Circuit Breakers
A primer on the Irish electronic scene Words by Niall Byrne ~ Photographs by James Goulden
Bass Dual Carriageway
Friday, midnight: while waiting to order at the bar, State is suddenly aware that pint glasses are vibrating across the basement of Traffic on Abbey Street in the counter top like wind-up toys moving hilariously to their doom. The bass frequencies are so loud that vision is blurry and the labels on the bottles stocked behind the bar are obfuscated and hallucinatory. There’s about a hundred people gathered in the small dark basement venue, feeling the repercussions of those low, low frequencies. Meanwhile, upstairs in the same building, a mainstream club-night playing radiofriendly dance and pop music is occupied by dolled-up ladies and standard issue Ben-Sherman shirt-clad gents. The two distinct tribes converge in the smoking area outside where the fella doused in aftershave is probably wondering what the ‘scruffy fuck’ with the dreads is doing on his turf. Welcome to !Kaboogie, an alternative music night which currently takes place in
36
Dublin city centre. With the tagline “bass that will make your granny cry”, !Kaboogie put on regular gigs featuring bass-heavy music like breakcore, dubstep, grime, reggae, drum ‘n’ bass and electronica, which have become the best off-the-radar nights Dublin has to offer, bringing over a range of headline international acts such as Aaron Spectre, Benga, Alec Empire, The Bug and Drop the Lime, to play alongside the best of Irish electronic talent like Herv, Prince Kong, T-Woc, Lakker, Ed Devane and Major Grave. !Kaboogie’s aim is to encourage and nurture the talent in the local scene, while throwing damn good parties in the process. The atmosphere is always friendly and welcoming, and always about the tunes. They also encourage visual artists to enhance the night, such as the Pussy Krew – three Polish blokes living in Ireland, who
regularly do live visuals armed with an old vision mixer acquired from the former West Germany, DVD mixers, two laptops, two open VCRs and a suitcase brimming with 400 battered VHS tapes. The crowd are definitely non-discriminatory, a !Kaboogie promoter tells State: “We organised the recent Scotch Egg gig with GZ, a punk promoter. We like the idea of mixing it up, Band/DJ/Band/DJ. It was a really good buzz, and cool to see !Kaboogie regulars getting into the punk stuff and vice versa.”
No-doubt !Kaboogie and other Dublin collectives such as the Alphabet Set, Bodytonic and Reach are helping to foster upcoming electronic musicians, while other promoters such as Electric Underground in Cork, Backtobasskicks in Galway and Diston