Alternating Current 2022
ddr. Presents
ALTERNATING CURRENT
Radio broadcast + in-person events
28th October – 29th October 2022
Dublin City
Alternating Current, Dublin Digital Radio’s celebration of the experimental currents in contemporary Irish music returns to The Complex this October Bank Holiday weekend.
During the station’s six years of broadcasting, it has come to occupy a unique position in Ireland’s music hinterland. As a radio platform that thrives on giving space to experimenters, artists and producers, the station has become a home to some of the most compelling work being made both in Ireland and by its emigre axis.
For Alternating Current 2022, the theme is Beyond Human Intelligence, inspired by the writings of James Bridle and Pauline Oliveros.
“The crisis of global warming is a crisis of the mind, a crisis of thought, a crisis in our ability to think another way to be,” writes Bridle.
Dublin Digital Radio commissioned eight artists, working in sound art, radio, field recordings, electronics, spoken word and traditional instrumentation to make new work in response to this theme.
Beginning October 28th, the Alternating Current programme features a specially commissioned radiowork by artist and resident of the station Aisling-Ór Ní Aodha which will be broadcast on listen.dublindigitalradio.com
Events will then move to The Complex where BABY NITS, BLACKMAGICRAWR, Colm Keady-Tabbal, David Donohoe, ELLLL, Howlbux (Irene Buckley and Elaine Howley), Maija Sofia, Stephen McEvoy as well as Diarmuid MacDiarmada, Clumsy Giantess and Warmer Climes will perform their new work in the old fruit and vegetable warehouse off Capel Street from 3pm until 1am. Finishing out the night will be Moot Tapes boss Polytunnel followed by up and coming Dublin DJ Bull Horris.
Tickets are priced at just €15 for Patrons, €22.50 for non-Patrons. You can sign up to Dublin Digital Radio’s Patreon here. Tickets are available here.
This is the alternating current, the one that seeks to give voice to the other island, the sounds less heard, the other traditions. The sounds of the hinterlands and its fringes coalescing.
Aisling-Ór Ní Aodha
Aisling-Ór Ní Aodha is an artist based in Dublin. Through the mediums of sound, text, sculpture and radio broadcast her practice interrogates the enactment of colonial ideologies and state institutions upon the body. Her practice draws upon performance studies, queer theory and Irish folklore. The early stages of this research regularly informs her monthly radio show ‘Lowlands / Ísealchríoch’ on Dublin Digital Radio
For Alternating Current she will present An áit nach siúlann an t-uisce (English translation ‘where the water doesn’t flow freely’), an hour long audio essay which explores the legacy of imperial water infrastructures in Ireland and the animation of water in Irish mythology and folklore.
BABY NITS
BABYNITS are DIY wingless insects that spend their entire lives on the human scalp, they feed exclusively on human blood & make art/tunes x
BLACKMAGICRAWR
BLACKMAGICRAWR is a crew of babez with a vision to experiment with melodious sounds steeped in melancholic-light lyrics. Part meditation, part prayer, the crew premiered their live piece as part of Beulah Ezeugo's 'Holy Terrain' a multi-media exhibition which took place at the Goethe Institute 2021.
For Alternating Current 2022, the crew will play with new tones representing parts of their world as well as a response to the sensual tension between Earth and humanity's new way of being.
BLACKMAGICKRAWR is made of Osaro, Renn and Cami with support from GoldMothMedia
Ren and GoldMoth Media - DIAxDEM on ddr.
Bull Horris
Bull Horris is the DJ pseudonym of visual & performance artist Bill Harris. He is a resident of the queer party Strawberries and co-founder / resident of Tender. Based in Dublin, his sound is hugely influenced by the Queer / DIY parties he frequented both here and abroad as a baby gay. He is known for his punchy trance infused sets, laced with seductive vocals and the sounds of early rave music. Constantly picking from 90s trance, house & progressive, you'll find slivers of techno, pop, goa and eurodance in his sets too.
Colm Keady-Tabaal
Colm Keady-Tabbal (they/them) is an Irish-Lebanese artist based in New York and Dublin. Operating through sculpture, performance, video and writing their practice investigates epistemologies of sound, place and memory and their relation to systems and infrastructures of control.
Recent installations and performances include Inadmissible Presence (2022) at Cork Centre for Architectural Education, quotation marks (2022) at Muine Bheag Arts, Through Walls (2021) at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and Models and Limits (2020) at the Douglas Hyde Gallery.
