debut performance of Lockout at Hangar, Andrew’s Lane Theatre on Saturday 21st November, with tickets costings €15/€12 from www.tickets.ie. and the performance beginning at 8pm.

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words Gill Moore photo Sarah Davis-Goff

Stranger than fiction homas Morris has just published his first collection of short stories, We Don’t Know What We’re Doing with Faber and Faber. Last year, he commissioned and edited Dubliners 100, a collection that comprised 15 ‘cover stories’ of Joyce’s original stories from Dubliners. He edits The Stinging Fly magazine, a space for new Irish and international short writing. He is from Caerphilly, and as his book’s author bio says, he ‘was educated solely through the Welsh language until the age of 18’, although this gives the somewhat misleading impression that it has been a great achievement for him to write a book in English. Instead, the book is an achievement in itself (even for a native speaker).

Described by the TLS as ‘a beguiling and spellbinding collection’ and by the Irish Times as ‘fresh’ and ‘at times brilliant’, the book’s interwoven tales of Caerphilly locals are funny, sad, and really very good.

Disclaimer: Thomas Morris is also my ex.

Ordinarily, writing publicly about one’s exes is probably best avoided. However, as Thomas recently wrote a nice piece in the Irish Times about his writing habits, which detailed ejecting me from his home on a cold rainy night at 1am so that he could write undisturbed (with my bike lights broken – a detail unfairly omitted from the original article), all seems fair.

Let’s start at the very start (apart from the copyright page). There’s a disclaimer: ‘These stories are works of fiction. Any resemblance to real life is purely inevitable.’ I can confirm there are definitely details, characteristics and even entire characters nicked from real life, which seems inevitable in a book so filled with minute observational writing. How does that process work? When you’re writing a character or a scene, do you find yourself naturally adding little details you’ve been storing up? Does it ever go the other way round, so that you’re basically writing someone you know but have to change enough so that they don’t get angry?

Firstly, I think a lot of writers can be dishonest about the source material for their work. ‘Oh, I just make it all up,’ – as if they’re just creating characters ex nihilo, and that it has no bearing on real life. Or maybe I’m just doing it wrong.

But I do take an awful lot from ‘real life’, so to speak. I’m not sure where else you’re meant to find the stuff that’s real and feels authentic.

But, if I’m being honest, rather than stealing from all friends and family, I draw a lot from my own experiences. I’d still feel odd stealing wholesale from someone else’s life. But there are little things: the way someone moves, or the way their leg shakes when they’re nervous or a particular feeling that someone has admitted to having. I keep using the word feeling when I talk about the book and I’m coming to realise that that’s what I’m most interested in – attempting to express particular emotional states at particular moments in people’s lives. And it’s going after those feelings, trying to pin them down, that ended up taking it beyond realism in some instances. I’m more interested in emotional realism than social realism per se.

That’s an interesting way of describing it, because it really does feel like the stories follow the logic of feelings – and that makes them unrelentingly realistic sometimes, hyperrealistic at others, and occasionally just weird.

It’s back to that idea of trying to capture what it’s like to be inside a human body and sometimes experiences can be so intense, so odd, that you have to leap over the fence in order to make it feel real. On the one hand, the attempt is purely

personal – I want to get back to a particular painful moment (which is, often it seems, tied to a kind of head-loneliness). I think I just arrived at the point where I realised the more particular and minute you go, the better chance you have of that experience being one that someone else will understand and perhaps relate to.

The way that affects emotional relatability or distance for the reader is interesting. A lot of the more surreal or absurd elements aren’t necessarily in the writing itself, but in the characters doing or imagining seemingly batshit crazy things without blinking an eyelid – I’m thinking here of the narrator in ‘17’ setting up his women-wrestling booth by the castle, or the woman peeling her face off in ‘Fugue’, and so on. These characters don’t know what they’re doing, but a lot of the time the reader doesn’t either – they don’t or can’t explain themselves to us. If the book is driven by the internal logic of feelings, is that necessarily a sort of erratic logic? And does it have to be unknowable?

I do like those moments in my own life when I’ve done one thing, which has led to another, and before I know it, I’m eight links down the chain, and I’m like, ‘What the fuck?’ With ‘17’, this particular scene isn’t in the story – but I always imagine him after a particular intense bout [of wrestling], beaming smiling, sweat dripping off his face, and then just kind of catching himself half-thinking, ‘Ah yeah...’. One of the greatest odd moments in film, for example, is the end of The Graduate when they’re sitting on a bus having bailed from the wedding and they’ve run on and it’s all exciting and they’re sitting there, side-by-side, and it’s really difficult to read their expressions or to pinpoint the exact intended mood of the scene. But there’s an overriding sense of them having gotten carried away, and now they’re at a pause and are like, ‘right, fuck, what now?’

I remember Sean O’Reilly once saying that motivation in fiction can be a dishonest thing.

When you’re sitting in a bar, and you look around the room, can you actually know what people are thinking? Now, you can take that in a whole manner of directions with writing but it posed an interesting question for me: what happens if you just have characters behave and allow

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their psychology to become behaviour? In that way, the reader just had to try and deduce the motivation in the same way that we all have to deduce each other’s motivations day to day. It’s a convention of film and theatre, I suppose, where there’s less immediate access to the interiority of characters. But the advantage of fiction is that you can go deeply interior when you want. And when you’re writing, you can play with those ideas of distance – when to go close in on a feeling, and when to pan back.

The craft and the consideration of form is absolutely essential, but writing is a form of plunging and need you things to plunge from.

Those absurd or meta-realistic moments seem important to you. And the epigraphs you chose are by Donald Barthelme and Richard Brautigan, writers we normally think of as really explicitly absurdist, countercultural or ’experimental’. It’s silly to class things in terms of genre anyway, and as we’ve mentioned there are lots of strange surreal moments in your collection, but the book is still predominantly grounded in realistic details and day-today life. And it’s been read by others as realistic or even restrained, notably by your own mother who felt you had ‘too light a touch’ if I remember correctly.

I’ve got such a great quote for this...

You can see where I’m going. If it’s only emotional logic holding it together, why are you still holding onto realistic models so much? Do you see yourself being more consciously experimental in other works?

Firstly, this quote from Barthelme is good: ‘That’s what’s curious when people say, of writers, this one’s a realist, this one’s a surrealist, this one’s a super-realist, and so forth. In fact, everybody’s a realist offering true accounts of the activity of mind. There are only realists.’ But, to answer your question, yes, I feel a temptation to write something a lot less based in the grounded day-to-day stuff. But I’m between two places on this. On the one side you have all the new Americans like Ben Marcus wanting to create these ‘engines’ and ‘machines’ that deliver you to a feeling at the end. The language around all this is appealing at first. But I was reading a Keith Ridgway story the other day, the first in his collection Standard Time, and I was just blown away because he seems to have found a way to just plug you straight into a feeling. He doesn’t feel the need to create these elaborate machines that you have to get through in order to come out the other side feeling a certain way. Yet I say all this without having read a Ben Marcus story.

What’s my resistance? Jealousy probably.

On these schools of writing… Given The Stinging Fly, could it be a bad thing for you to be so immersed in the world of stories and literature in general? I’m thinking of it a bit in the sense of the ‘difficult second album’, where a band gets popular based on its first album of songs about stuff and then loses everybody by writing a second album that’s mostly about being a band because that’s their life now. Not that I think you’ll start writing meta-things about stories themselves. But craft can take over, too, can’t it? I saw another little aphorism you wrote somewhere recently: ‘If you only allow other stories to inform your stories, you’ll create a hall of empty mirrors.’

Absolutely. It’s a big fear. I literally spend every day thinking and talking about short stories. It’s not particularly healthy. And the thing is – I’m

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not all that obsessed with books. There are writers I love and stories I love. But there are a lot of things I’d rather do than read a book that’s only okay. But the hall of mirrors is something I see a lot with younger writers. And you don’t want to be patronising and say, ‘Go out, live a little!’

Because, like, I’m 29, what do I know? But when I look at the stories in the collection, how I wrote them, where the best bits come from... it’s all from having done things. Don’t get me wrong – the craft and the consideration of form, etc, is absolutely essential. But writing is a form of plunging, and you need things to plunge from.

Additionally, you need to live a full life, because, well, what would be the point not doing that?

And I mean a good life as something distinct from the writing, and not for the sole purpose of living a full life so as to be able to take stuff from it – you inevitably find yourself in a selfconscious bind then. But yes, I’ve become very interested in the idea of joy.

The book itself can come off as a bit depressing, in its litany of all the small, cruel ordinary ways life makes us sad and tired. But there are also bits of absolute hope and joy, of buzzing and pulsing with possibility and sheer fascination at Life and Other People and Oneself and Things Happening. Was there a conscious need to brighten up the stories? To give the reader something? Normally those bits of hope are still quashed at some stage in your stories.

I think the idea of hope is something that came to me as I got a bit more mature. I slowly grew the willingness to risk being called sentimental… I realised that it’s dishonest to the people I know – and the experiences I’ve had – to just

have everything grey and bleak. I think a lot about something Julian Barnes said about Frank O’Connor’s writing: There are two ways to see things: 1. Life is beautiful, but it is depressing, isn’t it? or 2. Life is depressing, but it is beautiful, isn’t it?

Hope is a strange thing in fiction, though.

When you read Amazon reviews, you see so many readers complaining about the lack of hope in a writer’s work and it had never been something I was even conscious of when I read.

I just liked something, or I didn’t; I don’t think hope came into it. But then you look at Camus’ The Outsider, those final pages, the book is so bleak, so unrelenting, but Camus somehow finds something magisterial in it all, and it feels utterly genuine, and not at all tagged on.

Reading George Saunders, who I really like, I sometimes get the sense that the stories are a kind of game for him: Let’s see how far down I can take this character, and then see if I can get them out of the hole in the last paragraph. He’s a propagandist for hope, I think. I once heard Ali Smith talking about Hemingway’s ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’, where the nihilism is so, so strong, ‘Our nada, who art in nada, nada be thy name, give us our daily nada’, and so on. The thing she said was this: even if the content of the story doesn’t offer hope; the way Hemingway has written it – the artistry of the story itself – is a reason to be hopeful. I’m not saying I’m like Hemingway! But it was interesting to me that a story as object could have a hope index distinct from what happens in the story itself.

We Don’t Know What We’re Doing by Thomas Morris is out now, published by Faber and Faber.

CREATIVE EYE

SLAVES

TO THE MUSIC 32

words Dave Desmond main photo Holimage

or over 25 years now, Australian band The Necks have been sidestepping conventions and defying classification with their distinctive form of improvised music. Since the late 1980s they have released close to 20 albums, most of which are comprised of a single hour-long piece of music. With their latest release, Vertigo, having hit the shelves last month, they are making their way to Dublin to head the bill at Strut, a new four-day long, pop-up jazz club at the Peacock Stage at the Abbey Theatre. Curated and organised by Improvised Music Company, the weekend will feature a host of domestic and international talent playing a wide array of jazz and experimental music. Ahead of their visit to Ireland, Totally Dublin caught up with Tony Buck, drummer with The Necks, to try to unravel some of the mystery behind their beguiling and delicate craft.

It all began in the early ’80s in Sydney, Tony explains. ‘I guess we all kind of met when we were all studying at the conservatory playing lots of jazz in Sydney, but other sorts of music too. And I think we were all interested in a lot of different music that we weren’t having a chance to get into in any sort of degree in the contexts that we found ourselves playing in. So, apart from playing jazz and rock music equally, we were listening to a whole lot of other music, like reggae and soul, African music, Indonesian music, and contemporary classical stuff. And I think through discussions and things that we worked out about each other, that we thought we would like to get into playing in a way where the point of playing wasn’t to impress an audience or show that you could really play your instrument, but just to really take time and listen to how the instruments reacted to each other with no real grand-standing. And so we decided to form the band to explore that sort of thing, basically privately, and we did it for

“We kind of play for the music.

It’s almost as if the music is this entity that we are serving.”

six months or so, and quite regularly, like two or three times a week for six months. We just played together in a hall belonging to Sydney University where there were some pianos and it was quiet and we could just do it. And I think we all found it really almost like a therapy that we got a chance to have the time and patience to do that.’

Tony had grown up living near pianist Chris Abrahams, where, from the age of 15, they had played in rock bands and jazz outfits together.

He recalls how the face of jazz has changed over the years in Sydney. ‘I think it goes in waves.

This was the early ’80s in Sydney and there was a really healthy rock scene then, an inner-city rock scene, and sort of a squat scene. And there were a few jazz venues that were putting music on every night of the week, covering bebop to more modern, modal jazz, and it was pretty healthy then. Sydney’s a funny place ’cause licensing laws for clubs are very strict, very expensive, and real estate prices are very expensive. So around the late ’80s, early ’90s, a lot of places started to close down and bars found they could make more money from poker machines than live music, so it was pretty dire after that. At the moment, I think there’s sort of a groundswell of interest in improvised music and jazz again. There still aren’t very many venues. I think Melbourne has the greater focus of creative music venues and activities now, cause it’s much easier to open clubs in Melbourne.

So it is a very fluctuating scene.’

Although not easily pigeonholed as jazz, the underlying concept that permeates through The Necks’ music is that of improvisation. Their lengthy pieces begin with a single idea and grow organically throughout, with improvised variations giving life to the impromptu compositions.

Buck remembers how they came to be playing these long-form improvisations in the beginning.

‘Well, everything we do stems from the idea that we’re playing spontaneously together and improvising. When we play concerts, we just walk out on stage and play. We’ve sound-checked before the concert so we know that we’ll be able to hear each other and respond to the sound of the room. And we kind of take that approach, in a sense, into the studio except that we use the studio as an instrument in a way, and use what the studio has to offer, which is the ability to overdub, and then make decisions and sculpt a piece of music after the fact. So the way that we arrived at doing these lengthy pieces was straight away, from the beginning, the concept of the band. One thing we really wanted to do was let the music have its own breathing space and let the sounds be, and let what we played unfold in its own time.

And being freed from having to be entertaining or impressive, we found that really giving the music that sort of time was really important.

It seemed to me that around 45 minutes to an hour was long enough to let the music go on its journey and see where it ended up. Like I say, live, it’s all totally improvised, and in the studio it’s not exactly improvised cause there’s a lot of discussion and rumination going on about how

to make something work, or a good combination of instruments, but then again the performances that we draw on are us just playing. Maybe we’ll come up with a part and say, “Oh, I could do that again better”, but it’s always arrived at just by playing.’

For a lot of musicians the idea of walking onto a stage and having to improvise completely for an hour would surely be a daunting prospect. At what point does that kind of confidence arrive for a band like The Necks?

Buck explains, ‘Like I said, we formed the band without the intention of performing for people, so there was no pressure to come up with anything particularly. We finally gave into pressure and played a concert after we’d been together for, I think, six or eight months, and even then we thought, well, people have asked us to play because they’ve heard that we have this project and we thought that maybe if people thought it was boring that well… you know, you asked for it! So, yeah, we kind of play for the music. It’s almost as if the music is this entity that we are serving. The one thing we always do though, is somebody starts, which sort of sets, not really the parameters for where the piece will go, but at least the parameter for where it starts, and then the other members who haven’t started will come in when they feel they have an idea that will be in accompaniment, or some sort of comment, or a contrasting idea to what the opening gambit is, and then one thing follows the other and we let it unfold. We just try to keep the ball in the air but let the music, like it’s a living entity, decide where the music wants to go.’

An almost selfless way to perform then, but where does the musician stand in this relationship? When asked, Buck continues to describe the underlying philosophy behind the band’s music and what it’s like to be in the midst of such a performance. ‘Well, I don’t feel like we’re really performing. It’s a funny thing. It’s kind of processoriented music rather than product-oriented, and I think we just get the process underway, and it’s almost like we’re audience members as well, we kind of watch it unfold. But it’s not like other improvised musics that I play, where there’s interaction and fast reactions and things move very quickly. It’s very much like everything happens almost in slow motion. So, we play in this sort of cyclic way and set something up and keep hammering away at this one thing until somebody changes, or something happens and then that sets the chain-reaction happening. But it’s very slo-mo compared to other improvising, so we can just sit back and listen in much the same way as an audience does, and, yeah, we’re as amazed at where a piece of music might end up as an audience member might be, because we’re not really aiming at starting something and then having a point to get to.’

This must be a liberating way to play for any musician, where the line of performance and spectatorship becomes blurred. It’s almost as if the musicians have become vessels for the music to

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inhabit and conjure its own way into existence.

‘Yeah, it’s good’ Buck continues, ‘and I mean it takes a certain discipline to not want to do something sometimes, that’s the only difficult thing about it, a weird discipline. And physically I guess from an instrumental technique point of view, if you set something up you have to be really able to play it for the next 20 minutes. But even that doesn’t really come into it ’cause, now that I think about it, when we’re playing we don’t really know what the impetus is for change. Like sometimes if somebody else changes, it puts what you’re doing in a different perspective and context, and so there’s often sort of a pull of gravity, rhythmically or harmonically or texturally, where all of a sudden you realise you’ve changed what you’re playing because it just feels like that’s what you have to do, or that’s what the music has done. So, in a way, we’re also not even aware of what we’re doing sometimes I think.’

But how do audiences react when faced with hour-long improvised performances? Have they always been willing to stick with it? Buck goes on to relate his experiences with audiences over the years.

‘Nowadays I think people come to see us and they’ve either been forewarned or they know what we’re going to do, but when we play to audiences that haven’t heard us before, there tends to be, around the five minute mark, a kind of restlessness from the audience, and then if they get through that wall, which lasts a few minutes, then we usually have them, and usually the people, they also forget time, and they realise they’ve been listening intently for half an hour or an hour and they haven’t noticed time pass. Or they focus on one particular passage in the music and then realise something else is happening that wasn’t happening before but they don’t know when it came in. And that’s the usual reaction. Of course sometimes there are people that don’t like it, or don’t have the patience and they might leave, but that’s pretty rare actually. Even in the early days there was this sense of, “once the penny drops we have them” sort of thing. So it seems to work.’

Whatever the process may be, it certainly works for The Necks and the outcome is rarely short of astonishing. Their latest album, Vertigo, is out now and has a somewhat darker tone to their previous outing Open. ‘It’s an interesting record. I guess you make a record and it’s one track, so it’s one thing that we explore, and if you don’t like that thing, I guess you’re out of luck with that record! It’s quite dark in comparison with the previous one Open, which is very open. This one’s called Vertigo and I guess it’s a little bit more disconcerting than some of our records, but it definitely sounds like The Necks.

It has a dark drone that runs through it, and things hang off it at various points and creep out of this drone or swallow it. And it’s quite melancholy in a way. I think Open had a much more hopeful feel. Although there’s a bit in this record that I feel shines out like a sort of hopeful sunrise, but it’s generally darker than the last one.’

And that’s quite often the way when you listen to The Necks’s music: you never quite know when an unexpected ray of sunshine might catch you off-guard. That, and the knowledge that when you see them live that you are watching a truly once-off performance, a unique moment in time and a communal musical experience that will never again be repeated.

The Necks play the Peacock Stage in the Abbey Theatre as part of Strut on Saturday 21st November at 9pm, with tickets costing €22.50.

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STRUT YER STUFF Ibrahim Electric Wednesday 18 November, 7pm, €15 This Danish trio comprised of guitar, drums and Hammond organ combine a ’60s good-times swing with elements of acid jazz, blues, and a smattering of Afrobeat and global funk. Having first performed in Dublin at the 12 Points Festival in 2008, the trio have recently recorded their eighth studio album and were long overdue a visit.

Blue Eyed Hawk Thursday 19 November, 7pm, €15 If you managed to catch trumpeter Laura Jurd’s brilliant quartet in Dublin last April, you’ll know you’re in for a treat with another one of her projects, this time teaming up with Irish composer and jazz vocalist Lauren Kinsella. Their debut album Under the Moon was voted best jazz album by reader polls for the Ticket Awards in 2014 and serves up a blend of experimental vocals, effect-heavy rock-based riffs and melodic jazz interludes.

3G Feat. Gerhard Ornig Thursday 19th November, 9pm, €15 A widely respected name on the domestic jazz circuit and abroad, this trio comprises of three Guilfoyles, brothers Conor and Ronan on drums and bass, with Chris leading on guitar. Featuring blisteringly intricate modern compositions, this trio is joined by Austrian trumpeter Gerhard Ornig, a rising star who recently won the Grand Prix for Trumpet award at the Riga Jazz Stage.

Louis Stewart & Brian Dunning Friday 20th November, 7pm, €15 Another stalwart of the domestic jazz scene is world-class guitarist Louis Stewart who together with flautist Brian Dunning recorded an album entitled Alone Together way back in 1979, live on the Peacock stage of the Abbey. They revisit this recording 36 years on with bassist Dan Bodwell.

Gabriele Mirabassi & Francesco Turrisi Friday 20 November, 9pm, €15 Steeped in the Italian jazz tradition, clarinetist Gabriele Mirabassi explores a diverse range of ethnic influences with pianist Francesco Turrisi. Both musicians are grounded in multiple areas of expertise, from classical to world music and jazz, making this pairing a unique chance to experience a whole spectrum of wide ranging influences from Europe to Latin America.

Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster sees recent divorcé Colin Farrell sent to a remote hotel compound wherein he is required to find a life-partner within 45 days or be turned into an animal of his choosing (from which the film gets its title). Its world is one of absurd rules and regulations, a sort of ironic, dystopian satire in which its characters are always performing roles of one type or another. It also might be the funniest film of the year. We spoke to the director about narcissism, power and the unconscious as we prepare for the film to hit our screens.

Do you believe in love?

Well, that’s the question really.

That’s why I made the film, so there’s not really an answer... Right now I do, but it changes throughout life, I think.

One of the main reasons we made that film is to ask that question, and many others around it, about how we’ve organised our lives or how we value whether someone is successful in their life, or happy, just by seeing if they’re in a couple or in a relationship or not, or single. So I don’t know what the answer is. I think it should be different for each person, and maybe in different periods of one’s life it will be different as well.

something that interests you as a filmmaker?

Well, I think that our lives are very much like this. We are used to considering certain things as normal. The main question for me is whether these things have a claim on ‘normal’, or whether they should be questioned every now and then, and by individual people. And also whether all those rules and principles, as you call them, are appropriate for everyone or whether different people should live by different rules, and even if, in fact, we are free to think the way we want to, or make up our own minds for certain things. And obviously the unconscious is that area where you can investigate whether those things are right for every person or for our society, or world, or however far you want to go. I think that’s the connection with it.

How about monogamy?

I mean... I am a monogamist [right now]. I don’t have a theory about it. Again, there have been periods in my life when I have been monogamous, and others where I haven’t. I think it’s about where you are in your life, what the circumstances are and how you feel about it.

There seems to be a sense of an inescapable fate to the narrative in The Lobster, as though the characters are there in a certain way, but also without maybe active agency. Your actors tend towards a sort of detached, automaton-like style...

I’m not fond of those generalisations or characterisations.

I mean the actors in this film act quite differently to how they did in Alps or Dogtooth even. But maybe this is my personal taste. I can’t really comment on those things. That’s what I like, and I try to have my characters be as present and straightforward as possible in my films, and then the text and the situation moulds them into something. And then, when you put everything together, it becomes something else... it’s very complex for me, so then it’s hard to say something like they are like automatons. I don’t see it like that, I don’t work like that, so...

If you look at social organisation, monogamy seems to to be a structuring force. I wonder whether that’s a structural, or societal, impingement or something that is endogenic...

This is what we’re doing with our film, wondering about those conventions, rules about our everyday life, how we see certain things and our values. I don’t know where it comes from. There’s definitely an element of structuring and organising our lives with certain rules. But whether that’s inherent to us, whether it’s our nature or not... it needs to be explored.

There’s this theme of people structuring their lives based on sometimes abstract rules or principles that comes up often in your films, suggesting almost unconscious guiding impulses. Is the idea of an unconscious

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I realise I’m making a critical projection here... I suppose what I wonder is whether the inescapability of violence, injury, or death in the narrative is a result of, perhaps, your perception of those same qualities in societal organisation?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, there are so many different individuals and groups that society is made up of, and I think that’s quite oppressive. Even if it makes sense for most people, it will always be oppressive for some. We’re so different and so individual and unpredictable that I don’t think conflict – not necessarily violence – within a group of people comprised

of so many different personalities, characters, natures, backgrounds and educational experiences, is avoidable.

That’s one of the reasons that I was interested in creating these two different worlds within this film: the world of the hotel and the city which has these rules and principles, and then the forest and the loners who have their own, and have a person go through both, thinking he’s escaping from one and becoming free in the other, and seeing that that’s not really true. Again, you enter a different kind of organisation or community or society, which nevertheless has its own rules. So it’s that irony of believing you’re oppressed in this world, and escaping, choosing something very different, and then finding yourself in a similar situation to before: this is what I find interesting about the story.

Perhaps this is a crude analogy to draw, but the trials endured by your characters, in the hotel for example, and their sort of placid, obsequious acceptance of these, and given that this is a film set in Ireland, by a Greek director... does this reflect on some level the concessions made by the governments of these countries as part of their respective EU bailout deals?

[Laughs] No, not at all! I mean this isn’t set in Ireland, it could be anywhere with a big city, or anywhere in Europe, so such a thing was never on our minds. It’s a nice parallel to draw, or interesting, or whatever, but the initial part of your train of thought: it’s people just accepting certain things that interested us, that if you see it from the outside [those things] might seem absurd or extreme.

It’s wondering about that state of mind, of people brought into a certain environment, brought up and educated a certain way, and they get used to certain things that, if you get some distance and shine a light on them, might seem absurd. That’s obviously very similar to what happens in our real world, with various things: as you say political, personal, financial, economical, all those sorts of things, it’s a very elemental part of how we are.

We’re used to so many things that we don’t question.

Singles Club words OisĂ­n Murphy-Hall

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What struck me in this film, as well as in Alps, were situations in which characters were not forced to, but rather seemed to need to pretend on some basic level, in order to feel happy. Do you think that it’s possible to be happy without pretending?

I observe that people need to pretend, need to take up certain roles in their everyday lives in order to succeed and achieve certain things, and certain goals that they have, from very simple things to larger goals that they set for themselves. You acquire so many different roles every day in life... I mean even right now, the way I speak, the way I have to think, it’s not very natural to me, I’m not like that. When I go out of this room, when I’m with my wife, or out having lunch with a friend or something like that, I don’t behave the same way I’m behaving here. I think you can notice that in many aspects of our lives. So then I wonder, is that natural? Maybe that’s natural. Us saying that we’re pretending, maybe it’s not pretending, but part of human nature to acquire these different nuances within one’s life. So that might not be a bad thing. It might be a bad thing because all these types of behaviour are preset and prescribed and taught to you from an early age and, because we are kind of imitating animals as well, we learn how to do what is appropriate and what is acceptable in certain social structures and instances in life, and this is what we follow. So I don’t have the answers for these things, it’s just observing and wondering about them.

In The Lobster, individuals find a match based on a shared defining characteristic. Do you think our capacity to love is inversely proportional to our narcissism or self-interest?

I guess it’s one part of us. In The Lobster, it’s just an exaggeration of something. Mostly I think about the superficiality of the things that we consider important, at least in the beginning, in order to be able to approach another person, or to have the confidence that we can actually get along. It doesn’t necessarily have to be similar things in real life, it could be the opposite, or something that you’ve idealised which might not even be true, but you’ve done that theoretically in your head. So narcissism is one side of it, it could be something else.

Do you think we are living in an increasingly narcissistic society?

I don’t know if it’s technology that has made it much more obvious, but you know, seeing people looking at themselves all the time on their phones, and taking all those pictures of themselves, I guess... yeah. That’s another question: is it because technology makes it easier, and there’s more visibility to it? Because you can share so much more, it’s so incredibly fast and easy to reach, you know, thousands of people now. So is that because of technology or was that always there for people, but they could not exercise it as much?

