Always Loved A Film
August 25th, 2010Taken from Underworld‘s forthcoming album Barking.
You And I
August 25th, 2010
This is how I always dreamed we’d grow up. Together apart.
Red Light District
August 25th, 2010
Sex and hell, love and Christmas.
Cherry and strawberry, apple and wine.
Meals and movies, books and music.
Logic and reason, fights and crime.
Texts and emails, taxis and bikes.
Lies and omissions, grievance and rhyme.
Walking through the red light district,
The only truth missing is time.
Mother
August 12th, 2010
Picture thanks to Peter @ SharpShock.com
For the last 3 months I’ve taken on a residency at a new synth and electro night that was created as a fund raiser for the Gay Community News magazine. The club is called Mother and takes place in Copper Alley underneath the Arlington Hotel on Dame Street (up by Christchurch).
Myself and Kelly-Anne (pictured above with Lisa) are the residents every week, and the music policy is basically electronic music from the 70s to now minus the big obvious pop stuff like Gaga and all that. There is an emphasis on songs with words rather than straight up dance music tracks, but ultimately anything goes if it feels right.
I have to say I’ve been surprised at how quickly the club has become popular and at how wide a spectrum of music we’re getting away with playing too. The atmosphere is somewhere between a house party and and a really good bar with a DJ, and yet it is definitely a club that’s into dancing. Going until 3.30am every week helps too. 
While Kelly-Anne is away for a few weeks we’ve had some guest DJs in including Tim from NeoSuperVital, Simon from Monkey Tennis and James from Jo Burger. The club isn’t on this week as everyone is decamping to the Milk Festival but rest assured I’ll be back on August 21st for the next installment.
WhatClinic.com
August 11th, 2010
What I do during the day couldn’t be much more different to what I do at night, and seeing as a bunch of people have been asking me about it recently, here’s a quick peak at my day job.
I work in a place called WhatClinic.com, previously know as RevaHealth.com. We just changed the name yesterday in fact. The biggest reason behind the name change was that people were always confusing “Reva” with “Aviva” or “Vivas” or some other insurance company, and aside from anything else, we don’t play in that field. (Bad tangential Aviva Stadium pun intended.)
So, we had a few domain names sitting on the shelf that one or other of us here in the office thought might be useful one day. We went back to have a look through them and WhatClinic.com jumped out at us a bit. We sat on it a few more days, then a few more weeks, then a few months, and finally we decided to go ahead and take the plunge.
Now, we’ve already had enough complaints from the grammar police telling us it should be WhichClinic.com, but it sounds too soft thanks to its assonance and the soft ending of the first word. WhatClinic.com just sounds clearer. That and we don’t get confused for a site to find witches and warlocks.
Not WitchClinic.com
My job there is to bring people to the website. We get over 500,000 people visiting us every month, and we do that mainly by working to help them find us in Google and other search engines using a technique called SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation. Great and all as we are at that, the time was right to go with a brand name that helped drive the traffic too. WhatClinic.com is easy to understand, easy to remember and easy to recommend. Or at least we think so.
So, do me a favour and if you or a mate ever needs to find a dentist in Dublin, or a Botox clinic in Northern Ireland, or a fertility clinic in Spain, then head over to WhatClinic.com.
Inception
July 26th, 2010
The poster for Inception
So, what did you think? Do you agree with Memento fan Whitey that “Inception just fails to work” or perhaps with Kermode’s view that “the idea of getting lost in it kind of is the point of the film“? Anyone who’s seen the film has an opinion on it, so allow me to share mine.
Without giving anything much away, Inception is a big summer block buster with a slightly complicated plot involving dreams within dreams. It’s not art house, it’s not even particularly clever but it does contains a handful of visual wows, some decent plot twists and turns and some decent acting.
Whether you’ll like it or not I think depends on how you approach it. Let’s create a Christopher Nolan scale of Dark Knight (0) to Memento (10), where the numbers aren’t scores of any kind, but more a scale like black to white with opposites at either end. This movie falls much, much closer to the Dark Knight end of the scale, so if you go in believing a lot of the chatter about how clever it is, i.e. closer to the Memento end of the scale, you’re going to be very disappointed. Similarly, if you go in expecting Batman without the costumes, you’re going to be pretty disappoint too, just not as much.