Colm Keady-Tabaal - Models and Limits
Clumsy Giantess, Diarmuid MacDiarmada, Warmer Climes
Evocation. (For Aengus)
Diarmuid Mac Diarmada, The Clumsy Giantess and Taf Hassam are Sligo-Leitrim based. The trio will compose and perform a long-form immersive work using beats, tape and electronics to evoke the special spirit of Aengus Friel -Shammen Delly.
Tara Baoth Mooney works in collaboration with The Clumsy Giantess, a shadow persona that enables her to engage with her practice and the living world. Clumsy lives an interdisciplinary life encompassing sound, song, performance, textiles, drawing, and video. She explores lived experience and the inter-relationship of people and practice, daily ritual and objects within respective ecologies.
Diarmuid MacDiarmada is a multidisciplinary veteran of the Irish art and music world from the most popular platforms to the esoteric hinterlands.
Warmer Climes is artist, musician, and organiser, Taf Hassam. He is the co-founder of Second Culture Press and the independent art & music venue, New Conditions, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Based now in Sligo, Taf’s music often utilises both analogue and digital technologies to construct repetitive melodies and rhythms, creating a multi-layered trance like/ecstatic mental space. Other music projects include, Black & White Radio with Paul Corrigan (Gulpt), and Antakya Remains with Dan Guiney (Trumpets of Jericho).
For Alternating Current, they will present The star of the sea. (For Aengus), a piece which journeys through a process of loss encompassing the full breadth of the emotional spectrum. It has loosely sprung from a pool that has been inspired by loss, evocation of Shammen Delly’s work, recontextualised wisps of poetic text, tape-recordings and the resonance of landscape.
Diarmuid MacDiarmada on Soundcloud
The Clumsy Giantess on Bandcamp
David Donohoe
David Donohoe is a composer, musician, recordist, artist and improviser.
His ongoing research focus is a musical language at the intersection of piano tonality, FM synthesis, percussion, field-recording and processing. A long-term collaborator of photographer Eamonn Doyle, he has composed music and sound for Doyle’s acclaimed books, exhibitions and installations alongside designer & curator Niall Sweeney, most recently the major show at RHA Dublin (2019) and at Fundacion MAPFRÉ, Madrid (2019–20). This show features the 9 screen 4-channel audio installation MADE IN DUBLIN, featuring fourth collaborator, author Kevin Barry. Commissioned by St Patrick’s Festival, MADE IN DUBLIN continues to tour internationally to critical acclaim. Their debut short-film commissioned by RTÉ was broadcast in December 2020 and selected for the Berlin Short Film Festival 2021.
His performance practice focuses on immediate composition, solo extemporisation, live soundtracks, and collaborative improvisation. He regularly performs in an improvising duo with David Lacey. He has released on D1 Recordings, Fort Evil Fruit, Verz, Fällt, Minimise, Mille Plateaux, Force-Inc, and Studiomime.
He is supported by the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon
For Alternating Current, Donohoe will present ‘Fen', a selective evocation and invocation of a Kildare fenland. Focusing on the vocalisations and physical communication sounds of three bird species, it is comprised of field recordings of Grasshopper Warbler, Sedge Warbler (both Summer migrant breeders) and Snipe (resident breeder), alongside tuned percussion and synthesiser textures.
ELLLL
Irish born, Berlin based producer and DJ with a unique approach to bass, techno and off kilter club music. ELLLL has carved out a distinctive voice thanks to sets and production's laced with breaks, abstract experimentation, disjointed techno and bass heavy club.
As well as several releases with Dublin’s First Second Label where she explored
exploring shimmering melodic motifs, not to mention the singular Glacial Industries imprint which showcased left field, icy, percussive drum tracks, ELLLL most recently released her most recent EP, Housebreaker, also on First Second Label. Haunted, scattered breaks loom over the title track, a modern apocalyptic Hardcore journey where rave sirens puncture the feverous rinse-out tension throughout.
ELLLL is also established as a live performer and has been commissioned to compose several works including most recently, Images and Sensations, a collaboration with Crash Ensemble which was premiered at the National Concert Hall in 2021 for New Music Dublin. Images & Sensations is shaped largely by the theme of dreaming. Specifically daydreams, lucid dreams, fever dreams and the sensations that these evoke, such as feelings of disconcertion, deja vu, nostalgia and deciphering what is (un)real.