It seems as though we are more inclined to comment pessimistically on the way society is going nowadays, that our pessimism needs to find an object, as it were, which tends to be ‘narcissism’ or ‘technology’.

Well, I think we should be more critical.

Because we’re able to instantly educate ourselves, read things, see things, and we have more information and clues and elements to make up our minds. But at the same time, it’s so much easier to get false information, controlled or confusing information. So you have to develop a

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Yeah, well that’s the point up to which I get it. I feel like it wouldn’t work if I didn’t include that kind of violence. But I don’t know why exactly.

It’s just a feeling that you need that juxtaposition in order to complete something rather than let it hang. But that’s the furthest point I can get to, not knowing exactly why that works or how it doesn’t.

The hardest part is to understand your instinct and where it leads you, not to confuse it with fear or insecurity very critical attitude to be able to make conclusions. Now more so than ever, now that we’re getting so much more information that needs to be filtered in a certain way.

Are you pessimistic about the way that society is going?

I am concerned [laughs]. I don’t know if that’s why I make films that focus more on the problematic nature of how we have organised ourselves, but yes.

In your films there tend to be moments of violence or cruelty that punctuate an otherwise ironic narrative. Do you think that irony is inherently violent?

[Laughs] I don’t know. For me I do these things instinctively. I don’t have a theory about it.

It feels like the films wouldn’t work, or wouldn’t work as well, without those moments though...

Is it difficult for you to work, as you say, instinctively, in an environment where you have so many people coming together – actors, crew, etc. – who necessarily have their own disparate instincts and impulses?

It is difficult not necessarily because of other people, but because of yourself. Because you need to recognise your instinct, and understand what it’s saying, and that’s quite difficult. That’s a difficult thing, because all these different people have their own part to play, and I don’t just mean actors, but whoever the collaborator is, and it’s all filtered through you. So you are in control of most elements in a film as a director, and also as a co-writer. So the hardest part is for yourself: to decide when something feels right, to understand your instinct and where it leads you, not to confuse it with fear or insecurity.

As someone who makes films that are so critical of the wielding of power, is it difficult to adopt a position of, as you say, control, as a director?

[Laughs] It is! But mostly because of the responsibility that is bestowed upon you. But at the same time, I do allow a lot of individuals to bring things into whatever it is that we’re doing.

So I feel comfortable with that. I understand that someone needs to distil all this input into something, and take the responsibility for it, really. Taking that responsibility is the difficult part, I have no guilt about it. It’s about that weight of making the final decisions, and saying, ‘Okay, this is the best thing we could do with what we have,’ and then showing that to the world. That’s the hardest part to do.

The Lobster, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and starring Colin Farrell, is in cinemas now.

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On the cover: High neck black peplum blouse, JW Anderson at Brown Thomas Head Piece made by stylist Skirt made by stylist This spread: Black and white velvet sequin shirt, Harlequin Lace dress with embroidered polka dot tulle worn underneath by Loyd/Ford Costume headpiece by Katya Katya Shehurina Costume black lace-up boots, Topshop Glitter socks, Topshop

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Black jumpsuit, Claude Pierlot at Brown Thomas Black lace-up boots, Topshop Black and white socks, Topshop Black silk hat, Harlequin White velvet bowtie, Harlequin

Tweed Pinafore Dress, Tissue at Brown Thomas Print Shirt, Maison Scotch at Avoca Linen Tie, Bonagrew at Castle & Drury Annabelle Loafer, Buffalo Shoe Lab Rib Tights from Falke (www.falke.com)

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Sleeveless Jumper, YMC at Scout Culottes, Maria Grachvogel at Havana Black and white Cotton Shirt, COSpolka dot skirt and top, GivenchyBuffalo at Brown Thomas Brogues, Shoe Lab Black from suedeFalke lace-up shoes, Topshop Tights Black suede hat, Harlequin

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Glitter knit pants and polo, Sandro at Brown Thomas Black suede hat, Harlequin Black feather bolero, Harlequin Black suede lace-up boots, Topshop Mac, Campelli for Ms Beatty at Maven Criss Cross Fleur Silk Scarf from Ciara Silke (www.ciarasilke.com) Rib Tights from Falke

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Mandarin collar shirt with mesh buttons, JW Anderson at Brown Thomas Wide pant with belt detail, Alexander Wang at Brown Thomas Cat mask, stylists own Black velvet pumps, Kurt Geiger at Bt2

Photography Gerry Balfe Smith Assisted by Alex Sheridan Styling Sarah Flanagan (Flanagan.sarah1@gmail.com) Make Up Kate O’Reilly using Mac Hair by Jenni Crawford in Kazumi Model Katie Standen at Distinct Model Management Thanks to all the folk in Dolphin House

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Crafty people DE BRUIR Garvan De Bruir grew up as someone who always made things with his hands, but it was during a year studying abroad during school in Auckland that he became fully immersed in the craft. “I discovered the potential of bone as a craft material, spending much of my time perfecting Maori bone carving. The school’s workshop facilities were amazing and I’ve rarely been far from a workshop ever since. Whether I use wood, metal, leather, bone – the material is second to the act of making itself… the hands-on element, right to the end of a project, is brilliant.

The fact that the object can be realised within days or weeks instead of months or years keeps everything exciting too. Having the making skills yourself just ensures that a design can be executed exactly how you intend it.”

Although known for his work with leather, Garvan’s formal training came in furniture building, studying and working in Buckinghamshire in the furniture-making heartland of England. Having set up his own workshop in Kildare in 2008, the leather business evolved from within his furniture workshop. “I needed a laptop bag and had some leather I used for upholstery sitting on a shelf. Leather is such a great core material that you can engage it at different skill levels and still produce great objects.

Although the early bags were relatively crude in terms of craftsmanship, the approach to form and structure had potential.”

De Bruir’s design process is driven by the structural demands of the piece, be it a bag, a scarf or a bow-tie, such as those that he will be demonstrating at the Jameson Black Barrel Market. “For me, everything is a structure and comes with a physical brief, so a piece of furniture has particular structural demands; it

stands up and supports an object, while a bag’s demands are related; it hangs and supports an object. With the functionality paramount, I like to work with as simple forms as possible. I’ve a really high regard for my raw materials, so I enjoy using large portions in clean, honest constructions.”

Traditional workmanship and materials ensure his objects will live and function for a long life, but De Bruir still embraces modern technology to supplement his old-school skills. “I cut many of my detailed bag components by laser based on digital files. It suits to use technology to facilitate production, but I still go on to stitch the bags on a 100 year old saddler’s sewing machine or my more timeless brad awl, needle and thread.

So, yes to embracing digital technologies within craft, but you have to stay firmly linked with traditional skills and knowledge to innovate with such old materials into the future.”

De Bruir, Monasterevin Road, Kildare Town / debruir.com / @debruir (Twitter & Instagram)

The Jameson Black Barrel Craft Market takes place in the Backyard of the Bernard Shaw on Richmond Street, between Friday November 27th and Sunday 29th in association with Bodytonic. It will feature a host of Irish artisans and craftspeople working in a range of different fields that showcase a continually growing appreciation for the level of skill, enthusiasm and history that is imbued in the products that they create. The lineup at the market ranges from Mamukka, run by a pair of Hungarian brothers in Kinsale creating bags from upcycled parts of boats, to Garvan De Bruir who creates exceptional leatherwork at his Kildare studio.

There will also be demonstrations from the makers

themselves including the master cooper from Jameson, Ger Buckley, live music and Jameson black barrel whiskey tastings. Ireland’s own craft traditions never disappeared, but since the depths of the economic downturn, the Year of Craft in 2011 and Irish Design 2015, the appetite amongst the public for quality, handmade goods has grown hugely, and Jameson, whose coopers still use the same traditional doublecharring process on its barrels to produce the rich taste of Black Barrel, is proud to showcase this array of talent found amongst the makers of Ireland. We chatted to three of the craftspeople who are taking part this November.

SLATED Based in Dalkey, Slated is a family business run by the Hammonds, who have been connected to slate craftsmanship since the 18th century.

Slated’s range includes kitchenware, gardenware and bespoke pieces, all using Irish slate, often in combination with hand-cut wood or the traditional coupling of copper and slate. “I came from a background working in industrial relations, but my husband’s family have been slaters since the 18th century, all working as roofers,” explains Tara Hammond who runs Slated with her husband Ed. “He served his time within the family business, but I jumped straight in at the deep-end!”

Slated began just over five years ago when Ed had created a piece for Tara’s kitchen and her cousin Thomas Haughton, then Head Chef in the Westbury Hotel, asked if they could produce a piece of a certain shape for his restaurant.

“It was then the process began, researching food safety and product development,” explains Tara. “Because we cut the slate using a traditional tool – a slater’s knife – we aren’t constrained by size and shape like other companies are. We have done pieces for Kerrygold, Kilmeaden, Neven Maguire, and The Little Milk Company for example, all because they are looking for shapes and sizes that differ and we’re able to do that.”

The slater’s knife, which originally belong to Edward’s great-great-great grandfather, and has been cutting slate for roofs in Dalkey for over a century, is central to the process of creating products at Slated. “We are utilising the traditional methods and, of course, the original 150 year old slater’s knife, so each piece from our range is meticulously handcrafted to enhance the natural elegance of the raw materials. They are contemporary utilisations of the beautiful slate stone, yet we keep a tradition alive through our techniques that we use in the production.

For example, our copper and slate candle trios were designed to enhance the traditional coupling of copper and slate. The two materials compliment each other and the effect is really very striking.”

Despite starting in the depths of a recession, Slated has gone from strength to strength, featuring in trade shows both at home, like Creative Island, and abroad, like NY Now, and building up a network of stockists in Ireland, the UK, Canada and the US. “The main problem is that there aren’t enough hours in the day now!”

Slated, Dalkey, Co. Dublin / www.slated.ie / @slatedireland (Twitter and Instagram)

BONAGREW Olivia Hartigan is the brains behind Bonagrew, who create a beautiful range of ties, bowties and scarves that are simple, sophisticated and thoroughly inspired by the environment in which Olivia grew up, County Wicklow. “The name is derived from this small coastal townland. The inexhaustible pleasure from the shape, colour and texture of plants, grasses, flowers and wildlife around there feeds my imagination.” This is evident in the evocative names like Blackberry, Burnet Rose, Wild Thyme that her ties are named after. “My grandparents were avid greenfingers. I have memories of them arranging out the best seeds and seedlings for the next planting season, absorbed in a sort of obligation to find unexpected beauty. This is how I craft the Bonagrew style. I seek out natural colours and materials that reflect a sophistication of simplicity.”

Having dreamt of working fashion, Hartigan gained a scholarship to study for a masters degree in Bocconi University in Milan, before adding invaluable experience working with Tarlach de Blacam at Inis Meáin Knitting Company, and alongside Stefano Rosso at Diesel, all of which feeds into the Bonagrew brand. “It gave me the confidence to pursue my own creativity and seek out the weaving mills and garment manufacturers in Ireland. I researched fabric qualities, weights and finishes, and made my first prototype tie during a sewing class in my local library.”

The dedication to simplicity and quality is obvious in Bonagrew’s products. “I learned to never skimp on material and construction craftsmanship. Irish linen and tweed is the best in the world. Some of the world’s most vibrant gardens and wildlife are found in County Wicklow where I’m from. I was inspired to bring the everyday garden to life through a sophisticated palette of colours, woven into traditional fabrics and made into contemporary, premium accessories,” says Olivia.

Like others appearing at the Jameson Black Barrel Craft Market, Bonagrew fuses old traditions with newer designs. “I aspire to elevate the value of traditional Irish fabrics by giving them contemporary appeal and relevance to men and women,” explains Hartigan. “I’m not modernising the production processes in linen, tweed or accessory making – all these crafts must continue to be done by both hand and machine. But to sustain and progress, they need sales orders. I see Bonagrew playing a role in a modernisation of the demand, at home and internationally, for the best possible products made in Ireland.”

Bonagrew, Co. Wicklow / bonagrew.com / @bonagrewireland (Twitter) / @bonagrew (Instagram)

DJ’s by Bodytonic

The Dublin Pub Guide

Frite haus

THE PORTERHOUSE central

SÖDER + KO

Frite Haus offers a growing range of craft beers with wonderful authentic Belgian fries and sausages with an Irish twist in the heart of Dublin 2. They have put a great deal of thought in to their menu, from triple cooked house made potato chips, craft sauces and house made condiments, to their locally sourced artisan butcher sausages. Great ingredients, expertly prepared and served in a relaxed Belgian style ‘Chip Shop’ restaurant.

The Porterhouse in Temple Bar opened in 1996 as Dublin’s first microbrewery.

Brewing three stouts, three lagers and three ales in the tiny brewery created much demand for the brews and lead to the growth of the craft beer market. Seasonal beers are available alongside their regular ten drauaght beers they brew, namely Plain Porter which won a gold medal twice for the best stout in the world!

Experience the magic that single estate handcrafted vodka brings to a cocktail with Absolut Elyx. Taste the Skandi influence in their craft beers, ciders and in our signature serves or try a classic cocktail with a SÖDER twist. Discover 3 bars each with a different vibe, a heated beer garden like nowhere else in Dublin and a late bar ‘til 3am on Friday and Saturday.

Whether for a few drinks or to party ‘til late, it’s the place to be.

Frites Haus, 87 Camden Street Lower, Dublin 2 T: 087 050 5964 www.frite-haus.com @fritehaus1

16-18 Parliament Street, Dublin 2 45-47 Nassau Street, Dublin 2 tel: 01 677 4180 www.porterhousebrewco.com

64 South Great George’s Street, Dublin 2 01 474 1590 info@soderandko soderandko.ie

Fb: Porterhouse-Brewing-Company @Porterhousebars

McDaids

Grogan’s

Generator Hostel

McDaids is, if we’re honest, the kind of place where you’d call yourself lucky if you’ve nabbed a seat early in the night. Its much cosier, shoulder-to-shoulder affair where an unbeatable Guinness is only a quick shuffle away and commenting on overheard banter is de rigeur. The perfect place for whiling a night away righting the world’s wrongs with a few close friends or quiet pint in Brendan Behan’s memory.

Grogan’s Pub has been a mainstay in Dublin since time began. When you walk through the doors you get a sense of being catapulted back to a bygone era when pubs where a place that everybody knew your name. The decor has not changed in almost 40 years, and that’s the way it should be.

Do try their legendary toasted sandwiches with a pint of plain and admire all the artwork hanging from the walls which are, by the way, available to buy.

3 Harry Street, Dublin 2

15 Sth William St, Dublin 2

Generator hails a return to the proud tradition of innkeeping; providing lodging, food and of course, drinks. A relaxed venue where you can enjoy a selection of craft beers, the trusted classics or something more suited to a backpacker’s budget. Expect to meet guests from all over the world as they stop over in the fair city. It provides a perfect opportunity to practice your rusty Spanish, Portuguese, Italian or German. Situated in the ever-present yet up and coming Smithfield Square, right on the Luas tracks, Generator is a refreshingly different interface beween Dublin and her visitors.

01 679 4395

Smithfield Square, Dublin 7 01 901 0222 www.generatorhostels.com/Dublin-Hostel

CAFÉ EN SEINE

O’Donoghue’s

The Blind Pig

Choice… here, you’ve never had as much. Signature cocktails served with style. French Champagne fused to create sparkling surprises. Gin concoctions bursting with botanicals. The purest of vodkas served just as they should be.

And whiskeys… Irish, Scotch, American and Japanese… young, old and very old. A wine for every palette and bubbles for every occasion, all served with effortless charm in a lavish interior that is unmatched. With the largest drinks menu in Dublin, whatever your taste, just ask.

O’Donoghue’s is one of Dublin’s most historic drinking establishments located just off St. Stephen’s Green in the heart of Dublin. Probably best known for its traditional Irish music, session still take place daily, midweek from 9pm, Saturdays from 5pm and all day on Sunday from 1pm. O’Donoghue’s has a rich history in providing a welcome for locals and visitors alike to play a tune or enjoy a pint. A menu of soup, stew and sandwiches is served daily from noon.

Named after the police, who turned a blind eye to the liquor rooms of the 1920s prohibition era, The Blind Pig launched as a monthly pop-up Speakeasy bar, in secret, at a well-known Dublin venue. Since then, The Blind Pig has developed an affectionate fanbase in Ireland and abroad. The Blind Pig is the brains of the internationally award-winning mixologist Paul Lambert. With his expertly-crafted cocktail menu, The Blind Pig is now in permanent residence and is a full underground cocktail bar and restaurant.

The location, which is less than a 5-minute walk from Trinity College, is revealed upon booking.

40 Dawson Street, Dublin 2 01 677 4567 bookings@cafeenseine.ie cafeenseine.ie

15 Merrion Row, Dublin (01) 660 7194 Hours: 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 a.m.

reservations@theblindpig.ie 085 874 7901

The Meeting House In spite of its playful ethos, this venue takes its cocktails seriously, shaking up popular classics as well as quirky new creations to keep us guessing. Signature snifters include a startlingly exotic Lychee and Lemongrass Sour, and an Emerald Collins that switches gin with whiskey to delicious effect. Located in the bosom of Temple Bar, the Meeting House terrace is the perfect spot for sharing pitchers with friends as the sun goes down. Inside, it’s at once cool and welcoming, lively yet laid-back, and the scene hots up at the weekends when DJs mix soul, funk and disco into the early hours. You might even see the sun come up again.

Meeting House Square, Dublin 2 All cocktails just €6.66 on Sundays & Mondays themeetinghousedublin.com 01 670 3330

PROUDLY SPONSORED BY

BARFLY words Oisín Murphy-Hall photos Patrick Dyar

A DOG’S LIFE

Porndog

52

‘Remember that video of Kyle Walker’s girlfriend getting a lick out off a dog earlier this year?’ Anton asks me, after a thoughtful chuckle at our destination’s title.

‘That wasn’t real,’ I explain. ‘That was just some Arsenal fans having banter.’

‘No, but I saw the video,’ he replies. ‘It was really sick.’ He shakes his head.

‘I know. I mean, the video is real, it just wasn’t Kyle Walker’s girlfriend. You saw it on some Arsenal fan-site.’ Anton pauses.

‘No, I’m fairly sure I didn’t. I’m fairly sure Kyle Walker admitted it.’

‘He definitely didn’t.’

‘I’m fairly sure he did.’

Before beginning, the simple fact of the matter is that Porndog does not go far enough.

What initially appeared, through its online presence and general buzz preceding its opening, to be the most contrived Dublin restaurant yet, the ur-yuppie haunt, the Gabbo to Joe Macken’s Krusty. Instead turns out to merely occupy an unremarkable spot on an already existing continuum of affectation: about a 7.5 on a scale from 0 (mini breakfast at Gerry’s, incidentally situated almost precisely opposite Porndog on Montague Street) to 10 (eating slow-cooked meat off a literal dustbin lid in Smokin’ Bones on Dame Street, or any of the countless equivalent humiliations now commonplace amongst the city’s dining options). Well, come at the king, you best not miss.

Miss it unfortunately has. Porndog, with its wacky name and red neon-on-black aesthetic, situates itself precisely in the corner of the market predominated by Crackbird, Skinflint, etc., but fails to match these in terms of smartness of decor or ingenuity of the menu. If you’re charging €13 for a ‘gourmet hot dog’, the problem is, at the end of the day, it’s still a hot dog. The ‘Chow Chow’, containing a beef teriyaki sausage, tastes and feels so similar to the ubiquitous pork frankfurter as to be virtually unrecognisable, particularly underneath its excesses of dressing.

Less significant than this, but certainly related, is the troubling decision to slather sauce across

the bun of each hot dog – a foodstuff designed to be eaten by hand – with the net result of making their consumption an unavoidably messy experience. At this point one reflects that ‘gourmet’, stupid term though it is, ought to refer ultimately not to the food, but to the individual eating it. It’s probably just that little bit too expensive, for what it is, for it to work as bar food – and this is nominally a bar – while house beer, sold in growlers, works out at €10 per litre, a round figure of no exceptional value.

Then there is the troubling decision to decorate the seating area upstairs in the manner of a dog pound. Customers sit behind partitions that imitate the wire cages in which stray dogs are kept before, of course, they are killed. It is not a pleasant position to be placed in, even if only metaphorically. And if we are the dogs, in this scenario, then why too do we eat ‘dogs’? In this hellish scenario, who then are the servers, attending to our every wish? One’s mind races.

Why the ‘porn-’ prefix in the bar’s title? Who is watching all of this?

‘That was great,’ Anton smiles at me as we settle our bill and leave. ‘Really reminds me of my dog-catching days with the Corpo. Very authentic.’

‘Oh yeah? I didn’t know that’s what it looked like,’ I reply.

‘Yeah, pretty much like that. None of the suits though, they wouldn’t last five minutes in that line of work.’

‘Yeah, probably,’ I smile.

‘I have to say though I kind of enjoyed it,’ he says, thoughtfully. ‘Being on the other side of a cage for once.’

Porndog 16 Montague Street, Dublin 2 01-4783373 www.porndog.ie

BARFLY words Daniel Simon

THE REAL DEAL

Fitzwilliam Casino and Card Club Having rarely set foot in a gambling establishment at any reasonable (or responsible) hour of the night, stepping into the Fitzwilliam Casino and Card Club on a crisp autumn night to find a bright, spacious hall – a converted convent, with all the spaciousness and high-ceilings that go with it – I’m surprised, even a little nervous. Decorum is the order of the day. A little uncertain of the ins and outs of how everything works, I head mistakenly to the cash-out counter to get some chips with which to play. Thankfully however my naïvety is treated with hospitality, rather than an eye-roll, and the proper process is explained to me.

Leaving my first bout of uncertainty behind me, I pitch up at the easiest game to play in any casino, roulette. Roulette is also the one where you are most hostage to fortune of course and one where you have to be lead by feel rather than any real tactics. Gamblers here stack small bets along particular single numbers, looking for proof that their lucky number (or numbers) really are what they say. The croupiers have seen every ritual in the book before, and the bets range from 25c punts on house-numbers and birthdays, to a cool-hand veteran pacing evenly between this and another table scattering €5 at a go. It’s easy to tell there’s a large regular clientele supplemented

by an ever revolving cast of novices, both tourists and locals.

After some initial misfortune on outside bets – I quickly appreciate that this is a red table! But no matter how I try, defeats seem to come as frequently as wins, and after doubling my initial stake, I find myself back at square one and decide a change of scenery is in order.

On offer is punto banco, James Bond’s favourite game apparently, and a series of poker tables to the back of the room which are already very busy, as they are in the upstairs room too. Favouring some tactical strategising – but not too much – I plump for blackjack, where the dealer is handing out good natured advice that often seems to be falling on deaf ears of ever more adventurous gamers. Here too there is a mix of novices and veterans, and a there is a comradely feel, with everyone at the table somehow willing everyone else to win, rather than rueing cards that were potentially their own. Free drinks are offered to players but this is a non-alcoholic environment, meaning that the air of the place is one of calmness, only punctured by a repeated bursts of elation from the three-card poker table next door: ‘Oh, you lovely little dealer, I could kiss you!’ I keep thinking he’s going to say ‘Lovely little offload!’ a la Mario Rosenstock’s rugger man in that ad, but alas no.

Fitzwilliam Casino and Card Club Clifton Hall, Lower Fitzwilliam Street, D2 01-6114677 fitzwilliamcardclub.com

Suesey Street

Bellucci’s

KAFKA

Umi Falafel

26 Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin 2.

Sweepstakes Centre, 22-30 Merrion Road, Dublin 4

236 Lower Rathmines Road, Dublin 6

13 Dame Street, Dublin 2

t: (01) 669 4600 | info@sueseystreet.ie

01 668 9422

01 4977057

01 670 68 66 // umifalafel.ie // @UmiFalafel

www.sueseystreet.ie

www.bellucci.ie Kafka offers affordable, wholesome, and well-made brasserie fare at a reassuringly reasonable cost.

The sparse, minimal décor goes hand in hand with the delicious diner-style food; free of pretence and fuss. A varied but not overstretched menu touches enough bases to cover most tastes offering up anything from bangers and mash to porcini mushroom risotto. While their prices are easy on the pocket, Kafka cuts no corners with quality of their food.

Umi Falafel want to share with you their passion for the freshest and most authentic falafel in Dublin.

Their falafel are prepared fresh daily at their location on Dame Street with an old family recipe – ‘Umi’ is the Arabic word for mother after all. Umi Falafel is a fantastic eatery for vegetarians and vegans, as they serve mouth-watering salads, delicious Lebanese favourites such as hummus and baba ghanoush, as well as their favourites, the Palestinian or Lebanese falafel sandwiches served with a choice of salad and dips for a wholesome meal. Open 12pm-10pm daily.

@SueseyStreet The Suesey Street name harks back to Georgian times and was the original name for Leeson Street in the 1700s. The venue was formerly Brasserie Le Pont and now offers a more informal approach to drinking and dining. The large outdoor terrace is one of the best in the city, fully heated and topped with a retractable canopy making it the perfect space for al fresco dining year round. With the focus on quality food and great hospitality Suesey Street is the go-to place to socialise and enjoy the finer things in life.

Located in Dublin’s exclusive Ballsbridge area, Bellucci’s is situated close to many of Dublins top hotels, across from the famous RDS venue and a short walk from the Aviva Stadium. The restaurant is also close to both the American and British Embassies and is ideal for business lunches, pre and post-event suppers. The casual atmosphere coupled with great Italian food and service set the scene for a cosy romantic meal. The large outdoor area is ideal for al fresco dining or enjoying one of the something from the extensive cocktail menu.

Söder+Ko

The Meeting House

64 South Great George’s Street, Dublin 2 w: soderandko.ie t: 01 474 1590 e: info@soderandko

Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, D2 www.themeetinghousedublin.com 01-6703330 @meetinghousedub

Culinary Director Kwangi Chan and his team serve an Asian menu that’s made for sharing. Discover lots of small plates bursting with delicious punchy flavour. Pop in for an Express Lunch with a choice of tempting light bites, signature steamed buns and Chef Specials to savour. Come for dinner and mix it up with your favourites from their raw, dim sum and hot options, all designed to delight. Open for lunch, weekend brunch and dinner 7 days a week.

The Meeting House serves up superbly balanced, pretty-as-a-picture plates (all priced at €9.99 or €6.66 on Sunday and Monday) that burst with the flavours of South-East Asia. Favourites include a rare and delicate blackened cod, a seared sirloin steak that zings with Sichuan pepper and Asian Salsa Verde, and a signature tomato dish that takes notions of salad to a whole new level. The wine list is both thoughtful and exciting, though with award-winning mixologists behind the bar, cocktails here are a must. Enjoy all this and more in their cool, moody interiors or kick back on the terrace and watch the world go by in the summer sun.

Stanley’s Restaurant and Wine Bar

KC Peaches Wine Cave

7, St. Andrews Street , Dublin 2 // t: 01-4853273 //

www.kcpeaches.com

@stanleysd2

01 6336872

FB: Stanley’s Restaurant & Wine // www.stanley-

@kcpeaches

srestaurant.ie

28-29 Nassau St, Dublin 2

The 101 Talbot

Stanley’s Restaurant and Wine Bar is located in the heart of Dublin, a short walk from College Green on St Andrews Street. They pride themselves on pairing modern Irish cuisine with an inspiring and unconventional wine list. Chef/proprietor Stephen McArdle has created a unique space across three floors, a modern ground floor wine bar, an intimately classic dining room, and private dining room to cater for all occasions.

