Dublin seems to be coming down with festivals in October…they’ve already had the Dublin Theatre Festival with the brilliant playhouse) and Darklight and now we have 3 consecutive weekends packed with independent music courtesy of Hard Working Class Heroes and Dublin Electronic Arts Festival (DEAF).

hwch

First up HWCH this coming weekend (16th-18th Oct) which has a 100 bands over 3 days with a whole heap of industry panels and other sessions on top of that.  I love the concept of buying one ticket (for the day or the weekend) that gets you in to all the gigs, so there is no excuse not to try out an unknown band. Knowing how good hwch is I’m sure all the 100 bands are worth a look see but here are my picks

HWCH are also doing a surprise gig series called HWCH & the City, bit like our New Spaces for DEAF series (great minds think alike clearly) that you have to follow their twitter to find out about.

loving the profiles on breakingtunes.com too

Worth a mention too- though not strictly an hwch event I don’t think – is Bodytonic/Jim Carroll’s Banter#4

Next up is DEAF running for a marathon 10 days this year over two weekends from Thu 22 – Sun 31 October.  There is just so much here it’s hard to know where to start.  I’m involved to varying degrees with three projects for DEAF so I’ll plug them first

Donal Dineen – mixed media installation at Filmbase

Relay-  - an online sound project curated by Chequerboard and commissioned by The Model- now going offline for the first time

New Spaces for Music- this is my Sligo programme presented for DEAF.  7 of the best fresh sound makers open for the challenge of a new space.  Best of all gigs are FREE and short, but locations are a secret- you’ll have to follow Deaf on twitter or facebook for the info, released 24hours before the gig.

Then non plugged picks are

wow- I’m tired thinking about it.

For more DEAF picks check out handy as a small pot‘s picks