Belfast

music alliance pact

It’s hard to believe 2014 has passed so quickly. It’s als hard to resist – inundated with jingly Christmas tat and last-minute shopping as we are – using the last MAP of the year to push forward that rarest of things: a truly exceptional Irish club act. Our pub scene might dominate here in Dublin, but Belfast act OneKnown (a spin off/ rebrand from previous incarnation UNKNWN) is producing the kind of edgy beat we could use a little more of. Dig in, and happy Christmas/ New Year…

Click the play button icon to listen to individual songs, right-click on the song title to download an mp3, or grab a zip file of the full 17-track compilation through Dropbox here.

IRELAND: Hendicott Writing
OneKnown – JST BKZ
Formerly secretive artist Unknown, now outed artist OneKnown (get it?), Chris Hanna’s latest grimy beat-laden dubstep is exactly the kind of stuff Ireland is starting to see buck its well-established musical trends/clichés. Seemingly inspired by the likes of Burial and Flying Lotus, Hanna’s work is a whirling yet slow-building crescendo for the more discerning clubber. Record label Champion Sound isn’t short of acts just like this Belfast gem either.

ARGENTINA: Zonaindie
Pablo Dacal y Fer Isella – Los Caminos
Singer-songwriter Pablo Dacal (MAP February 2009) invited fellow musician and friend Fer Isella to perform a concert together. In return, Isella proposed that they record an album. After years of conversations they finally got together, then the two artists visited Ulises Conti (MAP March 2009) at his Buenos Aires studio and invited him to produce the album. Right there, the newly-form trio recorded piano, vocals and other arrangements. The resulting album is called Los Caminos and here’s the self-titled first single.

AUSTRALIA: Who The Bloody Hell Are They?
ScotDrakula – Shazon
Steeped in a love for fuzz and 60s rock’n’roll, Melbourne trio ScotDrakula transcend the novelty of their name with songs so catchy they make Gangnam Style look about as appealing as week-old haggis. The band has just released their debut album and it’s drowning in two/three-minute garage super-soakers. Shazon is irresistibly charming, enough to convert the stalest individual to a headbangin’ conqueror of the dancefloor.

How two Northern Irish lads tackled three continents and over 11,000 miles in a clapped-out Citroen Berlingo.

Sponsorship. Route planning. Team bonding and fundraising events; van-cramming and graffiti-acquiring. Even the work that goes into preparing for Mongol Rally – a death-defying charity odyssey from the UK to Mongolia – is a mammoth undertaking. Buying up a scrap-heap-ready Citroen Berlingo, which the spirit of the rally dictates should be scrawled all over (read: covered in sticky-taped Tayto packets and welded shopping trolleys) was the first part. Next, Dirty Sanchez star Mike Locke (aka Pancho) was persuaded to aid in the fundraising and promotional efforts by allowing donors to staple notes directly his equally scrap-heap-ready body. This, though, was only the start of a journey that was to take to Belfast lads around almost half the globe.

The aim of the Mongol Rally, ostensibly, is to deliver used cars for auction in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, and raise a lot of cash for charity along the way. However, Norn Iron duo Steve Neill and Barry Keenan (and, for a large portion of the journey, Steve’s wife Sarah), tagged on a few of their own personal aims. They live by the motto “For lust of knowing what should not be known”, a quote, appropriately, from early 20th century poet James Elroy Flecker’s ‘The Golden Journey To Samarkand’, and was determined to unveil a ludicrous number of oddities along the way. Aside from seeing far-flung corners of the globe, the team that would be come known as Team Charolastra (space cowboy in Spanish) also intended to cram their sizable van with helpful charitable donations, ingratiate themselves with the local police by handing out gifts of t-shirts from one of their main sponsors Tayto and generally get by on a wing and a prayer.

Music Alliance Pact: December 2014

The Mongol Rally