100-102 Talbot St, Dublin 1 t: 01-8745011 www.talbot101.ie

Vikings Steakhouse

TGI Friday’s

The 101 Talbot is one of Dublin’s best-loved restaurants, thanks to excellent modern cooking and vivacious service. It boasts great food, friendly staff, buzzing atmosphere and a full bar licence. The 101 is highly acclaimed and recommended in many guides. Their food is creative and contemporary, with Mediterranean and Middle Eastern influences, while using fresh local ingredients. Popular with Dublin’s artistic and literary set, and conveniently close to the Abbey and Gate theatres, the restaurant is a very central venue to start or end an evening in the city centre.

2nd Floor (Bram Stoker Hotel), 225 Clontarf Road, Dublin 3 01 853 2000 info@vikingssteakhouse.com www.vikingssteakhouse.com www.facebook.com/vikingssteakhouseclontarf

Fleet Street, 19/20 Fleet Street, D2, t: 01-6728975.

Stephen’s Green, D2, t: 01-4781233.

Blanchardstown S.C., D15, t: 01-8225990.

Dundrum Shopping Centre, D14, t: 01-2987299.

Airside Retail Park, Swords, Co. Dublin, t: 01-8408525 w: www.fridays.ie

Vikings Steakhouse, on the seafront in Clontarf, offers a wide range of juicy steaks (côte de bœuf and steak on the stone are specialities) along with seafood, chicken and vegetarian options. Super starters, healthy salads and a wide range of expertly made cocktails available, along with craft beers and an excellent wine list. Great value, friendly and professional service awaits you. Vikings Steakhouse... because steak does matter!

TGI Friday’s is your number one authentic American style restaurant that makes every day feel like Friday.

It’s the home of the famous Jack Daniel’s sauce, grill and glaze making their burgers, chicken wings and steaks some of the best tasting dishes in Dublin.

TGI have a fantastic selection of drinks to relax and enjoy with friends including an exciting new cocktail menu, great value lunch deals and a hard to beat two-course menu. #InHereItsAlwaysFriday

KC Peaches Wine Cave is a true hidden gem located under Dublin’s busiest café on Nassau St. Outstanding chef Ralph Utto continues the philosophy of KC Peaches by designing tasty sharing plates offering seasonal, all natural, additive free and locally sourced wholefood. The wine selection follows the ‘nourishment by nature’ message, allowing you to choose from only the best but affordable natural, biodynamic and organic wines. The Wine Cave is Dublin’s best kept secret on the verge of being discovered as the ‘place to be’ in the capital.

TueSat 5.30pmlate with live music every Saturday.

COPPINGER ROW

The Boxty House

Coppinger Row, South William Street, Dublin 2

20-21 Temple Bar Dublin 2

01 6729884

w: www.boxtyhouse.ie

www.coppingerrow.com

e: info@boxtyhouse.ie @theboxtyhouse

Coppinger Row, named for the lane off South William Street where the restaurant is located is in the heart of the city centre’s shopping district and is known for it’s Mediterranean cuisine, it’s relaxed, funky chic and also it’s cocktails. The menu relies on simple values of quality taste and seasonal change to keep the dishes fresh and appropriate. Between the food and ambience, Coppinger Row is an ideal spot in which to start a night out in the city centre.

The Boxty House in Temple Bar has been at the beating heart of a dynamic, contemporary community since 1988. Their guests experience a genuine taste of modern Ireland, with only the finest of Irish artisan produce used. They offer an extensive range of classic and contemporary dishes with a fixed price menu also available. You can also sit back, relax and enjoy their eclectic range of cocktails, selection of Irish craft beers and carefully chosen wine list. Open seven days from noon (Monday to Friday) and at 11am at the weekends for brunch, lunch and evening dinner. Last food orders taken around 10.30pm.

outdoor seating

vegetarian

kid-friendly

full bar

wi-fi

booking recommended

red luas line

green luas line

Deliveroo

ely bar & brasserie

CAFFE ITALIANO

CAFÉ EN SEINE

The Brasserie at The Marker

Chq, IFSC, Dublin 1

7 Crow Street - Bazzar Galley, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

40 Dawson Street, Dublin 2

Grand Canal Square, Dublin 2

www.elywinebar.com

www.caffeitaliano.ie

01 677 4567

01-6875104

elybrasserie@elywinebar.com

01 5511206

bookings@cafeenseine.ie, www.cafeenseine.ie

bookyourtable@themarker.ie

Right in the centre of Temple Bar you’ll find one of Dublin’s best kept secrets, the haven that is Caffe Italiano. The philosophy here is fresh food seven days a week using the best ingredients at affordable prices. All the food and wine comes directly from Italy, from cheese and cured meat boards to lamb cutlets with Black Forest sauce, they believe in doing things the traditional way to capture truly authentic flavours. There’s live music at weekends making this one of the capital’s hotspots, whether it’s for a coffee, a refreshing beer, a chilled glass of wine or a memorable dinner.

For lunch, dinner and Sunday brunch at Café En Seine you’re assured a treat. This is French bistro fare at it’s finest. For Hors D’Oeuvres try our Warm Crumbed Goats Cheese, Chicken Liver Parfait or Salade Niçoise with home smoked salmon. For Entrées their Steak Au Poivre is the star with hand cut chips and your favourite sauce. Or try a new twist on an old classic, Beef Cheek Bourguignon so tender it melts. Open 7 days a week.

@elywinebars 01 672 0010 ely bar & brasserie, awarded ‘Wine Bar of the Year’ 2014 & 2015 by The Sunday Business Post and ‘Best Wine Experience’ 2014 by Food & Wine magazine, is in a beautifully restored 200 year old tobacco and wine warehouse. Great wines, beers, cocktails and ‘food terroir’ all delivered with passion, make this one of the most unique and atmospheric dining experiences in the country. Check out their sun-trap water-side terrace this summer.

@themarkerhotel A refreshing addition to the Grand Canal restaurant scene, The Brasserie starts with its stunning interior.

Comfortable modern, minimal furniture, including the legendary Panton chair, the spectacular grey marble table, and private booths and banquette seating, creating the right amount of privacy for intimate dining. In Ireland, the traditional way of cooking is simple dishes, built around one great ingredient. The Brasserie is no different. From succulent rare breed pork or prime dry-aged beef, The Brasserie stays true to Irish roots. For a unique night out visit The Marker Brasserie for one of Dublin’s best dining experiences.

SALAMANCA

Zaragoza

St.Andrew’s Street,Dublin 2 // 01 6774799 // info@

South William St

salamanca.ie // www.Salamanca.ie //

01 6794020

facebook.com/salamancatapas // @SalamancaTapas Salamanca brings the taste of Spain to downtown Dublin, providing a wide range of quality Spanish tapas and wines. Their aim is to whisk you from the mundane to the Mediterranean with every mouthful. Located on St Andrews Street, right beside the relocated Molly Malone, just off Grafton Street.

Taste the sunshine and sea in the tapas on offer on the menu, such as Jamon Iberico, fried calamares and Prawns in Olive oil, also found in the signature dish, Paella de Pollo There are great lunch and early Bird offers, seven days a week. Also try their Cava & Tapas Platter nights which run from Sunday through to Wednesday. Check it out and transport yourself to Spain, without the check in!

info@zaragoza.com // @zaragozadublin

Michie Sushi

Mao

11 Chelmsford Lane, Ranelagh, D6 01-4976438 www.michiesushi.com

2 Chatham Row, Dublin 2 t: 01-6704899 mymao.ie

The word Michie in Japanese means ‘filled with smiles and laughter’ which is just how the folks at Michie Sushi want their customers to feel when they have eaten their sushi. Since expanding from a take away, catering and delivery service with a restaurant in 2011, they have been winners of McKenna’s Best Sushi in Ireland award each year. Though they specialise in hand-roll sushi, they also offer popular Japanese dishes such as ramen and okonomiyaki. With top quality sushi from chefs only trained by Michel, consistency is guaranteed. Visit them in Ranelagh, Dun Laoghaire, Sandyford, Avoca Rathcoole and Avoca Kilmacanogue or call for delivery.

You can visit Mao in Chatham Row (or their locations in Dun Laoghaire, Dundrum, Balinteer or Stillorgan) to enjoy the extensive Asian menu full of tempting, traditionally prepared dishes. Savour the flavour with delicious curries or try a shared platter to get the full Thai experience, not forgetting their famous Mao Classic dishes. If you fancy making a night of it, why not sip up a low calorie, classic or dessert cocktail or two. Mao are an official Leinster Rugby food partner, so why not try one of their healthy dishes as chosen by Leinster Rugby’s nutritionist. #MadAboutMao. Prepare to tuk-in! Lunch menu: 12-4pm Mon to Fri; Early Bird menu: 4-7pm daily; à la carte menu: from 12pm daily

fb.com/zaragozadublin Zaragoza restaurant is slap bang on buzzy South William St, Dublin’s hotspot for nightlife. The restaurant takes its name and culinary inspiration from the Spanish City and is a true food lover’s paradise. Treat yourself to a unique dining experience, as local delicacies are married together with authentic Spanish flavours. There is an enticingly extensive menu with Tapas and larger dishes. Choose from tantalizing charcoal tuna, tempura cod and a myriad of other dishes. You can also go for a cold platter and pair it with one of the delicious wines available. Explore, eat and enjoy!

Asador 1 Victoria House, Haddington Road, Dublin 4 // t: 01 2545353 // www.asador.ie / fb.com/Asador reception@asador.ie // @AsadorDublin Situated on the corner of Haddington Road and Percy Place, just a stone’s throw from Baggot Street Bridge in the heart of D4, Asador is known as a true barbecue restaurant where the best of Irish fish, shellfish, and of course steaks are cooked over fires of oak, apple woods and charcoal. It’s an authentic barbecue experience where the open kitchen allows guests to watch the chefs work the bespoke 7 foot ‘asado’. Go for the great flavours you get from cooking this way, stay for the craft beers and cocktails.

le bon crubeen

The Revolution

Hard Rock Café Dublin

ELY WINE BAR

82 Talbot Street, Dublin 1 // www.leboncrubeen.ie //

10 Terenure Road East, Rathgar, Dublin 6

22 Ely Place, Dublin 2 // 01 676 8986 // elyplace@

@LeBonCrubeen // 01 7040126

t: (01) 492.6890

12 Fleet Street Temple Bar, Dublin 2 t: 01-6717777

w: www.therevolution.ie This award-winning brasserie in the north of Dublin city centre is well known for delivering some of the best value for money in the city. The menu delivers a grassroots experience, sourcing ingredients from the very finest Irish producers delivering consistent quality. The pre-theatre menu is hugely popular with diners visiting the nearby Abbey or Gate theatres while a diversity of offerings mean vegetarians, coeliacs and those looking for low calorie options are also catered for. Shortlisted as finalist in 2012 of the Irish Restaurant Awards’ Best Casual Dining Restaurant.

@rathgarcraft The Revolution specialises in artisan stone baked pizza and craft beers. Located just south of the city in Rathgar, they offer creative styles of food including pizzas, steak and tacos, a vast selection of both local and international craft beers, and an array of quality wines by the glass. Their friendly staff will go the extra mile to make your time at The Revolution unforgettable. All their bread and pizza dough are made inhouse daily, and their ingredients are sourced locally when available. At The Revolution, it’s all about good food, good beer, and good people.

If you’re looking for fantastic food and live entertainment in a unique, laid back environment, Hard Rock Café Dublin is the place for you. Located just a few blocks from the Liffey in famous and vibrant Temple Bar, a pedestrian friendly area of Dublin featuring cobblestone streets, wide sidewalks, and plenty of attractions. Hard Rock is a great central stop off point which serves fantastic food with a smile.

Try their legendary burgers with a delicious cocktail or beer to wash it down. Have a rocking day!

elywinebar.com // www.elywinebar.com // @elywinebars Since 1999 ely wine bar has been at the forefront, being the first to truly deliver great wines by the glass. Today ely continues to be the leader in sourcing great wines, 500 in total. Awarded Best Wine Experience 2014 by Food & Wine, Best Wine Bars 2014 & 2015 by Sunday Business Post and 100 Best Restaurants 2015 by the McKenna’s Guide this is a place were you can enjoy prime organic beef and pork from their own farm and match it to wines from all over the world. Brilliant for bar bites too!

Kinara Kitchen

Upstairs@57

The Port House Pintxo

17 Ranelagh Village, Dublin 6 // @kinarakitchen //

56/57 Lower Clanbrassil St, Dublin 8

12 Eustace Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

01 4060066 // kinarakitchen.ie

01-5320279

01 6728950

57theheadline.ie

www.porthouse.ie/pintxos

The first floor bar offers 2 / 3 course set menu options every Thursday, Friday Saturday from 6pm.

The weekly specials from the kitchen reflect the seasonal produce available from their quality suppliers and the drinks menu covers 24 Craft beers on draught, Cocktails, Wine and premium whiskey.

Upstairs@57 is ideal for larger groups looking for great food and drinks at great prices.

The Port House Pintxo in Temple Bar serves an array of authentic Spanish Tapas and Pintxos plus a wide and varied selection of wines from Spain, Portugal and the Basque Region. With an impressive garden terrace overlooking Meeting House Square the soft candle light creates a romantic and relaxed atmosphere. Does not take bookings

Kinara Kitchen, featured in the Michelin Guide 2015, is the award winning Pakistani restaurant serving tantalising traditional food, paired with delicious cocktails and wines. Offering a great value lunch with ethnic naan wraps and thali style meals, Thursday, Friday and Sunday, and open 7-nights for dinner, with early bird available Monday - Thursday for €21.95 per person for 3 courses. Above Kinara Kitchen is Upstairs Bar & Roof Terrace. The award winning vintage-themed ‘secret’ cocktail bar is perfect for brunch or aperitifs in the sun. Call to find out about their cocktails classes and booking highly recommended.

Johnnie Fox’s Pub

Yamamori Izakaya

Glencullen, Co Dublin 01 29555647 info@jfp.ie www.jfp.ie

13 South Great George’s Street, Dublin

One of Ireland’s oldest traditional pubs is just half an hour’s drive outside of Dublin. Located astride a mountain in Glencullen, it’s also the highest pub in Ireland. A great destination for locals and tourists alike, transporting visitors to bygone times with trad music performed every night and during the daytime on weekends. All the produce this green isle is famous for features on the menu: oysters, mussels, crab claws, seafood platters, steak and lamb, as well as vegetarian dishes. The Hooley Show features live music, Irish dancers and a memorable four course meal. Johnnie Fox’s should be on everyone’s bucket list.

Yamamori Izakaya is located in what was originally Ireland’s very first café on South George’s Street.

The mix of old Irish architecture, oriental decor and soulful tunes set the scene. Downstairs is the Japanesestyle drinking house, serving small Japanese tapas dishes (‘Japas’), the famous Izakaya cocktails, and plenty of Japanese whiskys, beers and sake.

Walls adorned with 1940s beer ads, movie posters and black and white movies provide a visceral back drop to compliment the eclectic mix of tunes from Dublin’s favourite DJs.

mexico to rome

The Green Hen

23, East Essex St, Temple Bar, Dublin 2.

33 Exchequer Street, Dublin 2

01 6772727

01 6707238

www.mexicotorome.com

thegreenhen.ie

016458001 www.yamamori.ie

facebook.com/mexico2rome // @MexicotoRome Across from the Temple Bar Pub, is Mexico to Rome, the Bandito’s Grill House. They serve up wonderful mouth-watering Mexican dishes with a twist with tasty European and Italian dishes available. On the menu are sizzling fajitas, burritos, tacos, chilli con carne, steak, fish, pasta dishes and their famous Tex-Mex baby back ribs with Southern Comfort BBQ sauce. The extensive menu suits big and small groups. All cocktails are €5 and there is a great Early Bird (starter and main for €13.50) and a Lunch Special (starter, main and a glass of wine for €9.95).

Well worth a visit!

Kokoro Sushi Bento

coda eatery

Konkan

Il Posto

Viva

The Gibson Hotel, Point Village, Dublin 1

46 Clanbrassil Street Upper, D8 / t: 01-4738252

10 Saint Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2

27 South Richmond Street, Dublin 2

01 681 5000

1 Upper Kilmacud Road, Dundrum / t: 01 2988965

t: 01 679 4769

t: 01 424 4043

thegibsonhotel.ie

konkan.ie // info@konkan.ie

ilpostorestaurant.com

vivaespanatapas.com

It’s the final studio album by rock giants, Led Zeppelin and it serves pretty legendary food too! At Coda Eatery the ingredients speak for themselves.

Their menu offers a wide range of meats for example; dry aged rump, sirloin, rib eye and flat iron which are cooked over burning lava rock at a high temperature to create a charred and smoked finish.

They’ve kept things simple serving these prime cuts with well prepared sauces and seasonal sides.

Konkan Indian Restaurant is located on 1 Upper Kilmacud Road, Dundrum, just a two minute walk from the Dundrum Luas Station. They have another branch at 46 Clanbrassil Street Upper, near the Harold’s Cross Bridge. The food at Konkan is always fresh with complex authentic and regional flavours.

Konkan has garnered rave reviews both for the food and the friendly service and is a firm favourite amongst the locals. Their Early Bird is great value and the Tasting Menu is definitely worth a try. They also offer restaurant quality food for delivery and take-outs at great prices (which can be ordered online at www.konkan.ie).

Situated on Dublin’s landmark St. Stephen’s Green, Il Posto has been cooking delicious contemporary and traditional Italian Mediterranean dishes using the best local and international produce since 2003.

A firm favourite for business lunches, romantic dinners, pre-theatre meals and great nights out.

Il Posto offers an intimate and elegant setting, an informal relaxed atmosphere and sumptuous food, all served with a generous helping of warm hospitality.

Situated near the canal in Portobello, Viva brings a slice of Spain to Dublin. This Family run restaurant is filled with Latin colour and a vibrant bohemian atmosphere. Serving authentic Spanish tapas from our extensive menu and a delicious selection of Spanish wines, Cava and Cava cocktails, Spanish coffees, a good range of teas and real Spanish hot chocolate. Viva places an emphasis on flavour and wholesome homemade dishes, delicious seafood and paella made to order in a warm, relaxed casual dining space making it the perfect place to share a great meal for any occasion with friends.

19 Lower Liffey Street, D1, 01-8728787 51 South William Street, D2, 01-5470658 Unit N, Liffey Trust Centre, D1, 01-5474390 FB: @Kokoro Sushi Bento w: kokorosushibento.com Kokoro Sushi Bento takes pride in preparing not only the freshest, but most affordable sushi Dublin has to offer, freshly-made every day. Home to Ireland’s only pick ‘n’ mix sushi bar, at Kokoro you can enjoy delicious Japanese hot food favourites such as Katsu Curry or Yaki Soba. In using premium ingredients, together with highly trained staff, Kokoro has forged a reputation as Dublin’s finest independent sushi restaurant.

Located in the heart of the city on Exchequer St., The Green Hen specialises in classic French cuisine with an Irish twist. It is known for its gallic décor, an extensive drinks list of wines, bottled beers, draughts and of course its legendary cocktails. Open 7 days a week, you can try the three-course early bird for €22 from 5.30-7pm from Thursday to Sunday. Delicious food, a lively atmosphere, personable staff and a unique quaintness set this restaurant apart from the rest.

outdoor seating

vegetarian

kid-friendly

full bar

wi-fi

booking recommended

red luas line

green luas line

Deliveroo

MICHAEL & LOIC AT KC PEACHES We sat down with Head Chef Michael McKiernan and Head Pastry Chef Loic Hombecq to find out the secrets behind KC Peaches’ success.

Tell us a little about the KC Peaches food experience and what makes it so special.

M: We’re producing good quality food at a very reasonable price and it’s all whole foods, so you know it’s good for you.

There are lovely fresh colours in the salads and pastries which is very appealing and when people come in they can tell we’ve put a lot of time and effort into what we’re doing. I think we’re very lucky to be working with local suppliers such as Vernon Catering, Jackie Leonard, Gubbeen, Kish Fish and Food Co. and we also have a great local butcher who delivers fantastic meat.

L: You know that what you’re getting is quality. We work with fresh products and seasonal ingredients in KC Peaches and as Michael says we have some great local suppliers who always go out of their way to help us.

Seasonality is central to the philosophy at KC Peaches. How important is that to your creativity as chefs?

M: Our catering menu changes every

single day, which gives us loads of scope in terms of creativity.

As a chef I think the most challenging thing is coming up with dishes that can be done en masse but also making it very tasty at the same time. You’re constantly walking around, picking up ideas and thinking. Katie, who founded KC Peaches, encourages us to travel a lot so we’ve been to Asia and to France and I was in Chicago recently and was able to get a full overview of the whole foods scene in the US. We’re a fairly big operation now, producing between 5,000 and 6,000 meals a day, so we try to change the menu at least once a month depending on the weather.

L: Because we’re working with the same products and suppliers at this time of year Michael is going to use a lot of pumpkin in the salads and I’m going to use a lot of pumpkin as well, so they complement each other nicely. The staff here are always coming up with suggestions for dishes they’d like to see on the menu, and whenever Katie comes back from the States she’ll always show us photographs of things she’s discovered that she’d like us to try out, so we’re never stuck for ideas.

Together you manage a team of 30 chefs. What do you think is the secret to good management in the kitchen?

M: For me it’s all about good organisation, a bit of give and take, listening to people, and sorting any problems out early. Once you get that right it just starts to flow. We enjoy what we do and there’s a sense of pride from everyone involved. Everybody here has a lot of respect for each other. I think we’re extremely lucky in terms of our team.

L: You need to have good communication skills for sure. That’s the key. We choose our team and it’s very important to have the right person for the job. We actually grew in the recession, but it’s taken a lot of time and effort to get where we are. We have a large team around us, we support them and they support us.

Do you have a favourite item on the menu?

M: I love creating new menus and it’s hard to pick a favourite, but I really love the lemon bar Loic creates. It’s the perfect balance of bitter and sweet.

L: I love the nice selection of salads and the pastry of course!

There is one thing that I created for autumn, a chestnut pie, which I have to say is beautiful!It tastes really good and the chestnut is lovely and soft in the pastry.

KC Peaches celebrates its tenth birthday soon. Are you doing anything special to mark the occasion?

M: I think everything we do is special! I’m sure Loic will probably make a massive cake.

L: We’re going to do something good, something big for sure.

KC Peaches have locations at 28-29 Nassau Street (including their Wine Cave), 35-37 St. Stephens Green, 54 Dame Street and Unit 10A Trinity Enterprise Centre, Pearse Street. You can find out more at www.kcpeaches.com

The Dublin Dining Guide Best Delivery Saba To Go

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Delivers Wine

13 Rathgar Road, Rathmines, D6, t: 01-4060200 Based on the award winning Saba restaurant on Clarendon Street, Saba To Go do Thai and Vietnamese food at high quality for fast paced life.

All their meals are freshly cooked on a daily basis with highest quality ingredients with a mixture of locally sourced produce and key ingredients imported from Fair Trade producers in Thailand and Vietnam to give the real authentic east Asian taste.

Delivery as far as: Donnybrook, Churchtown, Rathfarnham & Sundrive

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Delivers Beer

KANUM THAI

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Email booking

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Phone booking

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Order on JUST EAT

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Vegetarian

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Coeliac

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Gluten Free

Rathgar 01 4062080 Ballsbridge 01 6608616.

Twitter -- @kanumthai Kanum Thai is an Irish owned authentic Thai food and noodle bar, which also provides take away or delivery to your home. Kanum uses only Irish meats and there is no MSG used in their food preparation. All of the food is cooked to order and is low in fat. Kanum pride themselves on giving their customers restaurant quality food at takeaway prices. Eat in, Takeaway or Home/Office deliveries from Noon until late 7 days a week.

Areas: Dublin 2,4,6,6w,8,12,14,16 and parts of 24.

Deliver wine. Beer for eat in only.

Available Vegetarian, Low Carb and Ceoliac Friendly options.

Orders by phone, online at www.kanum.ie or through their APP( “kanum thai dublin”, avail-

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able on APP store and Google play)

Michie Sushi Delivery

Mao At Home

www.michiesushi.com Ranelagh Dun Laoghaire Sandyford Avoca Rathcoole Avoca Kilmac

Ballinteer: 01 296 8702 Donnybrook: 01 207 1660 Stillorgan: 01 278 4370 Tallaght: 01 458 50 20 Dundrum: 01 296 2802

01-4976438 01-5389990 01-5550174 087-9933385 087-9933385

Michie Sushi delivers top quality Sushi and Japanese hot foods all over Dublin. We deliver to your home, office, wedding, party and events. Big or small your sushi order is hand made with love and dedication. All of our sushi and hot foods are made to order, our fish is handpicked and cut daily in our restaurants. We are proud to have been awarded the Best Sushi in Ireland for the past 5 years.

Mao restaurants have been the top Asian restaurant chain in Dublin for over 20 years and now are delighted to deliver their extensive range of Asian and Thai cuisine direct to you. Just order online, over the phone or walk in and take away to experience top quality dishes, from mild or spicy curries, fragrant wok specials to the popular Mao Classics! The Mao At Home chefs are passionate about using only the finest fresh ingredients to create our authentic, healthy and virtually low fat dishes. As an official Leinster Rugby food partner why not try one of their healthy dishes as chosen by Leinster Rugby’s nutritionist. #MadAboutMao Prepare to tuk-in! www.mymao.ie

••••••• Pizza Republic Quality food, delivered! Pizza Republic have taken their favourite features of Italian and American style pizzas and perfected the Pizza Republic style, crispy on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside, the way pizza should be. They guarantee fresh, delicious food, collected or delivered! Everything on their menu is of the highest quality and freshly prepared daily. They’ve created a mouthwatering menu full of choice including vegetarian options. Order online for collection or delivery from www.pizzarepublic.ie Leeson Street delivers to South City Centre, Trinity College, Grand Canal Dock, Temple Bar, Portobello, Ranelagh, Rathmines, Rathgar, Harold’s Cross, Milltown, Clonskeagh, Belfield UCD, Ballsbridge, Donnybrook, Sandymount, Ringsend, Irishtown t: 01 660 3367 Sun-Thurs: 12:00-23:00 Fri-Sat: 12:00-01:00 Dublin 18 delivers to Cornelscourt, Cabinteely, Carrickmines, Foxrock, Deansgrange, Leopardstown, Ballyogan, Stepaside, Kilternan, Sandyford, Sandyford Industrial Estate, Stillorgan, Goatstown, Blackrock, Mount Merrion t: 01 207 0000 Mon-Thurs: 16:00-23:00 Fri-Sat: 12:00-0:00 Sun: 12:00-23:00

Killiney delivers to Killiney, Dalkey, Glenageary, Glasthule, Sandycove, Dun Laoghaire, Sallynoggin, Deansgrange, Kill of the Grange, Monkstown, Monkstown Farm, Ballybrack, Cherrywood, Loughlinstown, Shankill t: 01 235 0099 Mon-Thurs: 16:00-23:00 Fri-Sat: 12:00-01:00 Sun: 12:00-23:00 Twitter- @PizzaRep Facebook- PizzaRepublicIreland Instagram- pizzarepublic w- www.pizzarepublic.ie e- hello@pizzarepublic.ie

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Base Wood Fired Pizza Terenure t: 01 440 4800 M –F: 16:00-23:00 - S– Sun: 13:00-23:00 Ballsbridge t: 01 440 5100 M-F: 08:00-23:00, S-Sun: 12:00-23:00 Twitter- @basewfp w- www.basewfp.com e: info@basewfp.com Base stands for honest, handmade, contemporary pizza. Base founder Shane Crilly wanted to improve the standard of pizza he could find in Dublin, and to create a pizza that he would be happy eating himself. They only use fresh ingredients, handcrafted every day. They never use anything that is frozen or pre-packaged. Base strives to honour the heritage of traditional pizza, follow them on their journey of creating pizza with real integrity.

Ballsbridge to Ballsbridge, UCD Bellfield, Clonskeagh, Booterstown, Ringsend, Irishtown, Donnybrook, Iveagh Gardens, South Dublin City Centre.