Howlbux
HowlBux is the project of musicians and composers Elaine Howley and Irene Buckley, who create atmospheric textures with ghosted vocals and synths. Sometimes pop, sometimes improvisational and exploratory, HowlBux creates atmospheres from the serene and hypnotic to the dense and immersive. Recent performances include the live soundtracking of Sara Baume's Alphabet of Birds and four Holy Show Productions short documentaries.
For HowlBux’s Alternating Current performance, they will imagine they are ‘Walking The Dusk’ , a moment for humans and non humans where vision is obscured and we are looking for maps and guides. This journey will be soundtracked, guided by the concept of Wabi Sabi; characteristically warm, dim, present oriented and unfocused on progress. This performance will make use of electronics, synths, voice and cymbals to bring this to life musically and artist Gavin O’ Brien will create visuals for the piece.
Maija Sofia
Growing up in the wild, rugged landscape of the west of Ireland, Maija Sofia's childhood solitude instilled an early devotion to songwriting. Leaving the stillness of the west behind, Maija spent several years submerged in the chaos of cities between Dublin and London, letting life unfold rapidly and alchemise into strikingly singular songs. Writing mostly at night, an innate nocturnal intimacy permeates Maija’s deft lyricism, and in 2019, Bath Time, her critically acclaimed debut LP arrived via Trapped Animal, announcing Maija as an accomplished songwriter whose unwavering eloquence and storytelling set her far apart from her contemporaries. Bath Time garnered widespread praise and a coveted Album of the Year nomination at the RTÉ Choice Music Prize. A recipient of the Arts Council of Ireland’s prestigious Next Generation Award, Maija has since been commissioned to write new compositions by several revered cultural institutions, including the National Concert Hall, Sirius Arts Centre and Cork Midsummer Festival. Now performing with a full band, Maija’s sound is continuously evolving and expanding in its breadth. She presents Invocations on Dublin Digital Radio.
For Alternating Current, Maija Sofia will engage with the festival's theme of intelligence that is 'beyond human'; reflecting on the intimacy between human intelligence and 'artificial' / digital forms of intelligence, the idea of touch, codependency and closeness with screens and the archives of our cyborg-selves that exist in strange layers within the internet. Maija Sofia has taken these questions into the music written for Alternating Current, exploring feelings of alienation, dis/connection, empathy, ecological grief and hope.
https://maijasofiamakela.com/
Maija Sofia on Bandcamp
Polytunnel
Hailing from Kilkenny, Ireland, Polytunnel is a meeting point of
sounds and interests, not bound by genre or scene. Having cut his
teeth as resident DJ at Dublin venue The Bernard Shaw for years, he
eventually made the move to Glasgow in 2019. The same year he
caught the attention of London-based party starters, Childsplay,
where he released his debut 12”, Time 2 Time.
His style of melodic electro mixed with breakbeat influenced acid has
seen his music gain acclaim from the likes of Mixmag, DJ Mag,
Inverted Audio, Xlr8r and supported by the late great Andrew
Weatherall on his much-missed NTS show, Music’s Not for
Everyone.
Since moving to Glasgow, he has released on Placid’s We’re Going
Deep imprint and released his full follow up to 2019’s Time 2 Time in
the form of Bioacoustics on Glasgow institution, Seventh Sign
Recordings, which received support from the likes of Laurent
Garnier, Dan Curtin, Vladimir Ivkovic, nd_Baumecker, Ryan Elliot,
Marcel Dettmann, Ame, Truncate, Chris Ssg and James Zabiela.
Keeping busy with his own labels, Moot Tapes and Made Magnetic,
there are plenty of solo releases on the horizon for the likes of Alien
Communications, Ornate Music and Magnonic Signals.
S McEvoy / TUUUNs
S McEvoy is an interdisciplinary artist making work which traverses spaces between sound, video, sculpture and performance. With a practice rooted in instinctive and hands-on research, they investigate the body, and the presences, absences, connections and disconnections that shape it. They have presented work in spaces such as Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Cafe Oto, Fylkingen, Medicinsk Museion and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art. They are currently enrolled as a Master’s student at the Dutch Art Institute. They present a monthly show on Dublin Digital Radio.
For Alternating Current, they will present Sotto Voce, which translates from Italian as “under the voice”, meaning lowering the volume of one’s voice for emphasis. The speaker gives the impression of uttering involuntarily a truth which may surprise, shock or offend. This idea is taken and applied to a range of materials such as plastic, liquids, and slimes, by recording them in an anechoic chamber - a room with no echo, a space that is as close to silent as can be constructed. By recording these extremely quiet sounds, the sotto voce of the material is accessed, and by extension their supposed truths.