Delighted to see that Myles’ O’Reilly’s documentary about The Cave gigs is getting it’s premiere very soon – Feb 16th in fact – in Cork Opera House. They were exceptionally special gigs (my review here), and from the look of this trailer Myles has captured them perfectly. It’ll be fascinating to see the whole story of the Caves revealed on film, and what a wonderful resource for them to have – this beautiful document of a very special place, at a very unique moment in time.

and so it’s Meteor Choice Music Prize time of year once again.  The lucky 10 this year in the running for Irish Album of the Year are

And So I Watch You From Afar “Gangs” (Richter Collective)
Bell X1 “Bloodless Coup” (Belly Up Records)
Cashier No 9 “To The Death of Fun” (Bella Union)
Lisa Hannigan “Passenger” (Hoop)
The Japanese Popstars “Controlling Your Allegiance” (EMI)
Jape “Ocean of Frequency” (Music Is For Losers)
Patrick Kelleher & His Cold Dead Hands “Golden Syrup” (Osaka Records)
Pugwash “The Olympus Sounds” (EMI/1969 Records)
Tieranniesaur “Tieranniesaur” (Popical Island)
We Cut Corners “Today I Realised I Could Go Home Backwards” (Delphi)

(thanks to OTR from where I robbed the list and linkages!)

As always it’s a great indication of the rich variety of sound in irish music – it would be hard to listen to these 10 albums and come up with a conclusive “irish” sound – and is a great expression of the strength and quality of irish indie labels, with Popical Island, Osaka, Richter Collective, Music for Loosers and Delphi all illustrating the strength of the irish indie industry.  There are some Choice stalwarts on their; with re-noms for Jape, Lisa Hannigan and Bellx1, but it’s great to see so many newbies and debut albums on the list. As always there are some that I agree with, some that surprise me and many more that could have been included, but I’d be happy with a winning result for most of the above. Of course I don’t have to make the choice, but the (un)lucky 11 who have to make the ultimate choice this year are

Brian Adams (Today FM)
John Barker (98FM)
Stuart Clark (Hot Press)
Siobhan Maguire (Sunday Times)
Naomi McArdle (Harmless Noise)
Lauren Murphy (The Irish Times)
Nadine O’Regan (RTE/Phantom FM/Sunday Business Post)
Colm O’Sullivan (Red FM)
Ed Power (Irish Independent/Irish Examiner/Metro Herald)
Rigsy (BBC 1 Northern Ireland)
Penny Rose-Hart (RTE Radio 1)

If you want to get your spoke in the best place for the debate is usually Jim Carroll’s On the Record blog – the choice post has only been up an hour and there’s already a heap of comments. Another good link is Nialler9′s blog of course- post here>, and if you want to get a listen to the albums @mrjamesfoley has made 7 of them into a Deezer playlist here>, and the others are on soundcloud – We Cut Corners, Patrick Kelleher and Tieranniesaur.

Tickets for the live award show on March 8th (at the Olympia) go on sale on Friday.

here’s the original tune

keep an eye out for Gotye’s album Making Mirrors – it’s already had it’s Oz release but is being held back here till Feb 10th

I was delighted to discover this little video during the week. Filmed by the staggeringly prolific (does the man sleep?) and always captivating Myles O’Reilly it features a young Dublin band called Traz playing a track called Leaving.

I first encountered Traz just over 2 years ago (see the blog here) when they were in transition year and only embarking on their musical journey. I’m delighted to see they’re still together and still writing lovely music, and even more delighted to discover they now have an EP available to buy on bandcamp (listen below).

Their folk influenced sound is enhanaced by judicious saxaphone use (to great effect on Let it Rest) and some beautiful vocal harmonies; perfect music for a cosy sunday afternoon. I see from the video above that they’ve done a session for Lyric’s In the Blue of the Night and from their site it looks like the live tracks will get an airing tonight, tomorrow night and Tuesday.  Traz also did an on air session with Donal Dineen for Fresh Air back in Nov ’09 which you can hear here>

Official links:  Facebook / official site / bandcamp

• Donato Wharton,
• Lisa Hannigan,
• Ronan O’Snodaigh,
• Jape (an early acoustic version of Phil Lynott),
• Milosh,
• Si Schroeder and
• Matt Elliott.

Dark Room Notes, Halves and Windings were also part of that tour, but don’t appear on film, and there’s archive info of the project on myspace (yes, it still lives) here>