Terenure to Terenure, Rathfarnham, Darty, Ranelagh, Knocklyon, Templeogue Rathgar, Kimmage, Ballyboden, Churchtown, Portabello, Walkinstown.

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The Mango Tree - 51 Main Street, Rathfarnham, D14, t: 01-4442222 - Sarsfield House, Chapel Hill, Lucan, Co. Dublin, t: 01-6280000 - Meridian Point, Greystones, Co. Wicklow, t: 01-2874488 The Mango Tree is all about authentic Thai flavours, spearheaded by Head Chef Nipaporn, trained by her mother, herself a successful Thai food chef in Thailand and Sweden, Chef Nipaporn has brought he skills acquired around the world to The Mango Tree. With branches in Rathfarnham, Lucan and Greystones, the Mango Tree covers huge areas of both sides of the city. Favourites include traditional Thai dishes such as Pad Thai and Green Curry.

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CE R V I F IS H & C HIP S An unpretentious venue serving the best chips in the city Catherine Cleary, The Irish times

CAF É C A S U A L S E A F OOD Super Miss Sue is the best restaurant in Dublin right now.

Niall Harbison, Lovin Dublin

LU N A DOW NS TA IR S DINING Luxurious and louche, it’s all low lights and New York in 1955.

You feel like propping up the (spectacular) bar with a very dry martini in one hand and an untipped king size Chesterfield in the other.

Tom Doorley, The Irish Daily Mail

Drury Street, Dublin 2 T: +353 (0)1 679 9009 | www.supermisssue.com

words Martina Murray

OF ALL THE GIN JOINTS...

Chambers of Curiosity, La Pharmacie Anglaise, Brussels Hendrick’s Chambers of the Curious is an unconventional homage to the inherent inquisitiveness of the human mind, offering those who pass through its portals a series of eye-opening experiences designed to stimulate new and curious ways of looking at the world.

Keen to explore this palace of curiosity, we recently embarked on an intriguing voyage of cerebral discovery in downtown Brussels.

Arriving at an impressive nineteenth century building we encountered a strikingly handsome man in a white lab coat, who greeted us warmly before ushering us across the threshold into the brightness beyond.

We were immediately ensconced in the rarified environs of La Pharmacie Anglaise, its warm and bustling air of Victoriana bearing witness to the building’s former incarnation as a nineteenth century apothecary. A series of ornate wooden cabinets lined the wall, displaying a rich repository of pharmaceutical vials and glass receptacles. Closer inspection revealed their bizarre contents, a macabre collection of gothic peculiarities freakishly preserved in formaldehyde.

The steely-eyed barman steadily dispensed a medley of curious concoctions at the counter, as the Master of Ceremonies appeared on the balcony above. Cordially inviting us to enter a narrow passageway behind the confines of the bar, we were encouraged to explore the labyrinthine warren of chambers beyond. Each interior was stocked with a mind-boggling array of surgical instruments and futuristic contraptions, their use carefully supervised by a strange army of phrenologists possessed of strong Scottish accents.

Over the following two hours we submitted ourselves to a series of individualistic experiments exploring the various chambers of the mind. Following this our white-coated friends discharged us to the salubrious confines of the bar, where the barman obligingly filled our ‘prescription’ for a brace of Soporific Sours.

Chambers of the Curious proved a hugely enjoyable affair, its idiosyncratic brilliance illuminating the darkness of our minds long after they called closing time at La Pharmacie Anglaise.

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A Word To The Wise, Unwise & Otherwise Based on the application of authentic research carried out by a number of inventors, each chamber involves an immersive experience informed by varying degrees of science, pseudo-science and theatre, all carefully designed to pique the curiosity of the human mind.

One such experience focuses on the Parietal lobe, the part of the brain that figures out the messages received from the senses of touch, smell, hearing and taste, telling you what is part of the body and what is part of the outside world.

‘Tasting in a Dream’ takes place in a dark, bare room and lasts approximately eight minutes. The participant ‘under treatment’ dons a headpiece and enters a dream like state while watching a series of unfathomable visuals.

The Dublin Chambers of the Curious Hendricks Chambers of the Curious comes to Dublin for four nights at the end of November, when the revamped interior of a former tenement building in Henrietta Street becomes home to this uniquely immersive experience.

With a central bar area and four areas of focus for smaller groups, participants are invited to engage in specific experiences, each designed to stimulate a different area of curiosity.

The organisers have remained characteristically tight-lipped about the exact details of the Dublin event, but in keeping with their reputation ‘as purveyors of the most unusual’, they are quietly confident that the overall experience will surprise, delight, shock and even disturb just a little, ultimately resulting in an evening not to be missed.

Chambers of the Curious takes place in Henrietta Street from Wednesday 25th to Saturday 28th November. There will be two sessions per night lasting two hours each (5pm – 7pm & 7.30pm – 9.30pm). Tickets: €15, for further details see www. chambersofthecurious.ie and follow the hashtag #CuriousHendricks

PROUDLY SPONSORED BY

GASTRO words Aoife McElwain photos Megan Kileen

STEAKING THEIR CLAIM Featherblade

I slip into my bench seat and as I look around the cool, understated décor, my expectations are high. I have a feeling I may be about to experience my new favourite casual dining restaurant.

But I felt that way before I even walked in the door of this Dawson Street steak joint, thanks to their simple website that relayed a focus on an under-appreciated cut of beef and the promise of a micro menu. I love when folks hone in on one thing and concentrate on doing it extremely well.

Featherblade is a joint venture by Paul McVeigh and Jamie O’Toole, with the former in the kitchen as Head Chef and the latter at front of house. ‘We wanted to focus on delivering quality and not quantity, at a price that does not exclude people.’ Having both lived abroad, they found on their return to Dublin that prices had crept up. ‘We were frustrated with having to pay €30 plus for a steak,’ explains O’Toole, ‘knowing that with the right attention it could be done for the prices we’re doing it at.’

The menu is enticingly simple and the prices are purposefully democratic. The starters are €8, the steaks are €13, the sides are €3.50, the sauces are €1.50 and the desserts are €6. There is a permanent menu that features the feather steak and seven sides. To supplement this, there is a specials menu with two starters and another cut of steak; for example a skirt, hanger or picanha.

The feather cut is known for its soft texture and subtlety of flavour, and the cuts served as specials are designed for those who prefer more intensity to their charred beef. ‘Lots of time and effort goes into preparing our steaks, from sourcing to cooking,’ says O’Toole. ‘The steaks are marinated and then slow cooked for six to twelve hours. We also use different rubs for the grill depending on the steak, its texture and the desired finish.’

We share a goat cheese salad with red pepper purée to start. It doesn’t quite stand up on its own, and feels like more of a side salad rather than a main event. To be one of only two choices for a starter, there is no room for anything less than spectacular. The high hopes start to feel a little wobbly.

Before the doubt has settled in, our table fills up with steak and sides. I had hoped to order the skirt steak, on special that evening, but it’s been a busy Tuesday night and they’ve run out. We turn to the featherblade steak, which arrives showing off its bright pink flesh, set off by the charred charcoal colour of the exterior. It has a delicate

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texture, and it has been cooked with care, but the meat’s flavour is a little unassuming.

We have a fork fight to lay claim over the truffle mac and cheese, a sticky pot of pasta with a lightly crumbed topping. The creamed spinach is well-flavoured with shards of strong, hard cheese and just the right amount of cream.

The herbs, garlic and chilli sauce, Featherblade’s take on a chimichurri, doesn’t work for me – it’s too bitter and overpowers the meat. The béarnaise sauce delivers a good kick of vinegar tartness, but the highlight is the whiskey and cream pepper sauce. It is perfectly balanced with clear tones of woody whiskey, the pepper so ingrained in the sauce that it delicately fizzles across my tongue.

Throughout, service is faultless. Our waiter nails the happy union of friendly and informative, and he’s chatty without being overbearing.

When we tell him our side of chips was over-

Featherblade 51 Dawson Street, Dublin 2 01-6798814 featherblade.ie

whelmingly salty, he apologises graciously and takes them off our bill.

As with the starters, there is a choice of two desserts so we order both. There’s a chocolate tart with Chantilly cream and a baked cheesecake with a berry compote. Though enjoyable, neither blow us away.

Featherblade make all their own cocktail syrups in-house and they whip up a non-alcoholic version of their berry syrup cocktail by adding a splosh of sparkling water to a wineglass of the syrup and fresh mint leaves. Instead of charging me for the cocktail, they bill me instead for the large bottle of sparkling water (€4) that they open to dilute the syrup and that we drink the rest of. A Maison Coquard Cabernet (€6.50) goes down well and complements the mellow flavour of the steak. In total, Featherblade sets us back €68.

I realise at the end of the meal that I wanted to find a version of London’s Hawksmoor on Dawson Street. There is a lot to like about Featherblade – their enthusiasm for what they’re doing, the care they’re putting into their space and menu – but it doesn’t reach the dizzying heights I was hoping for.

PROUDLY SPONSORED BY

GASTRO words Aoife McElwain photos Megan Kileen

WHAT A BAKLAVA!

Middle Eastern Feast at Brother Hubbard In three and a half years, Brother Hubbard has gone from a small café on Capel Street, to taking over the building next door, to building a sit down café and heated garden, a take-away section, an upstairs seating area and an entirely new café on the other end of town in Sister Sadie. It’s a remarkable rate of growth and I’ve often wondered if the owners have slept at all since 2012.

The Middle Eastern Feast is the latest in Brother Hubbard’s expansion, and it’s an addition that immediately makes sense. The menu promises excitement for the tastebuds and it delivers it. What’s on offer is my favourite type of food; a take on the flavours of the Middle East inspired by cooks like London-based Israeli Yotam Ottolenghi and British-Iranian Sabrina Ghayour. ‘Ottolenghi is single-handedly responsible for me doing what I’m doing now,’ says Garret Fitzgerald, co-owner with James Boland. ‘I have a folder of every Guardian article he wrote for about five years.’ Fitzgerald went to Middle East for four or five months after a stint in Australia.

There’s an à la carte to order from, where all mains circle around €11 (the most expensive is the lamb at €12.95). A set menu option facilitates a sharing platter starter mezze, a choice of a main course and a sharing platter of dessert for €27.95, or the option to go for two courses at €22.95.

Middle Eastern food caters well for vegetarians, and that is reflected in the entirely meat-free starter platter. It features a beetroot hummus sprinkled in dukkah and a fluffy sweet potato falafel drizzled in a tangy tahini dressing, along-

side the scrumptiously comforting harira soup (a tomato-based Moroccan broth). Cauliflower florets are coated in a spiced crust and fried until crunchy, with the housemade flatbread with a healthy coating of za’atar on offer for dipping and tearing.

For those of us who do eat meat, there is plenty to choose for the mains. I go for a lamb cutlet, a cut that is so easily destroyed by clumsy cooking (I’m thinking of my own cooking here.)

It’s truly a pleasure to see it treated so beautifully here. It’s charred and caramelised on the outside and pink on the inside. It’s a dream to slice and heavenly in its juiciness. It comes sprinkled with sumac, and served with a simple pomegranate salad, a salsa verde and a roasted red onion. The hake tagine (priced at €11.95 on the à la carte) also featured some crisply charred pieces of white, flaky fish swimming in a bowl of roasted red peppers, Jerusalem artichokes and okra.

Dessert is one of the most enjoyable dessert

The Middle Eastern Feast at Brother Hubbard is available Wednesday to Saturday from 6pm, with Little Brother next door open for wine at 6pm.

Brother Hubbard 153 Capel Street, Dublin 2 01-4411112 brotherhubbard.ie

experiences I’ve had all year. Delivered on a beautiful tray is a most delicate rosewater jelly that proves to be the best take on Turkish Delight I’ve ever encountered. There is decadently sweet housemade baklava, stuffed with caramelised nuts and sprinkled with powdered sugar. A housemade chocolate ice-cream blows us away, especially when paired with the slices of fresh fig and orange. We wash it down with pots of mint tea. The bill, which includes a housemade raspberry and rose water juice (that is so delicious) and a glass of red wine comes to €73.95.

The space adapts well to its new nighttime life; a few carefully placed candles in Moroccan metal holders help to create an evening atmosphere.

Essentially, though, it stills feel like we’re in a café, which might not be to everyone’s taste. For me, this latest expansion at Brother Hubbard has slotted right into place, as if they’ve been doing this since the very beginning.

PROUDLY PROUDLY SPONSORED SPONSORED BY BY

BITESIZE words Martina Murray

1. To Drink Beaujolais Nouveau 2015 Every year there’s great excitement as the first French wine of the season is released just weeks after the grape harvest on the third Thursday in November. To mark the Dublin arrival of Beaujolais Nouveau 2015 Alliance Française and Restaurant Chez Max host a very special Gallic soirée on Thursday 19th November. Taste this year’s vintage and toast the newcomer while savouring an open buffet of cheese and charcuterie in the convivial atmosphere of Chez Max. Tickets are €13 (Alliance Française members) or €16 (non-members) and include access to the buffet and a glass of Beaujolais Nouveau.

The event takes place from 6.30pm at Chez Max, 133 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin 2. RSVP@ alliance-francaise.ie

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2. To Eat Peacock Café at the Abbey Theatre The Peacock Café sees the welcome return of a café to the national theatre, with some great Irish produce gracing the menu.

Breakfast features Llewellyn’s apple juice and porridge with Highbank Irish apple syrup, while artisan rolls accompanied

by Ardsallagh goats cheese top the bill at lunchtime. Pre-theatre suppers include wholesome fresh salads and hearty beef and Guinness stews, all cheerfully accompanied by a strong supporting cast of wines and Irish craft beers. The café is open Monday to Friday 8am to 8pm, on Saturdays from noon to 8pm, closing at 5pm on evenings when there’s no stage performance.

The Peacock Café, 26 Abbey Street Lower, Dublin 1

3. To Taste Days and nights at the Morrison The stylish new Autumn Winter menu recently unveiled at the Morrison offers a gourmet take on perennial favourites such as afternoon tea and traditional bar classics. The ‘Grill by Day’ features a fine selection of enticing winter warmers including classic fish pie with luxurious parmesan mash and roasted lemon, while bar bites include roast chicken sandwiches and tasty pale ale battered cod. As the winter light fades, a variety of succulent meat and fish dishes emerge from the Josper grill at the heart of the kitchen, while dessert choices include a rather decadent looking Whoopie Pie. The Morrison Hotel, Lower Ormond Quay, Dublin 1.

MorrisonHotel.com

4. To The Last Bite FoodCloud Campaign Ever done a big food shop only to find yourself throwing most of it out later? If so, recent research indicates that you’re not alone, with many households spending as much as €700 a year on food that never gets eaten.

Keen to reverse this trend, FoodCloud recently launched ‘To the Last Bite’ a social media campaign highlighting the foods we bin most often. With lots of handy tips and recipes to help prevent food waste, those who get involved are encouraged to share pictures of their results via Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

The FoodCloud campaign can be followed using the hashtags #stopfoodwaste #tothelastbite #foodcloud foodcloud.net/tothelastbite

5. To Read A Glass Apart

by Fionnán O’Connor Interest in Irish whiskey has been undergoing a revival for quite a while now, and for those interested in learning more, Fionnán O’Connor has just published a beautifully illustrated homage to Irish single pot still whiskey.

Described as ‘a pure guide to the pure drop’ A Glass Apart (Images Publishing) is a lovingly researched, knowledgeably written tome covering such topics as pot still production, appreciation and history. There’s also an introduction to whiskey nosing and a collector’s catalogue of rare Irish pot stills. imagespublishing.com

SUESEY

SUPPER MENU 2 Course €27 | 3 Course €33 TUESDAY - THURSDAY, ALL NIGHT FRIDAY & SATURDAY, 6 - 7PM NOW BOOKING FOR

CHRISTMAS

26 Fitzwilliam Place, D2 Tel: 01 669 4600 info@sueseystreet.ie www.sueseystreet.ie a x @sueseystreet | #SueseySt SueseyStreet_TotallyDublin_REV2.indd 3

29/09/2015 14:03

Welcome to Zaragoza, where you’ll find deliciously fresh Mediterranean tapas served with the warmest Irish welcome.

A contemporary fusion of modern, authentic cuisine presented in a convivial atmosphere, Zaragoza is not just a place, it’s a destination.

South William Street, Dublin 2 Ph: 01 6794020 Opening hours: Monday - Sunday - 12noon - Midnight (last orders 11pm)

SOUNDBITE words Martina Murray photos Fior de Zucci

Combining a passion for raw food with a love of traditional Italian cuisine, Sligo-based chefs Erika and Fabio Rosati are strong advocates of the healing power of raw food. In particular they attribute Erika’s successful recovery from rheumatoid arthritis to a raw food diet, and now run plant-based workshops to encourage others to incorporate raw food into their own day-to-day routine. We caught up with Erika to hear more.

Over the past few years we’ve seen an increased interest in eating less processed, more natural food. Why do you think that is?

There’s no mystery behind the power of incorporating more fruit and vegetables into your life. I think people realise that we needed to live healthier and go back to a more natural life. Over time, our digestive system becomes weakened by processed, fatty foods so the more we eat simply, the easier it is to digest the food we eat. If you switch to a raw diet you see the energy coming back, because that kind of food is easier for your body to assimilate.

That’s the secret really, eating things that are simpler to digest. Also, I think that the connection between mind and body is very important, so raw food is not just about health for us; it’s also about creativity. It’s not about a restrictive diet or sacrifices, it’s about an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables to enjoy and have fun with whilst eating more natural food. Raw food can bring out the creative side, so it’s a beautiful thing.

How did your interest in raw food come about?

There’s always been a strong passion for food in my family. My grandfather had a restaurant and my father and uncle are both professional chefs, so the whole family has always been into good, healthy food. My Dad saw the benefits of the change in diet shortly after he decided to go vegan and he suggested that I could improve my health if I went vegan too. I decided to give it a go, but I found that going vegan wasn’t really enough to get rid of my arthritis. So I looked into it a bit more and, following some further research, I did a big detox and adopted a completely raw diet. Within six months of eating 100% raw I got rid of my arthritis.

Can you say a bit more about the science behind it?

The mind and diet both play a big role in all the diseases that affect the immune system. The more you alkalize your body and get rid of the acidity, the more it forces the immune system to react, which basically kick-starts your whole lymphatic system. Because melons and berries are very alkaline you can do that with the power of fruits, and when you focus on eating fruit for a while the detox process can be very powerful. So I focused on juicing, taking specific natural herbs and resting for a few weeks and when I did that the arthritis completely disappeared. After a few months I was able to quit all my medications. But a positive attitude, working together with the diet, will certainly make the difference. In fact, I notice that if I allow

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THE RAW AND THE COOKED Erika Rosati – Fior di Zucca myself to get very stressed, I tend to also feel physically very tired. But there’s absolutely no comparison to the arthritis I had before and now I know how to find my balance again.

Tell us about the plant-based workshops you run.

We teach people that basically our health is in our own hands. It’s very easy, simple and affordable to eat more fruit and vegetables, it just takes a bit more preparation. So at the workshops we show how to organise yourself to prepare meals in terms of calorie needs for the day so that you don’t go back to eating stuff you know is not good for you.

Our Italian identity is central too, so at our workshops people can learn how to make a raw pizza, raw lasagna and delicious deserts like tiramisu. We also cover how to eat raw in a climate like Ireland.

Many people think that eating raw is just eating cold salads all the time, but it’s not that at all. While heat destroys most of the nutrients and brings an amount of acidity to it, you can warm up your food while still keeping it raw provided you keep it to a maximum temperature of 42 degrees.

Fior di Zucca For more details visit rawitaliancuisine.com

You also run a market stall in Sligo, tell me about that.

We moved to Sligo after six years living in Dublin because we wanted to experience more of Ireland and we needed a change from the city. We’ve a good friend who supplies us with organic fruit and vegetables and we sell all our products at the market there. Bologna, where I come from is famous for ragù sauce, and I always loved it so we sell the raw version, ‘rawgù’ which our customers really like. We also do kale crisps, available in two different sauces, spicy tomato and dairy free cheese and onion, and we sell spaghetti made out of lots of different vegetables. Our courgette spaghetti is especially popular.

What do you have planned for the future?

We’re planning to do more workshops around Ireland and we’re going to make YouTube videos showing how to make our raw food recipes. We’re also travelling to Costa Rica soon where we’ll stay on an organic farm and learn more about cultivating organic vegetables and tropical fruit, so that’s something we’re really looking forward to.

A taste of Pakistan at the award winning

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11 Upper Baggot St. D4

01 6687170

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No. 17 Ranelagh Village, Dublin 6 T: 01 406 0066 @upstairsKK Email: upstairs@kinarakitchen.ie www.kinarakitchen.ie Sister Restaurant of Kinara, Clontarf and Kajjal, Malahide.

Complimentary Prosecco Reception for groups of 10 or more Mon - Wed in December

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CHRISTMAS We at Copper Alley Bistro strive to serve our guests with wholesome, home cooked Irish Cuisine with a twist within a well maintained and comfortable environment with a prompt and friendly service. All our food is sourced in Ireland and supplied by Irish suppliers to give you that authentic taste of Ireland.

Our Bistro provides a warm and friendly atmosphere to unwind & relax in after a busy day in Dublin City. Our renowned selection of Steaks, Seafood, Chicken and Vegetarian dishes are delicious and appealing to all.

Serving breakfast, lunch and evening meals, we hope to see you during your visit to Dublin.

Three Course Christmas Menu €29.95 per person. Visit website to view full menu.

Bookings now being taken. Contact Hagi on 01 677 0603 or info@copperalleybistro.ie

26 Fitzwilliam Place, D2 Tel: 01 669 4600 info@sueseystreet.ie www.sueseystreet.ie Opening Hours : Breakfast 7.30am – 11.45 noon • Lunch Menu 12 noon – 4pm • Evening Menu 4pm- 9.45pm No 2 Lord Edward Street, Dublin, City Centre South (beside Christchurch) • Ph: 01 677 0603 • www.copperalleybistro.ie | #SueseySt a x @sueseystreet SueseyStreet_TotallyDublin_REV2.indd 3

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TOTALLYCAFÉ

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CAFÉ OF THE MONTH Il Fornaio Dublin Barista School

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Roasted Brown

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Sasha House Petite

If you’re looking for more from coffee, The Dublin Barista School is the place. A dedicated training centre, offering two-hour lessons in espresso basics or an intensive threeday course to earn their Qualified Barista Award. Dublin Barista School is also the place to pick up any coffee accoutrements, whether you want to weigh it, grind it or pour it. As well as offering the knowledge and the gear, they serve up incredible value take-out coffee which they roast themselves (everything is €2), or even a filter coffee which they source their beans from The Barn, a Berlinbased roastery. Open Mon-Sun 9am-4pm

Roasted Brown has long established itself as one of Dublin’s top coffee spots and one of the city’s nicest hangouts.

Baristas Ferg Brown and Rob Lewis serve beautiful coffee using a variety of beans and brew methods, while Roasted Brown’s own roastery now supplies beans to a selection of the city’s most discerning cafés. But it doesn’t stop at coffee: all of Roasted Brown’s food is prepared on site, with gourmet sandwiches, organic soups and delicious sweet treats, and brunch at the weekends. Roasted Brown have now set up shop upstairs in the Project Arts Centre. Drop in and check out their new space.

Talk about not even knowing what you were missing until it is right in front of you! The latest addition to the Dublin cafe scene is the wonderful and quirky Sasha House Petite – a micro-roastery, French/Slavic pastry bar that will entice even the most diligent of dieters with the mouthwatering “signature desserts” and breakfast menus. Sasha House Petite’s specialties – from the Sacher Torte to the Pork Belly Bread – are delightfully refined and fresh; and if you’d rather go for some specialty coffee, you’ll be able to choose from a selection of several aromas and tastes, carefully picked and micro-roasted in house.

19a South Anne Street, Dublin 2. t: 01-6778756 w: dublinbaristaschool.ie @dubbaristasch

Proprietor/Head Barista: Ferg Brown 39 Essex Street East, Temple Bar, D2 @RoastedBrown

Drury Street Car Park, Drury Street, Dublin 2 www.shpetite.ie t: (01) 672 9570 @SashaHouseDub

Clement & Pekoe

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Science Gallery Café

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147 Deli

Clement & Pekoe is your local coffee house in the heart of the city. Pop by for a morning fix or an evening winddown and watch the world go by on South William St. Choose from an array of loose leaf teas and seasonal coffee from select roasters. The owners, Simon and Dairine, are on hand to advise on how to enjoy tea or coffee at home too. Clement & Pekoe are now also open in Temple Bar, housed in the contemporary surroundings of Indigo & Cloth on East Essex St.

Set in the super-cool surroundings of Science Gallery, Science Gallery Café is one of the city’s most interesting meeting places. This bright, contemporary space is home to an enthusiastic team serving up fresh food and great coffee. In fact, café owner Peter is so passionate about coffee that he decided to roast his own, and Science Gallery became the first place in Dublin to serve the amazing Cloud Picker Coffee, handroasted here in Dublin City Centre. You can also choose from a great menu that includes everything from Peter’s Mum’s Beef Goulash Stew to the student takeaway soup-sambo-fruit combo deals (for only €5!)

147 Deli is a small independent delicatessen that is passionate about local, seasonal ingredients and great coffee, located in the heart of Chinatown on Parnell Streett beside North Great Georges Street. Everything is cooked and prepared on-site which includes smoking their own meats and fish for their mouthwatering sandwiches and salads. The menu includes sandwiches, soups, salads and freshly made juices with weekly specials. Great decor, friendly staff, good music and big in the game when it comes to sandwiches.

50 South William St, D2 and Indigo & Cloth, 9 Essex St East, D2 www.clementandpekoe.com @ClementandPekoe

Pearse Street, Trinity College, Dublin 2. t: 01 8964138 www.sciencegallery.com

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147 Parnell Street, Dublin 1 t: 01 872 8481 w: facebook.com/147deliparnell @147cafe

Nearly one year ago this cosy café opened in College Green to offer Dubliners an authentic Italian experience of really good artisan coffee and Italian premium quality food and products. The cakes and biscotti display in the window captures the eyes of every gourmet passing by, and the scent of panini and pizza (freshly baked everyday) invite you for a tasty lunch. The perfect place to buy the finest cured and cooked meats and cheese. Open MonFri 7.30am-7pm. Sat: 10am-7pm. Sun 11am-7pm.

15 College Green, Dublin 2 t: (01) 6718960 facebook.com/ilfornaiocaffe

TOTALLYCAFÉ

Simon’s Place

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Berlin D2

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Mexico K Chido

An arty Bohemian café long established on George’s St, Simon’s place attracts an eclectic mix of students, musicians and working stiffs.

Heart-warming lunches of old-school doorstep sandwiches and home-made soups will always keep winter at bay. Try the cinnamon buns !

Located at the back of the Powerscourt Town House, Berlin D2 is a new cafe that is saying a big “Hallo” to Dublin’s city centre since it opened earlier this year.

Serving Ariosa coffee, Berlin D2 has a relaxed vibe in the style of the city from which it takes its name. Also on the menu are a selection of sweet treats, and a some accoutrements straight out of the German capital: a DJ booth playing crisp electronica, Sunday markets, morning yoga classes, ping-pong competitions and an fledgling bookshop with art and photography books and magazines. Recently they’ve added a beer license (serving predominantly German beers) with Fischers Helles and Guinness on draft as well as an evening menu with schnitzel, bratwurst and marinated chicken.

