How was it for you? Mike McGrath-Bryan picks some of his 2020 arts highlights
Mike McGrath-Bryan. Pic: Shane Horan
QBP is magic. Has been since the beginning, breathing life back into the city after the big freeze, rushing from the place to place, the old streets in new lights. This year was no different. Post-Punk Podge looming large over us, Elaine Malone with the band, Acid Granny wrecking the gaff… wonderful.
They were feral as usual. It was common knowledge that it would be the last time a lot of us in attendance would see each other for a while, and sure enough, lots of ‘goodbye for nows’ were exchanged outside the venue after our ears stopped ringing.
Making the best of the situation, John ‘Spud’ Murphy and friends corralled the cream of the Irish underground into Guerilla Studios in Dublin city centre for a bi-weekly stream that landed somewhere between a gig, an episode of No Disco, and the chaos of The Den. Magic ensued.
Willingly difficult noise-rock from a Dublin trio with plenty of pedigree in noisemaking between them. A Venn diagram of patience-stretching repetition, angular riffs, and treacle-thick bass tone. Lovely.
There’s been ‘big’ hip-hop projects all year, but Corkman Adam Gould’s mixtape of lo-fi instrumentals and collaborations for Dublin label Soft Boy Records has been one I’ve been going back to all year.
What started as an EP of lockdown tunes and compilation odds-and-sods from Ballyhea woman Kelly Doherty’s Gadget and the Cloud project ended up as a mini-album on tape from Cork-based label Fort Evil Fruit. Electronica and ambience, by way of earnestness and hard work.
Taking in short stories from a range of Irish literary minds in anthology The Art of the Glimpse; exploring wordplay and experience from our city in Cork Words; finding a dog-eared copy of journalist Emily O’Reilly’s Masterminds of the Right and seeing 2020 parallels; beginning to wade into the depths of Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in The Throat.
Comfort food only, all through lockdown. The return of The Den.
It’s been a hard year, and the sight of Zig and Zag on our tellies again after all these years was a very real lift.
Dublin Digital Radio’s output has been a constant companion - dropping in at any hour and hearing music and conversation curated by musicians, artists, journalists, DJs, academics and music lovers. The way it ought to be.
Otherwise: catching up with RTÉ’s Arena and Culture File, dropping in on Dan Hegarty’s session re-airings, and An Taobh Tuathail on R na G.
The Blindboy Podcast, every Wednesday morning without fail.
The Tortoise Shack family of social and political podcasts, and the Week at Work podcast; Fire Draw Near, Ian Lynch’s expeditions in trad; Motherfoclóir, a celebration of Irish words and words in Irish; and getting into Limerick academic Ellen Reid’s Small Plot Podcast.
We have a Nintendo Switch, so Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the lockdown go-to: pastoral, slow-burning, building, exploring, unfolding.
If Found was a highlight of the year, a visual novel set in 1990s Mayo.
Super Mario 3D All-Stars was always going to go down well, too, in fairness, and role-playing adventure A Short Hike was an unexpected favourite.
With lockdown and all that attends, there’s a sense that the world has contracted - our social spaces, work spaces, and such, have been boiled down to parts of our house.
Phoner interviews, the odd socially-distanced chat, they’ve been a lifeline to something vital and important in all of our lives, connecting with like-minded people in many ways.
Getting to as many gigs as I can, plonking a tent down in a field and shambling between stages, sticking my head into a museum, venturing to whatever form the cinema takes after this all settles down.
You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.
