Dolittle have given us some tickets to give away for their upcoming Midori Hirano & Mark Morriss gigs.
Dolittle have given us some tickets to give away for their upcoming Midori Hirano & Mark Morriss gigs. Read on for details of the gigs and how to enter.
Dolittle presents
Midori Hirano
& special guests
Whelan’s (Upstairs) October 30th
Tickets available from WAV [lo-call 1890 200 078], City Discs, Road Records, Tickets.ie & Ticketmaster
“Think Michael Nyman times Hans Zimmer to the power of Sigur Rós” – Time Magazine
Midori Hirano makes a welcome return to Dublin for an intimate show Upstairs @ Whelan’s, October 30.
Hailing from Kyoto and now based in Berlin Midori Hirano dances the divide between electronic and acoustic sound, creating lush, layered chamber music out of piano, strings, digital samples and vocals in songs that hark back to the past while hinting, irresistibly, toward the future.
After graduating from university with a major in classic piano, Midori Hirano started creating music with the help of her computer. Her participation in compilations by overseas labels and EP releases led to the release of her first album “LushRush” from noble record in September 2006. Her musical activities spread its wings throughout the world through remix and collaboration with fellow artists and creating music for European and Asian movies. February 2008 saw Midori Hirano became the only Japanese to be invited in the composer category of the “Berlinale Talent Campus”, a program for aspiring young film makers hosted by the Berlin International Film Festival.
Her latest album, klo:yuri, again released from Noble in 2008 has removed many of the live instruments seen in her first album and is replaced by electronic sounds, improvisations and field recordings. Midori’s murmuring vocal heard only in a few of the songs in her previous album are back again in almost half of the tracks with a slightly stronger voice in comparison to the last. The artist worked alone on almost everything from the composition to remix in her previous album. This time, Hiromits Shoji of soundworm has taken on the mix and mastering to bring tenfolds of depth and strength to the album with his unique musical structuring. The tingling excitement of improvisation and the spiritual melody like sacred music…the fragile but thoughtful voice and suggestive lyrics like an ancient European…Midori Hirano’s new album is a woven fabric of originality that proves the artistic maturation of the artist and her sounds with its deep stoicism and uncompromised beauty is awaiting for you to enter its labyrinth of sound.
[youtube url= https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRJhVpfpzsk&rel=0 ]
Dolittle presents
Mark Morriss (The Bluetones)
Mark Morriss (The Bluetones)
Friday, October 16, Upstairs @ Whelan’s
Acoustic performances: Early & Late Shows
Tickets €14 plus booking fee from WAV Box-Office (Lo-Call 1890 200 078), City Discs, tickets.ie, Ticketmaster outlets nationwide
Early Show: Doors 7pm. Mark Morriss onstage 7.30pm-9pm
Late Show: Doors 9.30pm. Special guest Rhob Cunningham onstage 10pm-10.30pm. Mark Morriss onstage 10.45pm-midnight.
“Strummed guitars, West Coast melodies featuring James Bond composer David Arnold on strings… astute covers (Teenage Fanclub, LeeHazlewood)… an album that emanates good-natured charm.” – Q Magazine
“Britpop survivor and Bluetones front-man goes it alone with eleven gorgeous pop gems. Like lounging outside on a summer’s day.” – NME
Performing classic Bluetones material and songs from his acclaimed solo album Memory Muscle, Mark Morriss returns to Dublin for two intimate shows Upstairs @ Whelan’s, October 16.
Best known as the frontman in The Bluetones, Mark Morriss has been getting his hands dirty with his own set of songs since 2004. Last year he started recording the material for his debut solo album Memory Muscle with producer Gordon Mills, enlisting Grammy award winning composer David Arnold along the way: “We first met on the set of Little Britain, ironically. We were both making a cameo in the same scene, and it was here that I learnt that he really liked the Bluetones’ music. In fact it was when he was composing the soundtrack to Independence Day that he first heard Expecting To Fly. I was naturally, incredibly flattered, and never dreamed that I’d ever have the chance to work with him.”
Arnold arranged the strings for “How Maggie Got Her Bounce Back”, “I’m Sick” and “Lay Low” – he also plays piano on “Unwanted Friend”. The album features two covers: a light, mellotron-enhanced twist on Teenage Fanclub’s “Alcoholiday” and the album’s closer is a take on Lee Hazlewood’s “My Autumns Done Come”.
The lightness in Memory Muscle is often in the music itself – dark lyrics with warm, sunny arrangements: “I wanted to make a Californian kind of album,” he reveals. “I wanted to re-create the sounds of my favourite records when I was a callow youth. It wasn’t stuff from my own generation really, it was music from the West Coast of America in the late 1960s and early 70s – things like Forever Changes, Rumours and Harvest.”
With the release of Memory Muscle Morriss will be hitting the road to share these newly embellished songs with whoever enjoys a persuasive melody and a nifty way with a word.
The Giveaway
Usual rules apply – just email your contact details to either [email protected] or [email protected]. Get your entries in by midnight, 1st October.
Usual rules apply – just email your contact details to either [email protected] or [email protected]. Get your entries in by midnight, 1st October.