With their funky vintage Citroen HY and friendly staff Mexico K Chido serve up delicious, authentic Mexican street food in an unconventional location! Parked in the entrance of Fegans Foodservice warehouse, K Chido creates a comfy (heated!) space with cushioned upcycled pallet furniture. Gustavo’s home-made marinades and salsas make it truly Mexican, firing out traditional classics such as pulled pork tacos, nachos and tortas weekdays, and transforming into a Mexican Bruncheria on weekends, offering a chilled atmosphere with your huevos rancheros. Freshly ground Ariosa coffee rounds off a perfect café experience. Mon-Fri 8am-5pm, Sat & Sun 11am-6pm

22 S Great George’s St, Dublin 2 Tel ; 016797821 www.facebook.com/simonsplacecafe

Hansel & Gretel Bakery & Patisserie From Trinity College to Baggot Street you’ll notice breadcrumb trails leading to Hansel and Gretel Bakery on Clare Street. Located just beside the National Gallery, this little bakery is the perfect spot to grab something to enjoy in Merrion Square. The freshly baked pastries (especially the almond croissants) and coffee from Ariosa make a great combo to start the morning, especially with the local office crowd. Everything is handmade from scratch with the ingredients sourced from small local producers, from their breads to their pastries to their delicious cakes.

20 Clare Street, Dublin 2 w: facebook.com/HanselandGretelBakeryPatisserie t: 01-5547292

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Doughboys A well-made sandwich is a wonderful thing and not easy to find, unless you’re talking about Doughboys.

This bustling counter-service sandwich and coffee shop serves up delicious breakfast, lunch and coffee.

All sandwiches are made fresh in-house with popular favourites such as meatball marinara and porchetta on the menu. There's Cloud Picker Coffee to fill your cup in the morning and freshly made lemonades at lunchtime. And not to forget their brekkie sandwiches – with smoked streaky bacon or breakfast sausage, poached egg and American cheese on a Arun brioche bun – a fine way to start the day!

Charlotte Way, Dublin 2 t: 01-4022000 w: fb.com/DoughboysDublin Twitter: @DoughboysDublin

Coppinger Row, Dublin 2 fb.com/homeofthebear t: 01 6779352

18 Chancery St, Dublin 7 Email: kchidomexico@gmail.com @kchidomexico Facebook: Mexico K Chido

The Punnet Food Emporium

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Base Coffee

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Cafe @indigoandcloth

The Punnet is a health food shop that offers customers a comprehensive range of healthy lunches, snacks and products difficult to find anywhere else nationwide – and if they don't have what you’re looking for, simply ask and they will find it for you! The Punnet's range of detox programs are also second to none, with 3/5 day fruit and veg or veg only juice cleanses and 5 day salad plans that take care of your food concerns for the week while all the nutrients and goodness take care of you.

The Punnet is the only place in Ireland to offer such a service dedicating itself to fresh, quality food and juices and rich flavourful coffee including the 'Bulletproof'.

Base has won over the coffee lovers of Ballsbridge.

With their House Blend and rotational Single Origin, there’s always something new to try here. They use the very best coffee sourced internationally from Dublin roasters 3fe. You can also grab a Base signature wood fired sandwich or salad or cake from Dublin micro bakery, Wildflour to make it the perfect working lunch hour.

The newly opened Cafe is a collaboration with our good friends Clement & Pekoe. It sits on our ground floor and has seating for 6 to 8 people. You can grab a perch in the window or at the larger community table, enjoy the surrounds or grab something to read.

Serving Climpson & Sons beans as our House Blend, choose from an ever changing filter menu, loose tea and some delicious cakes too. We hope you like it as much as we do. Open Mon–Sat 10am–6pm & Sun 12 – 5pm

94/95 Lower Mount Street pfedublin@gmail.com www.thepunnet.ie @punnethealth

Head barista - Kieran O’Driscoll 18 Merrion Road, Ballsbridge t: 01 440 5100 @basewfp

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9 Essex St East, Dublin 2 www.indigoandcloth.com/cafe www.clementandpekoe.com @indigoandcloth t: 01 670 6403

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Café Gray

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The Bretzel Bakery

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Eathos

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Minetta

Café Gray opened its second outlet on Dawson Street and is attracting a lot of interest. Owned by Robert Gray, it serves legendary 3fe coffee, loose leaf teas from Clement & Pekoe as well as cold pressed juice from Sprout Food for non-coffee drinkers. Their food offering is based on the best Irish artisan producers and the sandwiches, soup and salad are some of the best in town and the prices are very keen compared to the chains. Go before the crowds do!

A Dublin institution according to some, The Bretzel Bakery first began baking in Lennox Street in Portobello in 1870. It has recently expanded to include a café, offering not only freshly baked, hand-made bread, buns, cakes and confectionary, but a range of freshly made sandwiches and bagels on its signature loaves, not to mention they’ve a good strong cup of coffee or freshly brewed tea. With warm and inviting decor and friendly staff, the café is well worth a visit to beautiful Portobello – even if it has been a long time coming! Mon-Fri 8am6pm, Sat/Sun 9am-4pm

Eathos was born out of a love of food and healthy eating. Provenance and quality are really important to them, hence they have a long list of great Irish producers who supply them. Everything they serve is made in-house and is available to dine-in or take-away – which includes all of their salads, protein and patisserie as well as great coffee from 3fe. Plus, their menus cater for people with special dietary requirements. Open Mon-Fri 7am-5.30pm, Sat 8.30-4pm with our full menu available for take-away with Deliveroo.

This is no ordinary deli. Despite it’s size, it serves up the best handmade Italian style pizza, pressed sourdough sandwiches, wholefood salads, take home meals and deli pots for miles. The two Hughes sisters make everything in-house daily, with a few well-considered exceptions from suppliers such as Tartine organic bakery, Nick’s locally roasted sweet espresso and Sprout cold-pressed juices. Their signature ‘pressed sandwich’ is Devilled Crab with Gruyere - it must be sampled to be believed! They’ve started opening 3 nights for BYOB and 7 days to satiate the growing numbers of Minetta junkies out there.

63 Dawson St. FB @cafegraydublin @cafegraydublin

1A Lennox Street, Portobello, D8 t: 01-4759445 w: fb.com/the-bretzel-bakery

13A Upper Baggot Street eathosdublin.com @eathosdublin

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1 Sutton Cross, Sutton, D13 t: 01-8396344 w: www.minetta.ie Twitter: @minettadeli

Wall & Keogh Tea Lounge

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KC Peaches

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The Bird Cage Bakery

Grove Road Café

Wall and Keogh is the original. It’s the tea company that made loose leaf tea important again, with a location to enjoy your cuppa in that compares to no other. They have a full café attached and all the baked goods are homemade. Just go see for yourself, it’s wholesale & retail tea of the highest grade.

A New York-style loft newly established on Dame Street, KC Peaches is the ultimate hangout for tourists, students and working professionals. Serving natural, wholesomely enhanced all-day dining options, you leave the cafe feeling truly nourished by nature. Unlike anywhere else in Dublin, their hot and cold buffet options are delicious, convenient and affordable. With everything priced per plate size you can pile high on that wholesome goodness but make sure to leave room for their famous cheesecake brownie. The philosophy is simple: ‘Eat well, live well.’ Mon 8am-8pm, Tue-Fri 8am-10pm, Sat 9am-10pm, Sun 11am-6pm

Warm, cosy and friendly, The Birdcage Bakery stands out at its Harcourt location as one of the area’s finest cafes.

With inviting, comfortable décor, the friendly staff offer a selection of homemade pastries, desserts, cakes and bitesized treats all made from scratch daily. The savoury lunch menu is enjoyed all week long and offers an original take on classics such as meatballs and smokey bacon & cabbage among others. With top quality coffee, freshly roasted from the kiosk, enjoy one house blend and one single origin on offer daily, alongside a selection of teas from Clement & Pekoe. Open Mon-Fri 7.30am-3.30pm

Grove Road is the latest addition to the flourishing Dublin speciality café scene and is apparently the new place to be seen in Dublin 6! It boasts a bright and inviting space with a rugged yet contemporary interior, and sweeping panoramic views of the canal. At Grove Road they are very proud of many things: their consistently great coffee which is supplied by Roasted Brown in Temple Bar and their fresh delicious food and treats to name but a couple. It has also been said that they have the friendliest staff the city has to offer!

Mon-Fri 7.30am-6pm. Brunch Sat 9am-4pm.

21 Harcourt Rd, Dublin 2 t: 01 405 4890 w: facebook.com/BirdcageBakery

1 Lower Rathmines Road, Dublin 6 www.groveroadcafe.ie t: (01) 5446639 @GroveRoadCafe

45 Richmond Street South, Portobello, Dublin 6 t: 01-4759052 @wallandkeoghtea

54 Dame St., D2 t: 01-6455307 @kcpeaches

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“So these two Italian guys, Lino and Luli, who’ve been working in Dublin for the past 15 years in the hospitality business decided to open their own place. They called it Caffe Amore due to their love and passion for real food. Now you need to come and check it out for yourself!”

Caffe Amore, 59 South Great George’s Street, Dublin Ph: 01 475 0505

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GAMES words Leo Devlin Aidan Wall

LIKE A Giygas

BOSS

Earthbound – SNES

Final bosses have a knack for Inigo Montoya-esque flourishes. Just as you think they’re on their last legs, the cackling begins: ‘You haven’t even seen my true form!’ Giygas takes this idea to its extreme, consuming itself to become an undefinable force, devoid of motivation or consciousness beyond its capacity for evil. The resulting existential struggle can only be won by the player exhorting the game’s characters to pray for salvation. It may literally be a deus ex machina, but against an ambidextrous opponent, the right hand of God can be useful. LD

The Beginner’s Guide Everything Unlimited Ltd. Linux, Mac, Windows

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First-person games are, nominally, an ideal vehicle for diaristic expression. Why try to filter and explain your thoughts and ideas, when you can just let your audience experience them directly? Of course, it’s not really that simple. Halo 5 might make the claim that, playing it, ‘You are Master Chief ’, but even something so lavishly produced can never really pull you out of your own headspace as a player. A well-crafted game can certainly put you in someone else’s shoes, but your feet will still be your own.

The Beginner’s Guide is a remarkable exploration of the tension that arises when trying to push past this empathetic boundary.

The conceit of the game’s fiction is that the game’s developer, Davey Wreden, has assembled an anthology of short games and interactive vignettes made by his friend, identified as ‘Coda’.

Through voiceover narration, Wreden himself accompanies your playthrough of these pieces, offering his own observations and interpretations of their meanings as you go. The game constructs a convincing progression from Coda’s early, toe-dipping level design to a more fully formed aesthetic, with a strong through line connecting each section.

This structural narrative, though, proves irresistible to Wreden-as-narrator. As he guides you through Coda’s artistic journey, he becomes increasingly distraught by what he sees as cries for help from a tortured soul. To Wreden, these games aren’t so much an avenue for expression as a distillation of Coda’s soul. But the more you hear of Wreden’s theories, the more you may suspect that The Beginner’s Guide offers more insight into his own mind than Coda’s.

It’s at this point that you may catch yourself, in a spark of reflexive dramatic irony, recalling that Coda is, in fact, a fictional construct of Wreden’s own creation, and his observations are more self-reflection than anything else. Like his previous game, the surprise hit The Stanley Parable, Beginner’s Guide is an exercise in formalism that nonetheless offers a seemingly uncynical emotional kick. The game’s story which prods you, through cynicism, into constructing a complete person from scraps of their work, shows the pitfalls of judging someone through secondhand interpretation. As people become more and more publicly expressive, this is a valuable insight. There’s nothing inherently wrong with judgement – just make sure your assumptions are your own. LD

Undertale PC

Usually I’d warn against games which feature ‘flirt’ prompts in their battle systems, but Toby Fox’s Undertale isn’t a seedy Japanese import after all, rather, it just might be the charming game you’ve been waiting to bring home to meet the folks. Undertale puts the player in the shoes of a small child who has landed in an underground kingdom inhabited by monsters that have been sealed away following a war against humanity. This underlying conflict between human and monster, highlighted in the ‘attack vs. mercy’ combat system, forms the basis of the game’s somewhat meagre attempts to investigate violence and choice in videogames.

The most striking quality of Undertale is its sense of humour.

The dialogue manages to be consistently laugh out-loud funny, while the gameplay specific gags are so expertly pulled off that they feel like a new invention in the medium.

The self-referential humour is complimented by heartfelt moments of sincerity and naïvety that not many games can convincingly pull off.

The strength of the writing is backed up by memorable character design and excellent world building, which is made more impressive by the limited palette of the 16-bit aesthetic that the game adopts.

Undertale’s bizarre combat falls somewhere between Shin Megami Tensei’s ‘conversing with monsters’ and Warioware-esque mini-games (that eventually spiral into bullethell frenzies in the endgame). The combat is not a particularly fun component of the experience, but there is so much life to be found elsewhere in the Undertale’s music, story, and world that you will just want to inhabit its gamespace and discover all of its hidden quirks, and yes, you can go on dates with skeletons. AW

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ARTSDESK words Aidan Wall

HOPELESS TERRAIN Eminent Domain II at Pallas Projects is the second exhibition of an on-going project by Gillian Lawler which is inspired by the abandoned town of Centralia in Pennsylvania. Following the ignition of a coal vein beneath the town’s foundations in the 1960s, Centralia began to spout toxic gas from newly formed sinkholes left in the disaster’s wake. By the 1980s the town was declared unsafe and subsequently deserted, its residents relocated.

Drawing from a field trip to Centralia in 2014, Lawler has channelled the town’s empty landscapes into eerie paintings of an acutely attentive and unique style. Although the works draw inspiration from this particular US disaster, there is an Irish quality to their chilling drabness: the grey hues, the melancholic tones, and the underlying sense of a slight and foolish optimism in the face of a devastating crisis.

The first painting, Relocation II, depicts a misty dreamscape with a superb sense of scale. Lawler’s expert and subtle brushwork is first evident here in the fragmented and scuffed black and white tiling that spans the image’s floor. There is an otherworldly sensibility to the painting, as highlighted by the impossible perspective which spans forever outwards into a cloudy sky that would appear heavenly if it weren’t so hauntingly barren. The

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Gary Coyle RHA, After Watteau, 2014 – 2015, Charcoal on Paper, 120 x 100cm, Image courtesy of the artist.

Gary Coyle RHA, 12/07/1979 The Death of Disco, 2014 – 2015, Charcoal on paper, 80 x 110cm, Image courtesy of the artist.

Clockwise from main: Slide number 38 from Eminent Domain; Relocation II, Vent; Trautwine Street

tarnished and grubby surface of the canvas suggests flatness, contrasting with the expansive impossible space beneath. A hollow pyramidal shape hangs in an undetermined space above the skewed floor, the first glimpse of one of Lawler’s architectural insertions spread throughout each painting’s territory.

A tar-black smoke cloud emerges from the grey void of Relocation IV. A pale red shelf hangs suspended in the painting’s centre, casting a slight shadow into the misty nothingness which surrounds the blurred, ambiguous tar-smoke. There is no visible source of the smoke. No fire, disaster, or wreckage in the uncertain grey mist – the running motif that encompasses all of the paintings – which is painted brilliantly to create ambiguous spaces and non-spaces. Like some impossibly normal dream, there is a wrongness, an odd energy central to each painting that sucks the drabness of things into them like black holes of mundanity.

In Vent, a pale green fog, seemingly tethered by taut cords, bellows up into the painting’s ceiling.

A couple of the cords are attached to a bright-red ring which tries to hug the fog as it squirms and leaks around the ring’s circumference. The title, Vent, suggests an attempt to redirect this noxious cloud before it endlessly diffuses outwards, but this looped red structure cannot contain the gas.

Relocation’s colours are reminiscent of Pieter Bruegel’s dim snowy landscapes. A blue sheet of colour is suspended into the painting from some unseen support structure above the painting’s boundaries. The blue sheet evaporates a soothing powder-blue mist into the environment like a trans-dimensional sci-fi relic, leaving ghostly traces

of itself in the process of being realised in this new plane of existence. Its unsettling nature stems from its seeming lack of function, like a bizarre Kubrickian structure.

Trautwine Street depicts the closest thing to what one might call ‘cosmopolitan’ of the displayed works. Lawler’s eerie park scene in Trautwine Street is like a cross between a gloomy impressionist painting and a hazy still from an early German expressionist film. Across the image is smeared a speckled tired row of creamy pink paint: A notably self-aware mark in the context of the show’s other works of near-perfectionist brushwork. The mark adds a sense of movement to the image like it is a passing spectre, or some snow caught on a sudden gust. Trautwine Street is unhaunted by the geometric structures of the other works, but underlined with a dark red line that is disconnected from the scene like blood gathered at the bottom of a receptacle in front of the image. It is a gruesome and subtle touch which is offset perfectly against the hushed scene, closer to horror than the sci-fi projections of the other exhibited works.

The treaded and re-treaded thematic terrain remains fresh in each different landscape due to Lawler’s adept painting technique which is tonally consistent but not repetitive or predictable. A large flat trellis structure is supplanted into the oozing pink-tinged smog of Breaker’s obfuscated rural landscape scene. Rigid diagonal blue lines are built into the painting like buttresses that sever the thick fog. The divide between the fuzzy dismal surroundings of the background and the clear structure in the foreground is broken again by small segments of cloudy smoke which creep up onto the structures edges like a clawing sentient monster.

A projector’s hum and rattle leaks into the gallery from a darkened second room where a slideshow of 76 treated slides, Eminent Domain, runs on a five minute loop. The mark-making in the doctored photos of Eminent Domain is somewhat playful, though the works are still littered with images of swathing black smoke clouds and inferred disaster. Like in black metal imagery, there is a forensic quality to the rural autumnal scenes of back roads overgrown with browning dead foliage. The second room holds the only sculptural work in the show: the diamond shaped Tower looks like a maquette of an extra-terrestrial monument, its checkerboard pattern referring back to the stretching floors of Relocation II. The works are soaked in an overwhelming sadness that is somehow redemptive and cathartic. The exhibition offers a voyeuristic look into a world that is familiar and reflective of ours, but ultimately foreign and ungraspable. Lawler’s interest in sci-fi representations of desolation and devastation has led to a body of work that feels aptly speculative, although it is also grounded by a sense of close reflection on our society’s history of industry, and its ruinous potential.

Eminent Domain II by Gillian Lawler, exhibited at Pallas Project and Studios, 115-117 The Coombe, Dublin 8

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PRINT words Liza Cox Peter Morgan Eoin Tierney

Hear the Wind Sing/ Pinball, 1973 Haruki Murakami Harvill Secker

Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 were the first published works by Haruki Murakami, and form the initial two parts of his Trilogy of the Rat, together with the better-known A Wild Sheep Chase. For an author constantly touted to pick up the Nobel Prize, it’s a fright these novels were not more widely available before. English translations of both have been knocking around since the late ’80s, but only in microscopic A6 size. For this edition, both works are newly translated by Professor Ted Goossen, and have been packaged crosswise, so that Wind is read in the Japanese style from back to front, while Pinball, its opposite number, sits at the front.

Both novels centre on the narrator and his childhood friend, the Rat. The development of Murakami’s trademark ironic style can be seen in Wind, but mercifully he never ratchets up the whimsy as in his later novels. Pinball continues the narrator/Rat story, although neither character meets. Instead their narratives run parallel with the focus pinging from one to the other, exactly like a pinball. This symmetry continues in the narrator’s new living arrangements with a pair of twins in a ménage à trois. Ultimately, Pinball is the better novel: the narrator’s transfixion by a singular pinball machine – the three-flipper Spaceship – and his efforts to find it are deeply engaging. ET

Two Years Eight Months and TwentyEight Nights: A Novel Salman Rushdie Jonathan Cape

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Salman Rushdie’s latest novel – whose title is a prosaic rendering of the Thousand and One Nights – deals with a world that has descended into ‘a time of strangeness’, a time in which genies (jinnia) wreak untold havoc and warfare on the human race. At the core of the novel is a millennium-old battle of ideas, a vindication of the Aristotelian philosophy of Al-Andalus philosopher Ibn Rushd (whose name Rushdie’s father adopted in homage).

Can chaos and fear eventually push humans towards belief in God? Will religion eventually push them away from belief?

Whose agendas are these, and to what ends do people so insistently cling to them? The book is narrated a thousand years from now in the future, when humans have overcome all violence, religion and irrationality. It examines the battle between the rational and chaotic sides of human nature, abstracted and depicted as an epic sci-fi superhero battle between Good and Evil, light and dark, with the jinnia representing the irrational, cruel and despotic sides of humanity. If that sounds somewhat unsubtle, it’s because it is.

The book characteristically teems with characters, subplots, contradictions, meandering stories and Rushdie’s trademark unusual happenings. A man suddenly and inexplicably begins levitating; a baby capable of detecting corruption magically appears; wormholes open between the human world and Fairyland; people are struck by lightning in their thousands. But although there are moments when the magic strikes and rings true, much of the time the reader is left feeling that something is lacking, that some essential cohesion is missing. Much of the time, the tone falls short of the whimsical and playful. The events feel gratuitous; the references self-indulgent. Problematically, every single female character is a stunningly beautiful young woman (human or supernatural) who falls in love with an older man (magic realism indeed). In the end the novel manages to be both didactic and drifting, and, despite its boundless energy, is disappointing from a writer of Rushdie’s sensibility and imagination. LC

Dinosaurs on Other Planets Danielle McLaughlin The Stinging Fly Press

Danielle McLaughlin’s first collection of works, sees motherhood driving some of the stories – ‘The Art of Foot-Binding’; ‘Silhouette’ – and haunting the rest of them – see ‘Night of the Silver Fox’. The topic deserves an essay in itself. While rarely mentioned explicitly, the economic recession is another theme hinted at throughout. It’s an effective subtext whose scattered references work to shape the literary and physical landscapes in the collection. One standout piece, ‘In the Act of Falling’, describes a family who will soon be ‘back on their feet’ – it will just take three years of the father living and working in Dubai. The female protagonist envies, rather than pities, this predicament. Things are that bleak.

These stories are often melancholic, even dark, but on occasion, Dinosaurs on Other Planets surpasses such moods to create atmospheres of genuine terror. This requires an intricacy and intensity of narrative that only emerges as the reader progresses through the collection. Indeed, the final three stories, which are some of the lengthiest and richest, ensure that this energy does not peak too early. Elusive endings may sit uncomfortably with some readers, but rather than disappoint, these endings should instead underline the degree to which the preceding material is soaked with significance. Equilibrium does not exist here. PM

PRINT words Ruairi Casey Gillian Moore Mònica Tomàs

The Moor’s Account Laila Lalami Periscope Press

In 1527, 600 men under the Spanish conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez landed on the coast of Florida to explore the New World.

Only four would survive. One, as described in the account of Cabeza De Vaca, was Mustafa el Zamori, an ‘Arab Negro’ renamed Estevanico by the Spanish crew. From this short biography, Lalami has constructed a brilliant work of alternative historical fiction which retells the expedition from Mustafa’s point of view.

With drought reducing his family in Azemmur to poverty, Mustafa sells himself into slavery and becomes the chattel of a Spanish nobleman who joins the expedition. Just as Mustafa promptly becomes Estevanico, the Spaniards rename all else before them in their image: towns, rivers and animals are all dutifully logged under their new, Castilian names. But renaming new territory does not make it less hostile, and after skirmishes with native tribes, hunger and poor navigation, the original group is whittled down to a few men who travel to Mexico City with native tribes. There, Mustafa decides to produce his own travelogue when he sees the Castilians omit their poor decisions, theft, rape and torture from their own accounts.

Outsider history can be a powerful weapon against colonial hegemony, but few accounts exist in the annals of Spanish conquests. We will never know much about the historical Estevancio/Mustafa, but Lalami’s compelling fictional history reminds us of the possibilities of redeeming history from those ‘who just by saying that something was so... believed that it was.’ RC

Purity Jonathan Franzen Fourth Estate

In 2010, Jonathan Franzen’s solemn-looking head famously appeared on the cover of Time, poised primly beside the headline ‘Great American Novelist’. The head has not exactly resisted this mantle. It has appeared in author photographs for subsequent Big Novels titled and organised around Big Ideas – 2010’s Freedom and this latest release, Purity. From the pages of magazine interviews and articles, it has tutted and gazed sternly down at those writers and styles of writing it deems Inappropriate for this Current Cultural Moment: namely, experimental, difficult, media-centric or self-reflexively postmodernist work. And ultimately, it is difficult to read Franzen without feeling the presence of the head, insisting – mostly erroneously – that its writing is important.

Certainly, Purity works its way through significant – even relevant – concepts.

Three main stories interweave. Purity ‘Pip’ Tyler, a meandering twenty-something raised in a cabin, finds her place in a society where seemingly good causes are contaminated by ego and spite.

Her (third-person) narrative acts as an unsubtle frame for reflections on post Gen-X life, these being mainly expressed through hackneyed notions of activism and troubling understandings of sexuality. The second story is that of Andreas Wolf, who moves from rebelling against East German communism to fighting global corruption through a ‘relatively pure’ version of Wikileaks.

This premise allows both for cringey ponderings on The Internet (hint: it’s just as totalitarian as East Germany!), and for a genuinely interesting study of a megalomaniacal mind. The final narrative thread deals with two fairly likable magazine journalists, who also trade in exposing moral rot, and whose lives awkwardly dramatise the key ethical questions of the day. Franzen is a sharp plot architect, and his narratives interweave in ways both unexpected and engaging. And yet, each story finally becomes a hollow vessel for Important Ideas. By expelling the messiness of character, language art and experimentation from his book, Franzen attains a novelistic purity that is sorely limited. GM

Beautiful and Impossible Things: Selected Essays of Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde, Introduced by Gyles Brandreth Notting Hill Editions

Fans of Wildean wordplay will find great pleasure in Beautiful and Impossible Things, a new collection of essays illustrating the cult favourite’s views on subjects ranging from Shakespeare to the proper way to store one’s cloaks (in an oak chest, naturally). Widely recognised for his wit, Wilde once confessed that ‘the chance of an epigram makes me desert truth’: accordingly, even the collection’s most serious pieces abound with succinct and often hilarious one-liners that rival those gathered in ‘Maxims’ and ‘Phrases and Philosophies’. Although Wilde’s views are sometimes inconsistent – ‘Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative’, he rails – certain themes shine through, notably his devotion to creative freedom and to art for art’s sake.

However, this collection goes beyond art criticism to bring us closer to Wilde as a human. It showcases the breadth of his knowledge and interests, but also his empathy, as in ‘The Case of Warder Martin’, and his hopes for his fellow man, as in ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’. As well as the ‘beautiful and impossible things’ art should aspire to, Wilde affirms that in the realm of the real, ‘A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at’. At times utopian, at times delightfully shallow, this brief tome offers personal new perspectives on a long-lionised, near-mythical figure. MT

FILM REVIEWS words Bernard O’Rourke Luke Maxwell Oisín Murphy-Hall

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution

Director: Stanley Nelson Talent: Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Ericka Huggins, J. Edgar Hoover Release Date: 30th October 2015 Initially set up in order to protect the black community of Oakland, California from brutalisation by the police, The Black Panther Party was a revolutionary movement that quickly gained national traction. Stanley Nelson’s documentary examines both the party’s iconic practises – monitoring police patrols, volatile rallies and lists of demands – and some of those lesser known, such as its public health clinics and the Free Breakfasts for Children Program. In doing so, it paints a detailed picture of a movement the historicisation of which has predominantly been in the one-dimensional idiom of ruling class, white ideology.

Nelson explodes the reductive idea that The Black Panthers were just a bunch of angry black men agitating for cultural change. His subjects are here actively involved in building communities and performing essential caregiving activities within these. Moreover, we learn that the majority of Panthers were also women, many of whom contribute in their own words.

But perhaps the most radical and stirring inclusion in the documentary subject matter is that of COINTELPRO, the FBI’s notorious, secret counterintelligence program which actively sought to infiltrate, disrupt and sabotage the revolutionary black movement (and any group or organisation deemed to be seditious) by every means at its disposal.