The fact is Inception would come in around a 3 on the Dark Knight to Memento scale, a little too complicated for the popcorn crowd, and way too simple for the art house crowd, but strangely enough I think it does work. If you can switch off during it and go with the flow of the film it carries along at a good pace, it has some amazing set pieces that are all the more amazing when you read about how they were shot, and bar a couple of plot devices that cause some debate I think it hangs together well as a less brain-dead blockbuster.
I think the fact that it has divided a lot of people over whether it’s any good or not is a good thing. It means it has an audience, and one that really likes it. I count myself amongst them. Go see it.
Play For Haiti
May 19th, 2010
My mate Dave put together a fund raiser for Concern’s Haiti fund a couple of weeks ago and managed to raise over €500 on the night. It was a great fun way to spend a Sunday night with some mates, and all the DJ sets were recorded. You can download mine here and this is the tracklist:
1. The Phenomenal Handclap Band – 15 to 20 (Glimmers Mix)
2. The Beatles – Lady Madonna (Love Version)
3. Jape – Africa
4. Arrested Development – Tennessee
5. The Beastie Boys – Flute Loop (Shock Edit)
6. Mr Scruff – Get A Move On
7. The Chemical Brothers – Swoon
8. Phoenix – Lisztomania
9. The Units – High Pressure Days (Rory Phillips Remix)
10. LCD Soundsystem – All My Friends
11. The Beastie Boys – Sabotage
12. Bloc Party – Banquet (Phones Disco Edit)
13. Fight Like Apes – I’m Beginning To Think You Prefer Beverley Hills 90210 To Me
14. Johnny Cash – A Boy Named Sue
15. Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal
16. Arcade Fire – Rebellion (Lies)
17. Mama Cass – Make Your Own Kind Of Music
18. Blur – Parklife
19. La Roux – In For The Kill (Skream’s Let’s Get Ravey Remix)
20. Felix Da Housecat – Silver Screen Shower Scene (Thin White Duke Remix)
21. Otis Clay – The Only Way Is Up
22. The Housemartins – Caravan Of Love
Here’s the Otis Clay track on YouTube:
Finally, the other sets are here:
Carolyn (super Sunday funk soul and rock & roll)
Baby Dave & Shane (warning: includes 80s TV theme tunes and cheeky hip hop)
King Tee (heavy world funk and electronic soul)
Paddy’s Eve
March 12th, 2010
I don’t know about you but I’m getting to be glad I have the 17th off as I have a busy Tuesday night around town. First stop on this mad dash tour of the city is Bia Bar on Stephen’s Street for the long awaited return of Space Camp featuring a motley crew of DJs including Sol O’Carroll, Steve Manning, Ian Bright and myself. I’ll be playing pretty early at this gig, which kicks off at 9pm, if not earlier, before running across the city to support…
… the Bloody Beetroots (Live) at the Academy. Doors for this show are at 11pm, with me on the decks for a couple of hours followed by the craziness that is the BB live show. For an idea of what to expect, check out this video of the Bloody Beetroots playing live in Rotterdam recently. Then I’ve got to gun it down the length of Abbey Street to get to the Good Bits for my first gig there for the gang at…
… Punch presents The Leaders Of The New School, which ironically features loads of old folk like myself, Nic, Calvin and Arveene mixing it up with the kids including Lorcan Mak, Louis Hop, Josh Josh Josh and Colin Perkins. There are loads of good bits (pardon the pun) in the line up here, and ideally I’d love to get down earlier to see some more of the acts, but make sure you don’t miss what will undoubtably be a rare treat of Hystereo vs Deadbots at 1am in the Cave room. You can catch me at 1.30am in the Lounge.
Philth And Seki Live at the POD 2007
March 11th, 2010
Philth & Seki Live
Here’s something old I came across earlier today, a live set by me and Rob recorded in the POD in August 2007. Download and enjoy.
Huck Finn “Smiles”
March 11th, 2010“Smile” – Flashback Two from hadleyk on Vimeo.
A clip of a short film with some nice music.