Unmasking Limerick's newest masked rapper
What is it with Limerick musicians and their penchant for masks? First, we had The Rubberbandits’ plastic bags, then it was DJ/Producer Naïve Ted with a Japanese wrestling mask. Now, it’s a towering fiddle-playing punk with an An Post envelope on his head.
It’s a little over a year since Post Punk Podge and the Technohippies released their first EP, ‘Kick Against The Pricks’, having first released the politically satirical Post Punk Election Party in the summer of 2016.
Fronted by Post Punk Podge, the aforementioned envelope-clad fiddle player and vocalist, the Limerick trio rip out genre-bending songs incorporating elements of Hip Hop, Techno and Krautrock, but always staying true to a punk ethos: raw, subversive, dark music that confronts themes like homelessness, domestic violence and political corruption head-on.
Post Punk Podge himself exudes a quivering menace onstage that he says is inspired by the aggression of acts like The Sleaford Mods and Iggy Pop. Offstage, though, he’s a gentle giant: softly spoken and thoughtful.
“Maybe the masks come from that Limerick thing that we’re a bit self-conscious, I don’t know,” Podge says.
I was a massive fan of the Rubberbandits growing up, but I can’t speak for them. Personally, I wouldn’t be that confident a person and I don’t think I’d be able to present the shows in the same way without the mask
The band’s live shows are high-octane surrealism. Podge, clad only in perilously low-slung board shorts and his envelope, stalks the stage bellowing rage-filled lyrics and playing the violin, while The Technohippies, DJ Jurassic Park 2 and Hype Man Dr Asparagus Montague, also masked, fling handfuls of fake money and fake degrees into the crowd.
It’s far from mainstream, but they’re building a cult status and a loyal following. It’s been a busy year; they’ve played a slew of Irish festivals, gigs in respected venues, and still found time to record a follow-up EP, set to be released in spring to coincide with their debut London gig.
They’ve also just announced they’re on the line-up of Cork’s springtime music and arts festival, Quarter Block Party.
“We never expected to get the reaction we’ve got or to get where we’ve gone so quickly,” he say.
Sometimes you’re doing gigs and getting paid €25 and sleeping on a couch. But I find it a great form of therapy to help me deal with my mental health and it’s like that for the rest of the band too: we joke that it’s the Jobsbridge band for men with anxiety
When Podge talks about mental health issues, he’s speaking from personal experience; he was hospitalised twice following nervous breakdowns in his 20s which he freely admits were precipitated by his alcohol and drug consumption.
“It was fairly traumatic,” he says. “The second time I ended up with psychosis and extreme paranoia in hospital in Cork. It was kind of self-inflicted.”
Now 33 and abstinent, he says music is both his salvation and his means of self-expression.
A song released in October, ‘Never Coming Home’, was his jarring autobiographical account of growing up with domestic violence. Another, An Lucht Siúl, is dedicated to the victims of the Carrickmines halting site fire.
“They are big themes, but I’m trying to speak about them in a compassionate way,” he says. I think anger needs to be expressed or it becomes a form of oppression on people’s minds and bodies and souls.”
Post Punk Podge was spawned when fellow Limerick native, DJ and Hip Hop producer Naïve Ted, asked Podge, who prefers not to use his real name, if he could sample some violin pieces Podge had been releasing on Soundcloud under the name of Paddy Courage.
I wanted to express how I thought people felt in my own city: Limerick was hit very hard by the recession. It’s only starting to come out of that darkness recently
Rusangano Family, Naïve Ted, the activities of music collective DIY LK, of which Podge is a member, and a branch of educational initiative Music Generation renowned for its energy and resources: an independent music renaissance is emerging Shannonside, and Podge says it’s born of adversity and austerity.
Limerick is “the Detroit of Ireland,” he says. But things are changing. “We have a song on the new EP called ‘Stab City Is Burning’. That sounds negative, but it’s actually a positive song. We want to draw a line in the sand: that’s how Limerick was, not what it has to be.”
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