Here, the 1969 murder of Panther leader Fred Hampton and guard Mark Clark by Chicago Police, orchestrated by the FBI covert informant William O’Neal, then working as Hampton’s bodyguard, occupies a key point of focus, and the documentary is unequivocal in its indictment of the US government. If there is a criticism to be made, other than its relatively pedestrian form, it is in the film’s offhand dismissal of Huey P. Newton, co-founder of The Black Panthers, as just a drug-addled psychopath, a lazy characterisation that belies much of its other, more perspicacious work. A remarkable story, well worth your time for its discussion of COINTELPRO alone. OMH

Brooklyn

Director: John Crowley Talent: Saoirse Ronan, Domhnall Gleeson, Michael Zegen, Emory Cohen Release Date: 6th November Plucky Eilis (Ronan) travels from Enniscorthy to New York in search of a brighter future. Once there, she begins a new life but longs for what she has left behind. Brooklyn’s view of 1950s America is heavily rose-tinted but it’s this warm and optimistic ambiance that distinguishes the film from Ireland’s most prominent genre, the misery picture. There are hints of folks worse off than Eilis; we see the Irish that built America – homeless and drunk at Christmas – but they are essentially just windowdressing. There are undoubtedly all manner of crimes and unpleasantries happening all around Eilis but she doesn’t see them, and so, neither do we. In terms of its narrative Brooklyn is something of a curio. It enthralls through positivity alone, its quieter moments and larger message (that is, you can never go home again) pack an emotional punch but for better or worse, Brooklyn is a very simple, sweet story told well. LM

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Pan

The Lobster

Director: Joe Wright Talent: Hugh Jackman, Levi Miller, Garret Hedlund, Rooney Mara Release Date: 16th October

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos Talent: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Léa Seydoux, John C. Reilly Release Date: 16th October

There’s plenty of scope for telling a good story by the reinvention of a classic tale (and it doesn’t hurt if they’re in public domain either) but Pan is so totally derivative that it seems like a conscious experiment in unoriginality.

The film is initially powered by a silly imagination-logic that makes it seem like a fun ride, but this quickly fades into generic emptiness as it becomes obvious that Joe Wright has crafted his trite take on JM Barrie’s story from a CGI patchwork of other people’s movies. It’s a more shamelessly simple version of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth than Star Wars, and also manages to rip off the likes of Avatar and Pirates of the Caribbean in both story and visual terms.

It all feels like Wright and co have accepted that somebody else is going to reinvent Peter Pan again in a couple of years anyway, so why not just churn out some colourful disposable gibberish?

This is filmmaking on autopilot at its absolute laziest. BOR

Yorgos Lanthimos’ 2009 breakthrough feature Dogtooth imagined a sort of mini-dystopia governed by strange rules and buttressed by stranger, unquestioned beliefs. The Lobster does much the same, but broadened from a family environment to a satire of society at large, and the institution of monogamy at its heart. The newly single or widowed are shipped to a hotel compound wherein they must find a mate in 45 days or be turned into an animal of their choice.

Extra time can also be bought by hunting fleeing ‘loners’ with tranquilizer darts in the surrounding woods. Lanthimos’ characters seem comically resigned to their fates, speaking in a detached, ironic monotone from which much of the film’s humour is drawn. Its laughs are much in the vein of the tragi-comedy of Roy Andersson, observing humans with the curiosity of animals, their ways both simple and mysterious. The Lobster’s final act may arrest its brilliant early momentum, but this is an exceptionally funny, fascinating picture. OMH

The Walk

Director: Robert Zemeckis Talent: Joseph Gordon Levitt, Ben Kingsley, Charlotte Le Bon Release Date: 9th October When Philippe Petit strung a wire between the two towers of the World Trade Centre and walked across it, he probably had some kind of statement in mind. The Walk, however, does absolutely nothing to extrapolate what that might have been. Instead, for most of its running time, the film gets bogged down in ridiculous guff involving hammy French accents, wafer-thin characters and a girlfriend character whose only role is to watch from the sidelines.

But any irritation at this Hollywood facsimile of a good story gets blown away by the spectacular 3-D effects sequence of Petit’s high-wire walk.

As a film, this has nothing to offer outside of this special effects set piece, but the sequence is so breathless and vertigo-inducing that it’s worth the slog of silly plot (vastly inferior to the portrait of Petit in 2008’s documentary Man on Wire) that needs to be gotten through first.

The film may totally lack meaning, but it sure manages to convey the physical daring of Petit’s walk. BOR

Taxi Tehran

“The last thing I want right now is a kiss from a silly little girl.”

– Colin Farrell deadpan mugs off a small child in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster.

Director: Jafar Panahi Talent: Jafar Panahi, uncredited Release Date: 30th October Director Jafar Panahi, playing himself playing a taxi driver in this playful ‘day in the life’ style film, delivers this piece of advice to an aspiring young filmmaker, who reads books and watches films religiously, but cannot seem to find inspiration: ‘All those films have already been produced, and all those books have already been written. You have to find your own idea.’ Amusingly, and perhaps ironically, Taxi Tehran lifts its format – dashboard-filmed, slice-oflife taxi journeys – from Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten, a genuinely remarkable film from a great director whose name actually gets mentioned at one point in this film, which otherwise clumsily pads itself out with Iranian issues discussions that pander to the sensibilities of the liberal West, the fruits of which were a Golden Bear win at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. Panahi is banned from filmmaking in his native country, earning him some personal sympathy, but this is a mawkish, tin-eared Euro-turkey. OMH

They Will Have To Kill Us First

Kill Your Friends

99 Homes

Director: Johanna Schwartz Talent: n/a Release Date: 30th October

Director: Owen Harris Talent: Nicholas Hoult, Craig Roberts, Ed Skrein, Rosanna Arquette Release Date: 6th November

They Will Have To Kill Us First is a documentary about many things: the decline and intermittent banning of music in warravaged Mali, Tuareg separatism, mass emigration and refugees fleeing civil war, and the rise of the young Malian band Songhoy Blues. Most of the subject matter would be fascinating by itself, but it is wound together here in a cloying, condescending sensibility that sees French interventionism in Malian conflict (bomb the jihadis!) and Damon Albarn inviting Songhoy Blues to support him at a London gig given the same heroic, self-congratulatory treatment. This is a Western film for Western audiences, the documentary equivalent of Albarn’s Mali Music. The last thing it is capable of doing is regarding itself with shame or pity. Schwartz’s banal direction fails to ignite at any point, or interweave the film’s various stories, leaving us with a weird mélange of disparate elements, none of which really work. Such is life for a filmmaker when your strict avoidance of the Western imperial narrative means you essentially have to lie for a living. OMH

The music industry of mid’90s Britain, particularly the world of A&R, is a cutthroat place. Such seems to be the quite literal message of Kill Your Friends, in which ambitious young agent Steven Stelfox (Hoult) goes to deadly lengths to get ahead. The tone is part House of Cards, part American Psycho, as the fourth wall is broken and gruesome fantasy punctures the diegesis. John Niven, author of the 2008 novel of the same name on which the film is based, contributes a script that is frequently witty, occasionally crude and essentially mean-spirited, shot through with a cynicism that produces both cutting bon mots and dull jokes about AIDS in equal quantities. The film’s ’90s setting causes some problems too. References to Oasis and the Spice Girls abound, but we never feel really there. Hoult’s wardrobe is far too contemporary and the up-and-coming band, The Lazies, around which much of the plot hinges sound like polished, late-noughties twee rather than a believable 1997 buzzband. Half-baked, but undoubtedly amusing. OMH

To save his family home struggling tradesman Dennis Nash (Garfield) enters into a deal with the devil, via real-estate broker Rick Carver (Shannon). Bahrani directs, and presents us with a simple, sometimes cartoonish film about the corrupting nature of money and power. Nash’s descent into hard-heartedness is signposted to the audience through his wearing of increasingly expensive button-up shirts, while Carver’s evil is somehow connected to his use of e-cigarettes and, eventually, a cigar.

99 Homes may be simplistic and predictable but it does throw up some powerful sequences that showcase the plight of low-income American households in painful detail. It’s affecting, and at times you’ll be watching from between your fingers. How and ever, despite the film’s tougher moments everything works out Wall Street by the closing credits. The wrap-up is too clean, with both Carver and Nash seemingly absolved of their sins, it would seem that just as money makes the world go round, shmaltz is at the beating heart of even the most serious of American pictures. LM

Director: Ramin Bahrami Talent: Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon, Laura Dern, Clancy Brown Release Date: 2nd October

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SOUND words Sharon Phelan photo Frederic Mortagne

LIKE DREAMERS DO

It’s a sunny, woodsy day in Lumberton, so get those chainsaws out. This is the mighty W.O.O.D., the musical voice of Lumberton. At the sound of the falling tree, it’s 9.30. There’s a whole lotta wood waitin’ out there, so let’s get goin’.

– Radio announcer in David Lynch’s film Blue Velvet

In 1950, Bernie Wayne and Lee Morris co-wrote a song called Blue Velvet. Years later, David Lynch would hear one of the many versions of the song, igniting ideas for one of his most revered films, described by J. G. Ballard as ‘The Wizard of Oz re-shot with a script by Kafka and decor by Francis Bacon’. In a recent interview with film critic David Stratton, Lynch explains: ‘I was sitting somewhere, and that song came on, and in my mind’s eye I saw green lawns, red lips [pauses] at night. And these green lawns and red lips stuck in my mind, married to this song. And then the next thing was an ear – a severed ear in a field. And then more ideas started coming…’

Blue Velvet is sung by the red lipped Dorothy, known as the Blue Lady, and is just one of many inspired examples of the incorporation of popular song in Lynch’s film oeuvre. While his sonic repertoire includes his own compositions, lyrics and unique approach to sound design, it is Roy Orbison’s song In Dreams, also featured in the film Blue Velvet, which is of particular interest here. Musician and musical director David Coulter has borrowed the song’s title for his latest project In Dreams: David Lynch Revisited – a celebration of Lynch’s diverse musical catalogue and relationship to sound and image. Its premiere, last June at the Barbican Theatre in London, included performances by a large and eclectic cast of musicians. Coulter himself opened the concert, playing the musical saw, though in this instance by literally sawing a log in half, the sounds of which were amplified.

This opening gesture comes as no surprise considering how wood as material, and the woods as metaphor, continuously feature in Lynch’s films (and in opening night speeches). Amidst the excitement surrounding the return of the series Twin Peaks, it seems apt that we specifically remember the Log Lady, who was brought to life by the late Catherine Coulson.

We spoke to David Coulter about his diverse musical career, his role as a musical director, and the many collaborators involved in In Dreams: David Lynch Revisited.

I’d like to start by asking about your approach to collaboration. You have a

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long-standing career as a musician, playing in Test Dept., The Band of Holy Joy, The Pogues, and with musicians such as Beck, Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn amongst others. How does collaborating with such diverse musicians influence your approach to music?

I have always been restless and hungry. My approach to collaboration has been born from an early realisation that I was drawn towards the outside edges of contemporary music and theatre and the instruments that I have taught myself to play somehow seem to all fall into that eclectic category. Each time I am asked to collaborate in the studio or onstage with an artist, I take away something new. Music has always been a dialogue for me. I do love to perform solo, but there is something so much more exciting about having someone else onstage with you to converse with. It forces you to constantly question your approach.

As a multi-instrumentalist, you are known mostly for playing the musical saw. For anyone that has never heard a musical saw, could you describe some of the characteristics of it as an instrument?

Spooky, but beautiful! The musical saw is often referred to as a ‘singing’ saw and I often describe its sound as a cross between a worldly old female soprano and a theremin. It is an instrument capable of great beauty and great ugliness.

I suppose that’s why I was so drawn to it as an instrument. It is essentially a carpenter’s wood saw played by drawing a bow across the blunt edge of the saw’s blade. Its tone and pitch are altered by bending the blade and using various techniques to create vibrato and glissando.

In the past you have worked on projects such as Yoko Ono’s Double Fantasy live at Meltdown festival, the opera The Black Rider with Robert Wilson and Tom Waits, and the Gorillaz opera Monkey: Journey to the West. What’s involved in your role of musical director on such large scale multidisciplinary projects?

My role as musical director is probably more akin with producer or music supervisor. My role

can range from coming up with an initial concept of an idea and casting, arranging, directing, rehearsing and playing from within, to being hired in as someone to essentially make the project happen. The three examples you give were all very different briefs for example. My role will often evolve as the process develops. One of the most important elements of what I do is to always be very open to change.

In Dreams: David Lynch Revisited premiered at the Barbican Centre in London last year. How long has the project been in the making? Could you describe the journey from concept to reality?

I’d always wanted to make something Lynchrelated. It nearly happened a few years back at a big festival in France. My dear friend and producer Marc Cardonnel from Rain Dog Productions kept the faith and we finally found the resources to make it happen in June of last year at the Barbican thanks to Bryn Ormrod, and again at Sydney Opera House and Melbourne Recital Centre in March 2015. It is quite apparent that people who have seen the piece feel that the weirder it gets, the better it is!

The Sydney Morning Herald said, ‘An evening that takes you from the circus to the cabaret to the asylum and back again’ – that’s fine by me!

As far as the actual journey, these things happen in phases. A concept is discussed and agreed upon. We write to David Lynch to see whether or not he has any objections and to solicit his blessing. I contact and book my ‘House Band’ which is always comprised of my nearest and dearest musical collaborators.

Wishlists of desired participating artists are drawn up and they are contacted. Together with Marc Cardonnel I select a shortlist of songs and instrumentals, I think about who would be best suited to revisiting certain numbers. We conceive a stage concept. I try and work with lighting designers to breathe extra life into the musical content. We all gather together, we rehearse, usually for two or three days, during which time together with the band and the guest singers, we will arrange the songs. I will edit and rearrange setlists, running orders, etc. We do the show. If we are very lucky we might get asked to do the show again at a later date, but very often these shows will happen ‘for one night only’!

Stuart Staples, Jehnny Beth, Mick Harvey, Conor O’Brien, Cibo Matto, Stealing Sheep, Sophia Brous and Kirin J Callinan will be performing with you at the National Concert Hall next month. How did each musician get involved with the project?

I am an avid listener and over the years have been lucky enough to have worked with some truly amazing musicians and singers. I keep lists of people I want to collaborate with and fortunately some of them agree to do it! I will often start with a list of maybe three times the

number of guests we have room for and usually what happens is that we arrive at a final cast via a route of crossing off people who aren’t available for some reason or other. Some people just aren’t interested in the project so will pass. I always end up feeling that whoever is involved in the project are the right people.

Each of David Lynch’s films have a very distinct musical style. What were some of the challenges faced in revisiting certain songs?

I try never to impose too many of my own ideas as being definitive and prefer to allow arrangements to develop organically. Each individual participant will ultimately be able to put their own stamp and identity on their songs. I try to think of the most obvious thing to do with a particular number and then will do everything possible to make the complete opposite happen.

What has revisiting these songs shown you or opened up to you about the original versions?

It is a massive catalogue of material to choose from, so there are obviously certain numbers that are kind of like sacred cows. There are certain times when we will try out radical revisitations of things and end up realising that, in certain cases, if a thing ain’t bust, it’s not worth fixing just for the sake of fixing. There are however certain times when seemingly all that remains from the original version from the film will be a lyric and a vague approximation of the tune. That is why I like to use the term ‘revisited’. It harkens back to the more classical form of theme and variation.

What sort of sonic environment did you want to create or recreate with this project?

I am going to answer this question by quoting David Lynch himself: ‘The music should surround you, envelop you, so you can live inside a dream. And that’s the way it should be, in my opinion… Sound is almost like a drug. It’s so pure that when it goes in your ears, it instantly does something to you.’

In addition, I’m fascinated by sound in all its forms and I’ve tried to create an instrumentation that will transport the listener to familiar places sonically. I also try to use the element of sonic surprise by breaking with certain conventions and using sound-makers that keep some of the mystery Lynch manages to evoke with his filmmaking.

What approach have you taken towards the staging and visual style of the concert?

I have been lucky enough to work with Silent Studios, who call themselves Architects Of Experience Culture, on the look and feel of a couple of large-scale projects. Nathan Prince and Nick Gray somehow manage to translate my vision and ideas into a very real and tangible form. They paint with light and are able to create the perfect visual context for each song. We work together in a very easy way. I throw ideas at them, very often a list of words, colours, feelings and intentions and then they will go away and interpret that, add in their own touches and then they will arrive and build the lighting design accordingly. I come from a theatre background so have strong ideas about the physical look of the stage and the juxtaposition of the

musicians physically in the space. Two of the most often overlooked things when it comes to staging musical performances are space and silence.

And finally, do your own dreams ever have a soundtrack?

No. Never. In fact, I very rarely dream at all. I am a lifelong insomniac. My dreaming usually happens during daylight hours.

In Dreams: David Lynch Revisited takes place on Wednesday 15th October at the National Concert Hall as part of the Perspectives 2015 series, with tickets costing €37.50 or €42.50, and will feature performances from Conor O’Brien, Cibo Matto, Mick Harvey and many more.

CON T EMPORARY SOUNDS AT BELLOBAR Kaleidoscope

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C h r istm as Special - Dec 10t h

AUDIO REVIEWS words Tom Cahill Leo Devlin Ian Lamont

Beach House Thank Your Lucky Stars [Sub Pop] Listening to Beach House’s surprise-release sixth album, you have to wonder just what Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand were thinking ten years ago, while writing their first record. It’s not hard to imagine them scribbling notes in a gargantuan, decade-spanning diary, mapping out their career to the present day. ‘Oct. 16th, 2015: Pick up dry cleaning before lunch. Release Thank Your Lucky Stars. Book tickets for The Force Awakens.’ The assuredness with which they’ve built on the groundwork of their debut points towards a grand plan.

The thread that runs through their discography is clear, and has certainly left their releases open to the view that they are all more or less variations on a theme.

Really, though, the defined borders of Beach House’s sonic palette are one of their greatest strengths. The comfort and confidence with which they operate yields gratifying results on Lucky Stars. The suppressed tension of early highlight All Your Yeahs is immediately followed by the steady, five-minute pure exhalation of One Thing, and together they form a remarkable one-two specimen of the benefits of Beach House’s approach. No one element is unfamiliar, but the sum is unexpected and remarkable – what we have is an album that is enriched by, and in turn enriches, all of its predecessors.

And the best part is that Beach House know exactly where to go from here. They’ve got it all written down, remember? Heck, they already know if Luke’s turned to the dark side. LD Like this? Try these: Widowspeak – Almanac Wye Oak – Shriek Sleep Thieves – Islands

John Grant

US Girls

Grey Tickles, Black Pressure [Bella Union]

Half Free [4AD]

Mid-life crises can go a few ways. There’s the popular conception of them as a somewhat pathetic exercise; they can also be deeply felt, soulful journeys, leading (hopefully) to some sort of epiphany. With a healthy dose of self-awareness, they can even be comical. Grant’s crisis, ostensibly captured on this album, is all of these. With pop sensibilities at the fore, you can laugh or cry along, even as you feel the urge to damn him. LD

According to Meghan Remy of US Girls, the world is just one big family. A nice sentiment, but less so when that family is wildly dysfunctional. Remy’s vocals ring clearly through the swirling noise of samples and synths, as though the world is pounding on her bedroom door. Considering the epic sweep of tracks like Woman’s Work, this gives the album a personal touch. Of course, when the personal is geopolitical, the stakes are always going to feel a little higher. LD

Owensie

Deafheaven

Dramamine [Out on a Limb Records]

New Bermuda [Anti-]

Dramamine, a brand-name motion sickness drug, is a word so pregnant with lyrical potential, it’s no surprise that Modest Mouse got there before Owensie wrote his own paean. It’s also no surprise that a song titled as such moves in cyclical motion, driven here by virtuosic right-hand picking from a warm sounding Spanish guitar. Throughout the influence of other great late ’90s music like Elliott Smith and Microphones is abundant on this charming LP. IL

Where their breakthrough Sunbather mixed black metal tropes with moments of altogether more humdrum Explosions in the Sky-style soundtrackrock, New Bermuda bites down harder on the former, and provides less moments of crossover potential – though having engaged the indieverse so effectively last time around, it’s questionable whether that matters. An intense, explosive and altogether bleaker picture is conjured over the five epics here. IL

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Neon Indian VEGA INTL. Night School [Transgressive] Remember chillwave? Well, it’s back, in possibly the shortest style boomerang ever. Moreover, while you’re remembering chillwave (a genre that took its name from a post on a music hipster parody website no less), remember also that it was essentially a series of production embellishments (side-chained kicks, etc.) to songs that could easily have been classified simply as pop. Alan Palomo stays true to those sonic ticks and to his pop muse on an enjoyable record that brushes the haters off. IL

Tony Bennett and Bill Charlap The Silver Lining – The Songs of Jerome Kern [Columbia] At 89, with 18 Grammys and at it for over 60 years, Bennett is an icon. Here he teams with acclaimed jazz pianist Bill Charlap and his singing is as clear as a bell with Charlap’s hypnotic playing. Also joining in are Kenny Washington (drums) and Peter Washington (bass). There are no bad Jerome Kern songs but listen closely to The Way You Look Tonight and Yesterdays – they will leave you breathless. Buy this disc for someone you really care about. TC

Yacht

Lou Barlow

I Thought The Future Would Be Cooler [Downtown]

Brace The Wave [Joyful Noise] Having been out of action for some time, lo-fi legend Lou Barlow returns with an album that is informed by coming through the other side of a divorce (which Barlow spoke about with a distinct honesty on an episode of WTF last year). Typically, it manages to sound both rough at the edges and also rich, warm and homely, with arrangements typical of one-the-one-guy plays-everything variety, mixing electric and acoustic guitars and double-tracked vocals over ultra-simple rhythms. IL

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From their early support slots with bands like Dirty Projectors, to this fabulously titled but underwhelming record, Yacht have always seemed as much a situationist art project as a band, with amusing absurdity being as important to Yacht as stretching themselves musically. Taken as a whole, the Yacht project can be both fun and thoughtprovoking, but purely as a listening experience, this record fails to raise the pulse. IL

Joanna Newsom Divers [Drag City] At the end of Newsom’s lengthy heartbreaker Have One On Me, the final surrender of the relationship that album laments, Does Not Suffice, explodes from a tender piano ballad into a thunderous wash of feedback. At the end of the intimately acoustic experience that album was, it felt symbolically incongruous, and now five years later feels like a useful linking point to the expanded palette of her fabulous new record, Divers.

An inimitable talent, with a unique lyrical aptitude and a musical sensibility that elegantly weaves Americana with a variety of folk idioms through through both harp playing and piano playing (which has featured heavily throughout Newsom’s work since her debut, albeit to infinitely less fanfare), Divers sees Newsom’s keyboards, from piano to Mellotron to Minimoog to a variety of organs, becoming central to much of the musical fun here, with arrangements mixing and matching sounds, as well as integrating the harp and keyboard layers together.

From the first swells of Nico Muhly’s orchestral arrangement and delicately fizzing synth touches on Anecdotes through to the point when Time, As A Symptom overloads with contrapuntal vocal lines, this phenomenal album ruminates on time as a function of life, love, remembering and forgetting. The erased maps in Sapokanikan, the restless migration in Goose Eggs, and the sci-fi chanty Waltz of 101st Lightborne are all highlights on a magnificent, touching record that rewards deep listening time and time again. IL Like this? Try these: Judee Sill – Judee Sill & Heart Food Richard & Linda Thompson – First Light Harry Nilsson – Nilsson Sings Newman

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listings LIVE GIGS Tuesday 3 November Everything Everything The Academy 8pm, €22.50 Wednesday 4 November Alabama Shakes Olympia Theatre 7.30pm, from €33.50 Brian McFadden Whelans 8pm, €23 Ann Scott Whelans 8pm, €12 The Waterboys Vicar Street 7.30pm, €44 Thursday 5 November The Waterboys Vicar Street 7.30pm, €44 Ricky Ross The Sugar Club 8pm, €29 John Blek & The Rats The Workman’s Club 8pm, €10 Years and Years Olympia Theatre 7.30pm, from €21 Get Folked - Away With The Fairies The Grand Social 7.30pm, €5 Slaves The Academy 7pm, €20 With Baby Strange & Spring King The Devlins Whelans 8pm, €20 Friday 6 November Metz Whelans 8pm, €17.50 Alarmist The Sugar Club 8pm, €10-€22 Half of Me The Workman’s Club 8pm, €7 Lonely The Brave The Academy 7pm, €16.50 The Waterboys Vicar Street 7.30pm, €44 Otherkin Grand Social 8pm, €12 Lord Huron The Button Factory 7.30pm, €20 Years & Years Olympia Theatre 7.30pm, from €21 Saturday 7 November Girl Band The Button Factory 7.30pm, €16 Metropolis Festival RDS 1pm, €79.50 Ft. Hot Chip, Mark Ronson and Cloud Castle Lake Frances Black and Kieran Goss Olympia Theatre 7.30pm, from €28 The Beatles Table Quiz The Workman’s Club 2:15, €40 per team The Rockits The Workman’s Club 8pm, €18 The Waterboys

Vicar Street 7.30pm, €44 Sharon Robinson The Sugar Club 8pm, €42.50 Róisín O Whelans 8pm, €13 Sunday 8 November Metropolis Festival RDS 1pm, €79.50 Ft. Chic, Four Tet and Floating Points The Geddes Whelans 8pm, €12 Charlie Worsham Whelans 8pm, €16.50 Will Young Olympia Theatre 7.30pm, from €44.05 Samantha Crain The Workman’s Club 8pm, €14.50 Sweet Vicar Street 7.30pm, €42 Monday 9 November Megadeth 3Arena 6.30pm, from €49.65 Vintage Trouble The Academy 7.30pm, €24 Bully Whelans 8pm, €14 John Grant Vicar Street 7.30pm, €32.50 Tuesday 10 November Kelley Stolz, Dirty Ghosts & Exploding Eyes Upstairs in Whelans 8pm, €11 Joey Bada$$ The Academy 7pm, €26.50 John Grant Vicar Street 7.30pm, €32.50 Eagles Of Death Metal Olympia Theatre 7.30pm, €22.50 Kelly Clarkson 3Arena CANCELLED! High on Fire Button Factory 7.30pm, €TBC Wednesday 11 November Jack and Jack The Academy 7.30pm, €27.90 Texas Olympia Theatre 7.30pm, from €34.50 Thursday 12 November Kacey Musgraves The Academy 7.30pm, €20 Kacey Musgraves The Academy 7.30pm, €20 Mick Foley - 50 years of Foley Vicar Street 7.30pm €23/33.50 Cory Henry & The Funk Apostles The Sugar Club 8pm, €17.50–€20 Marc O’Reilly Upstairs in Whelans 8pm, €10

Friday 13 November Fujiya & Miyagi Hangar 7.30pm, €15 Hail The Ghost Whelans 8pm, €10 Breathe The Sugar Club 8pm, €17.50 Pam Ann: Queen of the Sky Vicar Street 7.00pm, €27-35 Stiff Little Fingers The Academy 7.30pm, €25 Dave Matthews Band 3Arena 6.30pm, from €69.50 Julio Bashmore The Academy 11pm, €22.90 Tucan + Guests The Workman’s Club 8pm, €12 Andy McKee Button Factory 7.30pm, €27.50 Robocobra Quartet Bello Bar 8pm, €TBC Saturday 14 November The Mountain Goats Whelan’s 7.30pm, €20 (Sold out!)

The Original Rudeboys The Academy 7.30pm, €20 The Stylistics Vicar Street 7.30pm, €65.45 Bob Moses [Live] The Button Factory 7.30pm, €10 Inni-K Bello Bar 8pm, €10-12 Sunday 15 November Kurt Vile & the Violators Vicar Street 7.30pm, €25 With Waxahatchee Talib Kweli The Sugar Club 8pm, €20 Part of the Beck’s Rhythm Series Áine Cahill Whelans 8pm, €8 adv / €10 door Davie Furey Upstairs in Whelans 8pm, €10 Monday 16 November Ducktails Whelans 8pm, €20 Tuesday 17 November Paul Weller Olympia Theatre 7.30pm, €49.65 Wednesday 18 November In Dreams: David Lynch Revisited National Concert Hall 7.30pm, €37.50-€42.50 Imagine Dragons 3Arena 6.30pm, €36 Paul Weller Olympia Theatre 7.30pm, €49.65 Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn Vicar Street 7.30pm, €35 The Album Leaf

The Workman’s Club 8.00pm, €19.50 Christian Scott The Sugar Club 8pm, €22.90 Benjamin Appl Hugh Lane Gallery 8pm, €15-20 Thursday 19 November Blue-Eyed Hawk Abbey Theatre 7pm, €15 Part of Strut at the Peacock 3G ft. Gerhard Ornig Abbey Theatre 9pm, €15 Part of Strut at the Peacock Christian Scott Quintet The Sugar Club 8pm, €20 Future Jazz Series 002 Alex Jordan and Co. Upstairs in Whelans 8pm, €5 Eoin Glackin The Workman’s Club 8pm, €8 Friday 20 November Alone Together: Louis Stewart and Brian Dunning Abbey Theatre 7pm, €15 Gabriele Mirabassi & Francesco Turrisi Abbey Theatre 9pm, €15 Uncle Acid And The Deadbeats Whelans 8pm, €20 Clutch Olympia Theatre 7.30pm, €23.00 Van Morrison 3Arena 6.30pm, from €76 All Tvvins The Academy 7.30pm, €15 The Proclaimers Vicar Street 7.30pm, €36 Dublin Burlesque Festival 2015 Circus Macabre The Sugar Club 8pm, €16.50/€27.50 Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats Whelans 7:30pm, €20 Danny O’Brien – Ah Jaysus!

Upstairs in Whelans 8pm, €12 Tom O’Mahony The Workman’s Club 8pm, €12 Saturday 21 November The Necks Abbey Theatre 9pm, €22.50 Maverick Sabre The Academy 7pm, €24.90 Joanne Shaw Taylor Whelan’s 7.30pm, €20 Relish Upstairs in Whelans 8pm, €15 San Fermin The Workmans Club, 7.30pm, €16.50 Dublin Burlesque Festival 2015 Gala Show The Sugar Club 8pm, €16.50/€27.50 Sunday 22 November

Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddess The Convention Centre 6pm, €55-€105 Of Monsters And Men Olympia Theatre 7.30pm, €28.50 Titus Andronicus Hangar 7.30pm, €16.50 Mercury Rev The Button Factory 7.30pm, €30 Discovery Gospel Choir The Sugar Club 8pm, €10.30 Monday 23 November U2 3Arena 6.30pm, €30-185 Matt Redman and Kari Jobe Vicar Street 7.30pm, €24-30 Tuesday 24 November Charlie Cunningham Doyles 8pm, €6.00 Thomas Dybdahl Odessa 8pm, €12 U2 3Arena 6.30pm, €30-185 Nick Oliveri & Mondo Generator Voodoo Lounge 8pm, €16 Motionless In White The Academy 6pm, €18 With Chelsea Grin & New Years Day Wednesday 25 November Chelsea Wolfe Button Factory 8pm, €18 Saint Raymond The Academy 6.30pm, €15 Prides Whelans 8pm, €16 King Daniel Whelans 8pm, €10 Thursday 26 November Dune Rats Academy 2 7.30pm, €12.50 Zedd & Vindata The Academy 7pm, €25.40 The Story of Swing Vicar Street 7.30pm, €23 O Emperor Sugar Club 7.30pm, €17 Daniel Sloss – Dark Whelans 8pm, €16 Friday 27 November Peter Hook & The Light The Academy 7pm, €23.50 Performing New Order’s “Lowlife” & “Brotherhood” & Joy Division material King Kong Company – Album launch The Academy 11.30pm, €15 U2 3Arena 6.30pm, €30-185 Saturday 28 November

Nothing But Thieves Academy 2 7.30pm, €14.55 George Fitzgerald The Button Factory 7.30pm, €15.50 Electric Six The Academy 7.30pm, €20 U2 3Arena 6.30pm, €30-185 Wyvern Lingo Whelans 8pm, €15 Delorentos – Acoustic Tour National Concert Hall 7.30pm, €25 Ian Prowse The Workman’s Club – The Vintage Room 8pm, €5 Sunday 29 November Thundercat The Sugar Club 8pm, €20 (Sold out) Part of the Beck’s Rhythm Series Simple Minds 3Arena 6.30pm, from €50.65 Monday 30 November The Prodigy 3Arena 6.30pm, €52.65–€57.65 Thundercat The Sugar Club 8pm, €20 Part of the Beck’s Rhythm Series Tuesday 1 December Simply Red 3Arena 6.30pm, €54.65 Django Django Vicar Street 7.30pm, €22.50 Wednesday 2 December Marina and The Diamonds The Academy 7.30pm, €27.90 The Magic Numbers Whelans 8pm, €21 Mumford And Sons 3Arena 6.30pm, from €51.65 Thursday 3 December Lissie Whelans 8pm, €18 Lianne La Havas Olympia Theatre 7.30pm, from €25 Marina and The Diamonds The Academy 7.30pm, €27.90 Mumford And Sons 3Arena 6.30pm, from €51.65 La M.O.D.A. The Workman’s Club 8pm, €15.50 Hypnotic Brass Ensemble & Stomptown Brass The Sugar Club 8pm, €20 Friday 4 December Hypnotic Brass Ensemble & Interskalactic The Sugar Club 8pm, €20 Gaz Coombes Whelans 8pm, €23 LA Priest

The Workm 8pm, €16.50

Kurt Vile and the Violators w/ Waxahatchee Sunday 15 November | Vicar Street | 7.30pm, €25 Fresh off the back of his latest and extremely enjoyable record b’lieve i’m goin down, the Philly singer-songwriter with the incredible name returns to the stage of Vicar Street, bringing in tow Katie Crutchfield, better known as Waxahatchee, for a top-notch double-bill of Americana. Vile’s music has become slinkier and less abstract, like a weird Neil Young off-shoot, while Waxahatchee’s draws from ‘90s alternative sounds, combining whisper quiet moments of intimacy with deep, dirty distortions.

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CLASSICAL Wednesday 4 November RTÉ Concert Orchestra: Our Lady’s Choral Society NCH, Main Auditorium 70th Anniversary Gala 8pm, € Thursday 5 November Swedish Chamber Orchestra NCH, Main Auditorium Thomas Dausgaard, conductor; Christian Ihle Hadland, piano 8pm, € Friday 6 November My Chopin Story NCH, John Field Room 1.05pm, €15/€13.50 RTÉ NSO Beethoven, Shostakovich NCH, Main Auditorium 8pm, €15-35 Saturday 7 November Paul Byrom sings The Great Irish Songbook NCH, Main Auditorium 8pm, €15-32.50 with Guest Moya Brennan (Clannad) Sunday 8 November Sunday Matinee Series NCH, Main Auditorium 3pm, €20

Camerata Ireland; Barry Douglas piano/director Arvo Part at 80 Christchurch Cathedral 8pm, €20/15 Tuesday 10 November Afterlight: Music of Ireland, 1890-2015 NCH, John Field Room 1.05pm, €10 South Pacific NCH, Main Auditorium 8pm, €20-35 Wednesday 11 November Afterlight: Music of Ireland, 1890-2015 NCH, John Field Room 1.05pm, €10 South Pacific NCH, Main Auditorium 8pm, €20-35 Thursday 12 November Afterlight: Music of Ireland, 1890-2015 NCH, John Field Room 1.05pm, €10 South Pacific NCH, Main Auditorium 8pm, €20-35 Friday 13 November

Gospel Greats NCH, John Field Room 1.05pm, € South Pacific NCH, Main Auditorium 8pm, €20-35 Saturday 14 November South Pacific NCH, Main Auditorium 2.30pm & 8pm, €20-35 Sunday 15 November The Four Seasons by Candlelight NCH, Main Auditorium 3.15pm, €25-46 Tuesday 17 November Perspectives 2015: Keith Jarrett Solo Piano NCH, Main Auditorium 8pm, €40-95 Wednesday 18 November Perspectives 2015: In Dreams David Lynch Revisited NCH, Main Auditorium 8pm, €37.50-42.50 Stuart Staples (Tindersticks), Jehnny Beth (Savages), Mick Harvey (ex-Bad Seeds), Cibo Matto, Stealing Sheep, Sophia Brous and Kirin J Callinan Friday 20 November Giants of Ragtime & Stride Piano

NCH, John Field Room 1.05pm, €15.12 “Mr Gershwin & Fats Waller meet Scott Joplin” Lifetime Achievement Award 2015: Paul Brady NCH, Main Auditorium 8pm, Sold Out! Saturday 21 November The Puccini Scandal NCH, Main Auditorium 8pm, €20-37.50 Sunday 22 November Sunday Matinee Series NCH, Main Auditorium 3pm, €20 Mark Padmore, tenor Paul Lewis, Piano IBO: A Duel, A Jewel University Church, St Stephen’s Green 3pm, €20 An Evening with Lorna Byrne and Cathy Kelly NCH, Main Auditorium 7.30pm, €15-25 Tuesday 24 November Tea Dance Tunes: DementiaFriendly Concert NCH, John Field Room

JAZZ

Dublin Book Festival Thursday 12 - Sunday 15 November | Various locations and prices The Book Festival returns, situated predominantly in the Smock Alley Theatre in Temple Bar, but with events also spilling into a variety of smaller locations like the Gutter Bookshop and the Irish Writers’ Centre. Highlights on the bill include a literary walking tour with Pat Liddy, a seminar on reviewing books with Sinead Gleeson (whose recent anthology of female Irish writers, The Long Gaze Back, is also the subject of a talk on the Saturday) and an event called Songbook, featuring the music of Valerie Francis. Go to www.dublinbookfestival.com for the full programme.

SUNDAY Stella Bass Cafe en Seine, Dawson St. D2 2.00pm, Free Jazz Session JJ Smyths, Aungier St. D2 4.30pm, €10 Stella Bass Quintet Searsons, Upper Baggot St. D4 6.00pm, Free MONDAY Hot House Big Band Mercantile, Dame St. D2 8.45pm, €5 Essential Big Band Grainger’s, Malahide Rd. D3 9.30pm, €5 TUESDAY Phoenix Big Band Tara Towers Hotel, Merrion Rd, D4 9.00pm, Free Tom Harte Quintet Leeson Lounge, Upr Leeson St. D2 9.00pm, Free Jazz Session International Bar, Wicklow St. D2 9.30pm, €5 WEDNESDAY Jazz Session (1st Weds of the Month) The House, 4 Main St. Howth, Co.Dublin 7.30pm, Free THURSDAY Jazz Session House, Lwr. Leeson St. D2 6.00pm, Free Jazz Session

2pm, Sold Out! Violin and Piano Master Classes Engineering Library 4.30pm, €5 with Nikolaj Znaider and Robert Kulek Summon the Heroes NCH, Main Auditorium 8pm, €10-15 A Celebration of 35 years Wednesday 25 November Nikolaj Znaider, violin NCH, Main Auditorium 8pm, €34.50-47.50 Robert Kulek, piano Thursday 26 November RTÉ Concert Orchestra Signature Series: Ian Bostridge NCH, Main Auditorium 8pm, €15-45 Friday 27 November Pigalle - The Life and Music of Edith Piaf NCH, John Field Room 1.05pm, €18/16 RTÉ NSO Prokofiev, Szymanowski, Walton NCH, Main Auditorium 8pm, €15-35 Sunday 29 November

Global Harmony NCH, Main Auditorium 7pm, €30-50 Monday 30 November Musical Adventures with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra NCH, Main Auditorium (Unreserved) 10.30am, 12.15pm & 2pm, €10 Tuesday 1 December Louis Stewart and Jim Doherty NCH, John Field Room 1.05pm, €15/13 Rejoice NCH, Main Auditorium 8pm, €15-25 Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Goethe-Institut Choir Wednesday 2 December The ESB “Great” Christmas Concert NCH, Main Auditorium 8pm, €12-30 Thursday 3 December Ring Out Glad Bells with The Palestrina Choir NCH, Main Auditorium 8pm, €15-30

JJ Smyths, Aungier St. D2 Nov 5 John Morairty Qrt. Nov 12 Hugh Buckley Group Nov 19 Brian Dunning Qrt Nov 26 Tommy Halferty Trio 8.30pm, €10 Jazz Session International Bar, Wicklow St. D2 9.30pm, €5 FRIDAY Jazz Trio Marcel’s. 13 Merrion Row, D2 9.00pm, Free Jazz Session Mint Bar, Westin Hotel, College Green, D2 10.30pm, Free SATURDAY Jazz Session The Fitzwilliam Hotel, St. Stephen’s Green, D2 9.00pm, Free Jazz Trio Marcel’s. 13 Merrion Row, D2 9.00pm, Free

9.00pm, €12 Tuesday 17th November Keith Jarrett (Solo Piano) NCH 8.00pm, SOLD OUT Wednesday 18th - Saturday 21st November STRUT (Pop up Jazz Club) Peacock stage, Abbey Theatre, D1 7.00pm, €15 Wednesday 18th November Mal O’Brien JJ Smyths, Aungier St. D2 8.30pm, €10 Thursday 19th November Listen Joe OÇallaghan/Izumi Kimura & friends Bello Bar, Portobello Harbour, D8 7.00pm, €10 Christian Scott Quintet Sugar Club, Lwr. Leeson St. D2 7.30pm, €20 Friday/Saturday 20th/21st November Mary Coughlan JJ Smyths, Aungier St. D2 9.00pm, €20 Sunday 22nd November Zrazy JJ Smyths, Aungier St. D2 4.30pm, €10

ONE OFF Sunday 1st November Louis Stewart Qrt. JJ Smyths, Aungier St. D2 4.30pm, €10 Friday 13th November Jo Lawry (NYC) JJ Smyths, Aungier St. D2 9.30pm, €14 Saturday 14th November Zrazy The Hot Spot, Greystones

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November 28th – RDS, Hall 4 – 10am-7pm €20/ KILO Featuring: DJ!, Pop Up shops including Tola Vintage Pop Up €1 ENTRY - Tickets available now!

Mick Foley: 50 Years of Foley Thursday 12 November | Vicar Street | 7.30pm, €23/33.50 Mick Foley was a childhood hero to many who brought hilarious humour and hardcore smashes back to the forefront of pro-wrestling during WWE’s Attitude era in the late nineties and early noughties. Billed throughout his lengthy career as Mankind, Cactus Jack and Dude Love, Foley eventually became simply known by his own name and as an everyman hero with a crazy tolerance for pain and an innate ability to entertain, before retiring to become a hall-of-famer and celebrated author of autobiographies and children’s books. The 50 Years of Foley tour is a talking and storytelling event, and boy has he got some stories.

COMEDY

Wicked Wolf Comedy Night Wicked Wolf, Blackrock 8pm, €5 Every second Tuesday The Comedy Improv The International 9pm, €5 Every Monday Talk Talk Panel Show The International 9pm, €5 Every Tuesday The Comedy Cellar The International 9pm, €8 Every Wednesday International Comedy Club The International 8.30pm, €10 Thursdays, Fridays & Sundays 7.30pm & 10.15pm, €10 each Each Saturday Battle of the Axe The Ha’penny Bridge Inn 8pm, €5 with flyer Capital Comedy Club Chaplins Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays Doors 8.15pm €10 (students €5 Thursdays), €3 Tuesdays The Comedy Crunch The Stag’s Head 7pm, free event Each Sunday & Monday Alan Carr Anseo Comedy Club Anseo 9pm, Pay what you want Every Wednesday

Wicked Wolf Comedy Night Wicked Wolf, Blackrock 8pm, €5 Every second Tuesday The Comedy Improv The International 9pm, €5 Every Monday Talk Talk Panel Show The International 9pm, €5 Every Wednesday The Comedy Cellar The International 9pm, €8 Every Wednesday International Comedy Club The International 8.30pm, €10 Tuesdays, Fridays & Sundays 7.30pm & 10.15pm, €10 each Each Saturday Battle of the Axe The Ha’penny Bridge 8pm, €5 with flyer Tuesdays or Thursdays Capital Comedy Club Chaplins Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays Doors 8.15 pm €10 (students €5 Thursdays), €3 Tuesdays The Comedy Crunch The Stag’s Head 7pm, free event Each Sunday & Monday ONE OFFS Friday 6 & Saturday 7 November Michael McIntyre 3Arena 7pm, €44.50 Friday 6 & Saturday 7 November

Joe Rooney, Paul Marsh & Simon O’Keeffe Chaplins 9pm, €10 Thursday 12 November Mick Foley - 50 Years of Foley Vicar Street 8pm, €23/€33.50 Friday 13, Saturday 14, Saturday 21 November Keith Barry Olympia Theatre 7.30pm, from €29 Friday 13 & Saturday 14 November Colm O’Regan, Kevin O’Sullivan & Danny O’Brien Chaplins 9pm, €10 Thursday 19, Saturday 21, Sunday 22 November Dara O’Briain: Crowd Tickler Vicar Street 8pm, €30 Friday 20 & Saturday 21 November Tommy Nicholson, Jim Campbell and Rory O’Hanlon Chaplins 9pm, €10 Monday 23 - Sunday 29 November Kevin Bridges Olympia Theatre 7.30pm, from €31.50 Friday 27 & Saturday 28 November Aidan Strangeman, Michael Mee & Robbie Bonham Chaplins 9pm, €10 Friday 4 & Saturday 5 December PJ Gallagher, Emma Doran and Colm McGlinchy Chaplins 9pm, €10

FESTIVALS

Kinopolis: 9th Polish Film Festival The ninth edition of the Polish film festival returns to the IFI on Eustace Street. For more see ifi.ie Friday 6 – Monday 9 November Dublin Beatles Festival Those loveable moptops will never go out of style; and here’s a weekend of Fabs-related fun to prove it. For more see dublinbeatlesfestival.com Friday 6 – Monday 8 November Metropolis Festival A new city festival for Dublin takes over the RDS with a line-up including Mark Ronson, Giorgio Moroder, Jamie xx and much much more. See metropolisfestival.com for details.

Saturday 7 & Sunday 8 November Dublin Book Festival Taking over Smock Alley Theatre, as well as many other smaller venues around the city, Dublin Book Festival will this year feature workshops, talks and events for all ages. For more see dublinbookfestival.com Thursday 12 – Sunday 15 November Dublin Web Festival Might be awkward if these lads move to Lisbon, would probably have to change the name. For more see dublinwebfest.com Friday 20 – Sunday 22 November Improv Fest A combination of Irish and international improvised comedy performers take to the stage of the Teacher’s Club Theatre. See improvfestireland. com for more.

Sunday 15 – Saturday 21 November

POKER

Fitzwilliam Casino & Card Club Monday 8:30pm: €75 + €5 No Limit Freezeout.

Tuesday 8:30pm: €50 + €5 No Limit Double Chance Freezeout.

Wednesday 8:30pm: €20 + €5 Hold’em Multirebuy.

7:30pm: Satellite Tournament.

Thursday 8pm: €45 + €5 + €10 Scalp No Limit Freezeout.

9:30pm: €30 + €5 Pot Limit Omaha Triple Chance.

Thursday End of Month €250 + €20 Freezeout.

Friday 8:30pm: €70 + €5 No Limit, Double Chance.

Saturday 8pm: €100 + €10 Deepstack No Limit Freezeout.

9pm: €20 + €5 No Limit Freezeout.

Sunday 8:30pm: €50 + €5 No Limit Freezeout. www.fitzwilliamcardclub.com

KIDS Popular Music Week 2015 at The Ark Funky Raps & Rhymes Workshop Saturday 24 October 10.30am & 12pm (Ages 5-7) & 2.15pm (Ages 8+) Early Years Workshop: All Together Now Sunday 25 & Monday 26 October 10.30am (Ages 2-3) & 11.45am (Ages

3-4) Ukulele Blues Céili Sunday 25 October 2:30pm. Ages 7+ Family Gig: Little Xs for Eyes Monday 26 October 3pm. All the family Studio on a Bus: Vocal Recording Sessions Mon 26 October 10:30am - 5pm. For Ages 7+ Dance Tracks, Remixes & Mashups Workshop Wednesday 28 & Thursday 29 October 10:30am (Ages 8-10) & 2pm (Ages 10-12) I’m in the Band!

Tuesday 27 October, 10:30am (Ages 8-9) & 2pm (Ages 10-12) Pop & Rock Songwriting Workshop Friday 30 October, 10:30am & 12pm (Ages 5-7) & 2.15pm (Ages 8+) Open drop-in Popular Music Jam Wednesday 28 October 12pm to 2pm. For Ages 7+ Deadly DJ Demos Saturday 31 October, 10:30am & 11.15am (Ages 8+) Halloween Day DJ Disco Saturday 31 October 12pm - 1pm. All the family

CLUBBING Mondays Soul, Funk and Disco with Upbeat Generation Industry Club and Venue, 11.30pm Sound Mondays Turk’s Head, Parliament St Indie rock, garage and post-punk 11pm, free Dice Sessions Dice Bar, Smithfield DJ Alley King Kong Club The Village, Wexford St, 9pm, free The Industry Night Break For The Border, Stephens Street Pool competition, karaoke and DJ DJ Ken Halfod Buskers, Temple Bar Chart pop, indie rock, rock, 10pm Lounge Lizards Solas Bar, Wexford St Soul music, 8pm, free Thank God It’s Monday Ri Ra, Georges St Electro, indie and big beat 11pm, free Simon S Fitzsimons, Temple Bar 11pm, €5 Floor fillers Language Exchange Ireland DTwo, 6.30pm Like speed-dating, but for learning languages Tuesday We Love Tuesday Ri Ra, Georges St Martin McCann’s eclecticism 11pm, free C U Next Tuesday Indie, pop, hip hop hipsterdom Lost Society, Sth William St, 11pm, €6 Ronan M Fitzsimons, Temple Bar 11pm, €5 Lost Tuesdays Deep House The Pint, Free Admission, 8pm Wednesday FUSED! Ri Ra, Georges St 80s and electro, 11pm, free Fubar!

The Globe, Georges St 11pm, free Dirty Disco Dtwo, Harcourt St Chart pop Wednesdays at Dandelion Dandelion, Stephen’s Green Student night Moonstompin’ Grand Social, Liffey St Ska and reggae 8pm, free Bruce Willis Lost Society, Sth William St 10.30pm, €10 Dance music for students Somewhere?

Workman’s, Wellington Quay Free before 11 Indie and dance Simon S

Fitzsimons, 11pm, €5 Kling Klang Wiley Fox Every second Wednesday, 8pm Krautrock, shoegaze, industrial, cosmic disco...

Thursday Decades Club M, Bloom’s Hotel, Temple Bar FM 104’s Adrian Kennedy plays classics Free before midnight Boo! Wiley Fox Every third Thursday, 8pm Cold Wave, post punk, synth pop, deathrock LITTLE big Party Ri Ra, Georges St Soul, indie and rock ‘n’ roll 11pm, free Mischief Break For The Border, Stephen St 11pm, €8 After Work Baggot Inn, Baggot St Quiz night with band and DJ from 11pm, 8pm, free Take Back Thursdays Industry Bar and Venue, Temple Bar 10pm Blasphemy The Village, Wexford St, 11pm Get Loose, Get Loose Mercantile, Dame St Indie, Britpop and alternative 10.30pm Push Workman’s, Wellington Quay Soul, funk, disco and house Phantom Anthems Workman’s, Wellington Quay Rock, indie rock, other rock Weed and Seven Deadly Skins Turks Head, Parliament St 11pm, free, Live reggae Loaded Grand Social, Liffey St 8pm, free Indie and alternative Zebra Whelan’s, 11pm, Free Bands and DJs show their stripes Poison: Rock, Metal, Mosh & Beer Pong The Hub, €4/7, 10.30pm Flashed Techno / House / Hiphop / Reggae / RnB €5, 10pm Friday My House Buck’s Townhouse, Leeson St With special guests Ladies Night Baggot Inn, Baggot St Cocktail masterclasses from 7 7pm, free Club M Friday Club M, Bloom’s Hotel, Temple Bar DJ Dexy on the decks We Love Fridays Dandelion, Stephen’s Green DJ Robbie Dunbar Friday Night At Vanilla Vanilla Nightclub, D4

Chart-topping hits, 11pm Car Wash Sin, Temple Bar Retro disco 9pm, free before 11 Friday @ Alchemy Alchemy Nightclub, Temple Bar Chart floor-fillers, 11pm Living Room Lost Society, Sth William St Moves from 7, music from 10 7pm, free WV Fridays Wright Venue, Swords €10, 11pm Irish DJs Resident DJ Café en Seine, Dawson St, 11pm, free War Andrew’s Lane, 10pm, €8 Pop for students and hipsters Darren C Fitzsimons, 11pm, €10 Chart hits Babalonia Little Green Café Samba, reggae and mestizo, 9pm, free Saturday Simple Sublime Saturdays Club M, Bloom’s Hotel, Temple Bar Chart pop, dance and r’n’b Free before 11.30 Saturday @ Alchemy Alchemy Nightclub, Temple Bar Chart floor-fillers 11pm Dandelion Saturdays Dandelion, Stephen’s Green Two floors of summer sound Space: The Vinyl Frontier Ri Ra, George’s St Intergalactic funk, electro and indie 11pm, free Saturday Night SKKY Buck’s Townhouse, Leeson St Signature night Indietronic Grand Social, Liffey St Electro and indie, 8pm, free Propaganda The Academy, 11pm, €10 New and classic indie Saturday Night at Vanilla Vanilla Nightclub, D4, 11pm Andy Preston’s latest pop and rock Sports Saturday Baggot Inn, Baggot St Sports from 3pm, DJ til late, 3pm, free Sugar Club Saturdays Sugar Club, Leeson St, 11pm Hidden Agenda Button Factory, Temple Bar, 11pm International techno and house Djs The Best Suite 4 Dame Lane Suck My Deck The Village, Georges St, 11pm High Voltage Foggy Dew, Temple Bar, 10pm Bounce Sin, Temple Bar R’n’b and chart, 9pm, €10 Gossip Andrew’s Lane Indie, electro and pop, 11pm

Workman’s Indie Residents Workman’s, Wellington Quay New and classic indie, 11pm, free BW Rocks Wright Venue Over 21s, neat dress, €10, 11pm A Jam Named Saturday Anseo, Camden St Lex Woo and friends, 7pm, free Reggae Hits the Pint Reggae, ska, Rocksteady The Pint, Free, 9pm The 33 Club Thomas House Last Saturday of each month, authentic ‘Harlem’ funk and soul night 9pm, free Sunday The Burning Effigies Turks Head, Parliament St Real funk and soul Sundays at Sin Sin, Temple Bar Tribal and electro house 9pm, €10 Well Enough Alone Dice Bar, Smithfield Bluegrass The Beat Suite 4 Dame Lane Indie, electro and pop 10pm, free Mass with Sister Lisa Marie Workman’s, Wellington Quay 80s classics and hip hop, 10pm, free Saucy Sundays Grand Social, Liffey St Live music, 4.30pm, free Reggae, Ska, Rocksteady Foggy Dew, Temple Bar, 7.30pm, free Darren C Fitzsimons, 11pm, €5 Saturday @ Alchemy Alchemy Nightclub, Temple Bar Chart floor-fillers, 11pm

Hidden Agenda & Sense: Bob Moses Button Factory 11pm, €12 Friday 20 November Ben Sims & Randomer District 8 11pm, €20 Curve present Tough Love Button Factory 11pm, €10 The Pig’s Ear, RnB Club, Live Live w/ Fatima & Eglo Live Band Button Factory 7.30pm, €12.50 Fatboy & Strictly Deep present: DJ EZ The Wright Venue 10pm, €15 Saturday 21 November Hidden Agenda: Kiasmos District 8 11pm, €15 Sense with Paul Woolford Button Factory 11pm, €10 Pyg presents Nick Curly Pygmalion 9pm, €10/15 Republik present DJ Koze

Crystal Night Club The Underachievers District 8 7.30pm, €TBC Friday 27 November Maya Jane Coles District 8 11pm, €15-€20 Saturday 28 November Vitalic (Live) Hangar 11pm, €15 Levon Vincent & Fred P aka Black Jazz Consortium District 8 11pm, €12-€18 Sense with George Fitzgerald Button Factory 11pm, €12.50-€15 Friday 4 December Octave One District 8 11pm, €15-€18 Saturday 5 December Sense with Scuba Button Factory 11pm, €10-€15 Leon Vynehall & Henry Wu District 8 11pm, €15-€20

ONE-OFFS Saturday 7 November Metropolis Festival RDS 1.30pm, €79.50 Ft. Todd Terje and Tiga Pyg presents Eamon Harkin Pygmalion 9pm, €5/10 Sunday 8 November Metropolis Festival RDS 1.30pm, €79.50 Ft. Jeff Mills and Floating Point Pyg Sundays presents Nicky Siano Pygmalion 9pm, €5/10 Friday 13 November Loco Dice & Caleb Calloway District 8 11pm, €20 Curve present Joris Voorn Button Factory 11pm, €15 Julio Bashmore The Academy 11pm €22.90 Saturday 14 November

The Pig’s Ear, RnB Club, Live Live w/ Fatima & Eglo Live Band Friday 20 November | Button Factory | 7.30pm, €12.50 A big, big line-up of good time grooves courtesy of Louis Scully’s RnB Club. A particularly exciting part of the line up is Swedish soul singer Fatima, who is part of the Eglo stable, famous for being home to Floating Points. Fatima charmed the pants of us at the Eglo Showcase in the Sugar Club last winter so we’re expecting more loose-limbed r’n’b and live sass.

FRI 20/11 - TOUGH LOVE

FRI 27/11 - BAKERMAT

SAT 14/11 - BOB MOSES [LIVE]

SAT 21/11 - PAUL WOOLFORD

SAT 28/11 - GEORGE FITZGERALD

www.buttonfactory.ie www.sense-live-,music.com

FRI 13/11 - JORIS VOORN

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THEATRE Abbey Theatre The Forgotten/L’Oublié(e) A fusion of theatre and dance from Crying Out Loud, a contemporary French circus company.

Tuesday 10 – Saturday 14 November 7.30pm, €13-€45 You Never Can Tell The Abbey’s Christmas play this year is Bernard Shaw’s joyful and unpredictable battle of the sexes.

Previews: Wednesday 2 - Monday 7 December. Opens Tuesday 8 December – Saturday 6 February 2016.

7.30pm, matinees Saturdays 2pm, €13-43 The Gate Theatre The Gigli Concert The production of Tom Murphy’s play from this summer is back by popular demand.

Previews Wednesday 4 November.

Opens Thursday 5 - Saturday 21 November.

7.30pm, matinees Sat 2.30pm, €25 – €35 The Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde’s classic comedy of manners returns to the stage of the Gate.

Previews from Wednesday 25 November. Opens Tuesday 1 December.

7.30pm, €32 The Gaiety Theatre Puttin’ on the Ritz A song and dance spectacular of old fashioned fun.

Until Saturday 7 November 8pm, €36.20-€39.70 The Matchmaker A new production of John B. Keane’s play starring Mary McEvoy Monday 9 – Saturday 14 November 8pm, €25-€33.50 Coppélia Ballet Ireland present a tale to young lovers in comic chaos.

Wednesday 18 - Saturday 21 November 7.30pm, matinees Saturday 2.30pm, €25 Little Red Riding Hood Pantomime Panto season begins in earnest!

Sunday 29 November - Sunday 10 January Monday - Friday, 6.30pm; Saturday 1.30pm & 6.30pm; Sundays 1pm & 5pm.

No performance 7 December. €19.50 The Bord Gáis Energy Theatre Mack & Mabel Until Saturday 7 November 7.30pm, matinees Wed & Sat 2.30pm, €15-€45 Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty A high end production of this classic tale of good and evil.

Tuesday 10 - Saturday 14 November 7.30pm, matinees Wednesday & Saturday 2.30, €20-€60 RTÉ Concert Orchestra presents Back to the Future Sunday 15 November 3pm & 8pm, €20-€59.50 Romeo and Juliet A production from the Tchaikovsky Perm State Ballet Wednesday 18 & Thursday 19 November 7.30pm, €35-€99.50 Swan Lake A production from the Tchaikovsky

Perm State Ballet Friday 20 - Sunday 22 November 7.30pm, €35-€99.50 Lord of the Flies William Golding’s tale of humanity’s wretchedness is brought to the stage by Regent Park Theatre.

Tuesday 24 - Saturday 28 November 7.30pm, matinees Wednesday & Saturday 2.30pm, €15-€45 Mary Poppins Thursday 3 December - Saturday 8 January 2016 2.30pm & 7.30pm Wednesdays, Thursdays & Saturdays 2pm & 7pm Sundays. No shows Monday 7 & Monday 14 December €25-€68 Project Arts Centre Foxy Fact, fiction and fairytales collide against a backdrop of song, testimony and gingerism.

Until Saturday 7 November 8.15pm, matinee Saturday 2.30pm, €14/12 Dusk Ahead A captivating dance work from Junk Ensemble.

Friday 6 & Saturday 7 November 8pm, €18/16 Beowulf: The Blockbuster This one-man show from Bryan Burroughs as the must-see show from Edinburgh Fringe 2014 Tuesday 10 - Saturday 21 November 8.15pm, €18/16; matinees Saturdays 3pm, €14 Through a Glass Darkly Ingmar Bergman’s legendary film is adapted for stage by Jenny Worton and director Annie Ryan.

Thursday 12 November - Saturday 5 December 8pm, €12-€22 The New Theatre Temptress Speckintime present Philip St John’s darkly comic and spooky play.

Until Saturday 7 November 7.30pm, €15/€12 conc.

New Writing Week - Various Authors Monday 9 - Saturday 14 November Various times and prices The School for Wives AC Productions’ play is back by popular demand after a critically acclaimed summer run.

Monday 16 - Saturday 28 November 7.30pm, €15/€12 Snake Eaters A play about violence, love and the scars you cannot see.

Monday 30 November - Saturday 19 December 7.30pm, €15/€12 The Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire Underneath Thursday 12 & Friday 13 November 8pm, €18/€16 The Unlucky Cabin Boy Friday 27 & Saturday 28 November 8pm, €20/€16 Beowulf: The Blockbuster Tuesday 1 December 8pm, €16/€14 Faulty Towers: The Dining Experience at Fitzpatrick Hotel Killiney

Wednesday 2 & Thursday 3 December 7.30pm, €47.50, incl. 4 course meal.

The Mill Theatre, Dundrum April Bright Dermot Bolger’s play is presented by Sandyford Little Theatre Company Tuesday 3 - Saturday 7 November 8pm, €12-€16 It’s Showtime!

KMS bring an evening of popular song.

Thursday 12 - Saturday 14 November 8pm, €15 Phil Buckley’s Big Idea Friday 13 November The Mill Theatre, Dundrum 8.15pm, €12/€10 Safe A gripping tale of the plight of Irish women over the last 50 years.

Monday 16 - Saturday 21 November 8.15pm, €12/€10 Big Maggie Tuesday 17 - Saturday 21 November 8pm, €16/€14 Tom Crean: Antarctic Explorer Sunday 22 November 8pm, €18/€16 PJ Gallagher & Joanne McNalley: Separated at Birth The Mill Theatre, Dundrum Saturday 28 November €18/€16 Many Happy Returns Friday 1 - Tuesday 5 December 8pm, €16/€14

Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray The House Maeve Miller directs this not to be missed play by Tom Murphy Until Saturday 7 November 7.30pm, €16/€14 Susanna’s Secret / The Human Voice Two short operas about love, lies and infidelity.

Wednesday 11 November 8pm, €25/€22 Yarn Storytelling Festival Various events spread over a weeks including off-site events at Kilruddery House.

Saturday 14 - Sunday 22 November Various times and prices.

Oklahoma!

Local secondary schools present the classic musical.

Wednesday 25 - Saturday 28 November 8pm, €17 Draíocht, Blanchardstown Beyond the Brooklyn Sky Coolmine Drama Circle present a play centred on returning emigrants.

Until Saturday 7 November 8.15pm, €16/€13 Tom Crean: Antarctic Explorer Thursday 5 & Friday 6 November 8pm, €18/€14 White Christmas Coolmine Musical Society present

Irving Berlin’s musical.

Tuesday 10 - Saturday 14 November 8pm, €17-€20 The Unlucky Cabin Boy Saturday 21 November 8pm, €18/14 Civic Theatre, Tallaght Elvis is my Daddy Wednesday 4 & Thursday 5 November 8pm, €18/€16 conc.

Wrapped The tale of two unlikely female friends in Dublin.

Tuesday 10 - Saturday 14 November 8.15pm, €16/€12 Susanna’s Secret / The Human Voice Two short operas about love, lies and infidelity.

Thursday 12 November 8pm, €25/€22 The Unlucky Cabin Boy Friday 13 & Saturday 14 November 8pm, €20/€16 Urinetown: The Musical Tuesday 17 - Saturday 21 November 8pm, €20/€18 Shoot My Dog A one-man show from Brendan Burke Thursday 19 & Friday 20th November €16/€12 Celebration A local talent show Sunday 22 November 8pm, €5

Weighing-In A comedy about dieting.

Monday 23 - Saturday 28 November 8.15pm, €16/€12 Axis: Ballymun Tom Crean: Antarctic Explorer Wednesday 4 November 8pm, €15/€12 conc.

Love | Loss | Life Thursday 5 & Friday 6 November 8pm, €10 An Triail A play as Gaeilge for Leaving Cert students Monday 9 - Friday 13 November 10.30am & 12.30pm, €12.50/Teachers free Aunty Ben A colourful exploration of gender, family, love and happiness.

Tuesday 17 & Wednesday 18 November 12pm & 6.30pm, €10/€5 How To Keep An Alien Friday 27 November 8pm, €15/€12 New Form Theatre The Divide The Divide touches on the issues that are forefront in America and the world, as the Muslim community comes to terms with the divides even within their community since the birth of ISIS. Each Friday & Saturday from 6 November, 8pm, €11.60

Through a Glass Darkly Thursday 12 November - Saturday 5 December | Project Arts Centre | 8pm, €12-22 Ingmar Bergman’s legendary chamber film, in which members of a family act as mirrors for each other over the course of a day on a remote holiday island, has been adapted for stage by Jenny Worton and director Annie Ryan, and produced by veteran Dublin theatre company The Corn Exchange. Previews run from Thursday 12th to Saturday 14th November, with the opening proper on Monday 16th November.

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Futures An Anthology 2011 – 2014 18 November – 20 December

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6pm December 15th, 16th, 21st & 22nd 1pm Sundays December 13th & 20th

8th-22nd December 7.30pm | Sat & Sun Matinee 2.30pm

Preview 7th Dec 7.30pm - €12 | Tickets €15 / Concessions €12 / Family of 4 €50

Smock Alley Theatre, Exchange St Lower, Dublin 8 01-6770014 | www.smockalley.com

Smock Alley Christmas Fayre

Helen Blake, Jenny Brady, Peter Burns, Alan Butler, Neil Carroll, Anita Delaney, Emma Donaldson, Eleanor Duffin, Adam Gibney, Aoibheann Greenan, Tracy Hanna, Caoimhe Kilfeather, Vera Klute, Barbara Knezevic, Maggie Madden, Shane McCarthy, James Merrigan, Ed Miliano, Sheila Rennick, Jim Ricks, Stephanie Rowe Also showing: Ailbhe Ní Bhriain, Reports to an Academy, RHA Gallery II Sean Molloy, Neo Pentimenti, RHA Ashford Gallery

December 5th & 6th | 11am-6pm

€50

Christmas Markets, Carols, Readings by Lamplight and much more!

FREE ADMISSION

Free Admission GALLAGHER GALLERY / 15 Ely Place, Dublin 2 +353 1 661 2558 / info@rhagallery.ie www.royalhibernianacademy.ie

Winter Term 16 November 2015 – 23 January 2016 French Courses forAdults, Teenagers, Children & Toddlers The French Language & Cultural Centre in Dublin 1 Kildare Street, Dublin 2 / www.alliance-francaise.ie

ART Art Box James Joyce Street, D1 Emer O Boyle & Meadhbh O’Connor, 2039 An exhibition, commissioned by ArtBox in association with UCD Art in Science residency, which explores Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin’s PhD research on stellar spectra.

Until Friday 20 November Cross Gallery 59 Francis Street, D8 Joe Vanek - Tom Vaughan Lawlor in the Rivals Until Saturday 7 November John Boyd Thursday 12 November - Saturday 5 December Douglas Hyde Gallery Nassau Street, D2 Chris Martin A notable figure in the New York art scene for his exuberant experimental painting, inspired by neighbourhood graffiti and featuring healthy dollops of glitter. Not shown in Ireland before.

Until Monday 2 December Seanie Barron A stickmaker and seanchaí from Askeaton, Limerick, Seanie Barron has been honing his craft for decades.

Until Monday 2 December Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane Parnell Square, D1 Hugh Lane (1875-1915): Dublin’s Legacy and Loss Celebrating Hugh Percy Lane, the

philanthropist and art dealer who presented a priceless collection of artworks to Dublin to establish a Gallery of Modern Art in 1908 before he drowned on the Lusitania in 1915.

Until January 2016 Gallery of Photography Meeting House Square, Temple Bar D2 Charles Haughey: Power, Politics and Public Image A collection of photography by Eamonn Farrell taken of Charlie Haughey, Ireland’s most controversial statesman, along with many of the FF lackeys he left in his legacy as the supporting cast.

Gormley’s Fine Art Eileen Meagher, A Year in Connemara A collection of painted works of the west in the first solo exhibition from the artist since 2012.

Until Saturday 7 November Lorcan Vallely, Solo Exhibition New works feature in this solo exhibition Until Thursday 19 November Irish Museum of Modern Art Miitary Road, D8 What We Call Love: From Surrealism to Now Featured Artists: Marina Abramović and ULAY, Sadie Benning, Louise Bourgeois, Constantin Brancusi, Brassaï, Victor Brauner, André Breton, Luis Buñuel, Cecily Brown, Miriam Cahn, Sophie Calle, Michele Ciacciofera,

Dorothy Cross, Attila Csörgö, Salvador Dalí, Annabel Daou, Vlasta Delimar and Jerman, Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Dupuy, Elmgreen and Dragset, Max Ernst, VALIE EXPORT, Jean Genet, Jochen Gerz, Alberto Giacometti, Nan Goldin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Douglas Gordon, Mona Hatoum, Damien Hirst, Jim Hodges, Rebecca Horn, Jesper Just, Kapwani Kiwanga, Ange Leccia, Ghérasim Luca, Vlado Martek, André Masson, Annette Messager, Tracey Moffatt, Séamus Nolan, Nadja, Henrik Olesen, Yoko Ono, Meret Oppenheim, Ferhat Ozgür, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Nesa Paripovic, Garrett Phelan, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Carolee Schneemann, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Paul Sharits, Jeremy Shaw, Wolfgang Tillmans, Andy Warhol, Cerith Wyn Evans, Jun Yang, Akram Zaatari.

Until Monday 7 February 2016 Chloe Dewe Matthews, Shot at Dawn A new body of work from the British photographer that focuses on the sites of execution of British, French and Belgian soldiers for cowardice and desertion during WWI. Until Monday 7 February 2016 Kerlin Gallery Anne’s Lane, South Anne Street, D2 William McKeown, Cloud CuckooLand Cloud Cuckoo-Land sees the gallery transformed into an artificial domestic environment, the walls lined with

bright orange wallpaper of cuckoos and nooses. This oppressive interior is interrupted by McKeown’s contemplative Hope paintings, drawing the eye away from the visual noise of their surroundings to create a sense of openness and expansiveness, bringing indoors the sense of home the artist found within nature.

Until Saturday 21 November Liliane Tomasko, Sense A collection of abstract works from Swiss artist Saturday 28 November - Saturday 9 January 2016 Mother’s Tankstation 41-43 Watling Street, Ushers Island, D8 Sebastian Lloyd Rees Friday 13 November - Saturday 19 December The National Gallery of Ireland Clare Street, D2 Jackie Nickerson, Uniform This display will comprise photographs selected from Jackie Nickerson’s series Terrain (2012-13) and paintings from several schools and periods from the National Gallery’s permanent collection. The photographs, taken in several southern African countries, are studies of individual agricultural workers and farmers carrying items associated with their work in a manner that in most cases obscures their faces and/ or alters their figurative outline. Many have a markedly abstract, distorted quality that eschews the fundamental character of the studies as portraits.

Until Sunday 10 January Olivier Cornet Gallery 3 Denmark Street, D1 In Their Element A group show of ceramics by gallery artist Annika Berglund and invited artists Sinéad Glynn, Lesley Kelly, and Freda Rupp. At the opening there will be a guest speech from Dr Eoin Grogan, landscape archaeologist.

Sunday 15 November – Sunday 13 December Project Arts Centre 39 East Essex Street, Temple Bar, D2 Gretchen Bender, Total Recall A multiple screen presentation of the classic science fiction movie from the 1980s.

Until Wednesday 23 December The Royal Hibernian Academy Ely Place, D2 Selection from the Waterford Municipal Collection Borrowing from the impressive Waterford City collection or contemporary art amassed between teh 1930s and the 1970s, this exhibition’s highlights include works from Jack Yeats, Louis Le Brocquy, Patrick Collins, Letitia Marion Hamilton, Evie Hone and Camille Souter.

Until Sunday 20 December Taylor Galleries 16 Kildare Street, D2 David Quinn, SEAM Developed over the past two years, this new body of work was completed during the summer months in Callan,

Gretchen Bender, Total Recall Until Wednesday 23 December | Project Arts Centre This exhibition will show a reconstruction of Gretchen Bender’s seminal Total Recall (1987), bringing again to life her concept of ‘electronic theatre’. A monumental 24-monitor multi-projection screen installation, Total Recall explores the accelerated image-flow of television and includes a multitude of images that surrounded the context of her work – corporate logos, military hardware, Hollywood film as well as commercials for consumer goods.

Co. Kilkenny, while Quinn was the recipient of the Tony O’Malley Studio Residency Award 2015. The residency provided him with the opportunity to experiment with working on a larger scale, and also saw him introduce a variety of new materials to his subtle painted assemblages. SEAM is Quinn’s sixth solo exhibition with Taylor Galleries.

Until Saturday 14 November Temple Bar Gallery and Studios Temple Bar, D2 Rhona Byrne, Huddle Tests Irish artist Rhona Byrne transforms the gallery into a testing ground for the exploration of social relations, group dynamics and associated anxieties.

The installation, including sculpture, drawing and wearables, reflects on the desires and tensions experienced between private thought and public behaviour, feelings of isolation and belonging, connectivity and relating, distraction and attending and the fragile state between comfort and discomfort.

Until Saturday 7 November Dublin Art Book Fair 2015 The latest in art, photography, zines, and related publications published internationally and in Ireland by small art-house and self-publishers, the Dublin Art Book Fair offers a succinct snapshot of the contemporary art publishing world, and is a good spot for buying nice gifts for your arty mates.

Thursday 19 - Sunday 22 November

BEST OF… NOVEMBER

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BEST B.Y.O.B

BEST BYOB BAR

SÖDER + KO

THE HIDEOUT

CAVERN

In the heart of the creative quarter, a short walk up South Great George’s Street, your next lunchtime favourite is waiting. Enjoy super quick light bites from €5 like Beef Carpaccio, Crispy Chicken Pot Stickers and King Prawn Dumplings. Take 2 and a delicious side like Tempura Broccoli or Fried Sweet Potato for just €11.95. Or treat yourself to a tempting Chefs Special like Chicken Yakitori or Steamed Hake. For lunchtime flavour without the fuss, this is sure to delight.

Dublin city centre has long been yearning for a chilled out spot where you can enjoy some casual beers without breaking the bank. Fortunately,The Hideout pool hall has stepped up to the plate. But don’t expect death metal, crooked cues or dodgy geezers trying to hustle you.The Hideout may be a pool hall by name, but with its bright decor and deep house vibe, it is not a traditional pool hall by nature. Alongside experiencing quality tables you can enjoy BYOB for a very small and very reasonable charge. Cues and cans it is then!

This relaxed environment is perfect for after works drinks or catching up with friends.The wine-friendly food menu offers the best of Irish and international artisan produce.This place is a hive of activity with wine and craft beer tastings, art exhibitions and live music every Saturday. Offering BYOB from the upstairs located Baggot Street Wines (voted one of Dublin’s best beer & wine specialists) between 5-10pm, corkage is priced at a mere €5 on bottles of wine and €1 on beers with over 650 wines and 300 craft beers to choose from.

64 South Great George’s Street, Dublin 2 Call 01 474 1590, email info@soderandko, www.soderandko.ie

thehideout.ie hello@thehideout.ie 49 South William Street (01) 537 5767

17 Upper Baggot Street, Dublin 4 (085) 808 8266 Instagram: @CavernBaggotSt Twitter: @CavernBaggotSt

BEST MEAL IN TOWN

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Mao, Chatham Row

GENERATOR

Treat your taste buds to delicious Asian food and sip up Low Calorie, Classic and Dessert Cocktails shaken to perfection while listening to funky tunes pumping by star DJ’s from Musicmaker Dublin. This is the scene you’ll find Friday and Saturday nights at Mao Chatham Row. Savour the flavour with mouth-watering curries, a shared platter, or a Mao classic for the full Thai experience. Then sip a CosMAOpolitan, Ginger Dragon or Toblerone to tame the flames! As an official Leinster Rugby food partner check out healthy dishes as chosen by Leinster Rugby’s nutritionist, just look for the little blue rugby balls on the menu. Call your besties, pick the perfect outfit, pack your selfie stick then drop in for a night you won’t forget.

Mao, 2 Chatham Row, Dublin 2 01 670 4899

Great grub, drink specials and a packed events schedule combine with a captive audience of tourists to give one of the best international bars in the city. Located just off the Luas Redline in the exciting Smithfield District, this bar is a winner for those looking to practice “speaking foreign”.

An ever-changing crowd guarantees a unique experience every time. Don’t miss out on the burger, rumoured to be among the best in the city.

Smithfield Market Fair, Generator Hostel Dublin, Smithfield Square, Smithfield, Dublin 7

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TEMPTRESS Mao, Chatham Row

Bobo’s

Leo Burdock

Treat your taste buds in toWicklow, delicious two Asiantroubled food and sip meet.

In an eerie old house men up Low Calorie, and to Dessert shaken tohis Middle-aged PeteClassic has come rescueCocktails young Noel from perfection while listening to funky tunes first-to deadly obsession.

But is Pete the rock of pumping sense he by claims classAnd DJ’sdoes fromthe Musicmaker This isonly theinside sceneNoel’s you’ll be?

TemptressDublin. really exist find Friday and Saturday nightsSeas at Mao Chathampresent Row. mind?

Speckintime and High Productions Savour the flavour withcomic mouth-watering a shared this spooky and darkly play. Writtencurries, by international platter,winning or a Mao classic for the full Thai experience.

Then award writer Philip St John, Temptress is a startling sip a take CosMAOpolitan, Ginger Dragon or Toblerone new on the Irish ghost story. to tame the flames! As an official Leinster Rugby food partner check healthy dishes as chosen Leinster Rugby’s The Newout Theatre, 43 Essex St E,byTemple Bar nutritionist, just look for the little blue rugby balls on the (01) 670 3361 menu. Call Mon your besties, pick the perfectOpening outfit, pack Preview 26 & Tue 27 Oct, Wed yourOct selfie stickSat then7drop for a night you won’t forget.

28 until Novin2015 7.30pm Mao,€12, 2 Chatham Row, Dublin 2 €10, €15 www.thenewtheatre.com 01 670 4899

Bobo’s are a neighbourhood diner. Who aim to provide an Irish take on high-end fast food, delivering mouth-watering burgers made from top quality prime young heifer meat.Their all day breakfasts have recently been getting rave reviews, from Full Irish, to the French Toast, Bobo’s is definitely worth a visit to start the day.The food is fresh, locally sourced, served in generous portions, and freshly cooked to order - all in a fun friendly atmosphere, with a large dollop of nostalgia thrown in.

If you like some history with your chips, Leo Burdock has as much backstory as it does salt and vinegar. Its Werburgh Street branch has been chopping potatoes for almost a hundred years now and the chips are only getting better. Pay a visit and ask them about their celebrity fans on their Hall Of Fame. Leo Burdock now has chippers in six locations around the city.

50-51 Dame St, Dublin 2 | ph: 01 672 2025 22 Wexford St, Dublin 2 | ph: 01 400 5750 info@bobos.ie Breakfast, 10am - 5pm

www.leoburdock.com

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101 Talbot kc peaches

KIOZQ

The National Print Museum

Rich in history full of Dublinhas flavour, 101passion Talbot isfor one The Wine Caveand at KC Peaches a strong of thewhich cities shows longestthrough standingtheir restaurants . Now 25 years wine extensive yet affordable in businessMany and located minutes from The Abbey selection. of their just wines are certified organic orand The Gate Theatre, thisfrom wellresponsible established producers. and hugelyEach popular biodynamic, sourced restaurant has kept the theatre crowds Thursday they celebrate a region, work and withcontributors suppliers well fed for Cheese many years with the pre theatre includSheridan’s Mongers to allow you to menu experience ing -courses forand €19.95. an in organic of seasonal the 2best cheese wineWith pairing Dublin.mix Their most produce changing regularly , it showcased includes everything fine recent event ‘A taste of Italy’ fresh andfrom delicate meats andfloral remarkable vegetarian options served in a Prosecco, Pinot Grigio, ripe and darkallSangiovese truly unique Barolo Dublin paired atmosphere. and vibrant with gran kinara, Gorgonzola cremoso, pecorino toscano and taleggio cheese. This is a 101 Talbot Street, weekly event priced at Dublin €18 per 1 person. www.101talbot.ie +353 (0)1 8745011 The Wine Cave 28-29 Nassau St. @winecavekcp

Launched in early July, KIOZQ already stocks over 50 periodicals focusing on design, food, art, culture, travel and crafts from around the world.They carefully select and collaborate on a great range of creative indie magazines available to buy online. KIOZQ is driven to provide the community something worthy of buying, something of the highest quality, and above all, something great to read. But KIOZQ is not only about magazines, it’s a colourful world full of ideas and stories.

Browsing is mandatory.

Buried away at the back of the old Beggers Bush Barracks in the gorgeous old Oratory Building is the National Print Museum. It’s a haven for geeks with a penchant for Heidelberg’s.

There are weekly workshops, video documentary screenings and an opportunity to see some of these beautiful antique machines in action. Feats of engineering that made the newspaper possible and which created some of the most decisive documents in history are on display – while the museum is the home of the original Irish Proclamation until 2016.There is a mezzanine floor which acts as a gallery and a kiddie area, while the recently revamped Press Café has delicious sambos and goodies. A nice visit for all the family.

Garrison Chapel, Beggars Bush Barracks, Haddington Rd, D4 +353 (0)16603770 www.nationalprintmuseum.ie

Visit www.kiozq.com or send an email to hello@kiozq.com with any additional inquiries.