From a student night in Limerick to taking over Townlands Carnival – it’s been a long road for the D.I.E. crew. Mike McGrath-Bryan talks with organiser/DJ Dan Sykes about how it all came together.
Townlands Carnival is a little over two weeks away at this point, and the excitement that’s been steadily building throughout the summer is coming to a head. With international headline artists like Sister Sledge and Leftfield’s Neil Barnes providing an attraction factor for new, lapsed and casual music fans, this year’s Townlands Carnival presents opportunities for Irish and independent artists alike to be seen, discovered and enjoyed by a wider audience, including Choice Prize nominees like Bantum and Katie Kim. The Rising Sons stage is custom-made for new Irish music, up and down the billing, while the Sibín allows festival-goers to hide out in the nearby woods and take in some of the festival’s hidden gems, many of whom are taken from the local scene. Between its location amid a tight-knit rural community, and its support for new Irish music, community development has evidently been at the heart of the festival’s rise in recent years, so it’s appropriate that one of the festival’s sleeper highlights comes in the form of Limerick collective D.I.E..
Beginning amid the turmoil of the late-2000s recession and while their city was emerging from years of stigmatisation on a national level, D.I.E. (short for ‘Dubstep/Indie/Electronica’) came along at a time when the playing field had effectively been levelled, and opportunities, if nothing else, for enterprising young music heads abounded, for those willing to put in the work. Recognising an opportunity to establish a multi-space club night in Dolan’s in Limerick, using its various rooms, the crew responsible worked with local student unions to build a bottom-line crowd for the night with Limerick School of Art and Design, providing a space for local musicians and selectors. Co-founder Dan Sykes looks at the effort they put in, and the path it paved for the city’s current golden age. “It’s like anything really, you come in fresh-faced and put work in, over the time your work gains momentum, and can start to go well and influence other people and so the cycle continues. We meet loads of really driven young people these days, who seem lightyears ahead of their years, and they are doing amazing work in putting on parties, etc. It’s great to see music outlets being there for other types of music. Like Limerick right now has so much creativity and this real rawness in the hip-hop scene. They are all really driven, focused and all together. Knowing these things are happening in your city makes everything feel great. I know the internet has changed lots of things in music, but that old social ground is, and always will be, the club. So we’re happy to have a club where we put on music, people come and listen, they dance, they meet, ideas are created and exchanged. It’s all part of development and having a space to do so. Very happy that we may offer that space in some sense.”
Running a club is tricky business at the best of times, amplified by replicating the feat across a number of rooms and even Dolans’ smoking area. The result, however, isn’t that far removed from festival setups up and down the country – different stages need different specs for a variety of musical genres – making the changeover from venue to festival stage takeover relatively easy. “So, it starts at around 4pm. First port of call is lovely, creamy pints to start off. We have a pint and discuss production, etc. After that we then set up, room-by-room. Programming rooms is one thing, but producing the room so all artists, etc. can do their thing, with their preferred spec, takes a little more in terms of planning. Luckily we have an amazing team who all work really hard. For some of us, the best part is knowing that all rooms have been produced to the highest possible standard.”
D.I.E. manages to do what promoters and venues in other cities, arguably including Cork, either can’t or just don’t anymore – maintain a key relationship with the city’s students and maintain their support as a bottom line. Sykes goes into the necessities and changes of doing so. “Well, having the night on a Thursday really makes us part of that student nightlife. However, things are changing, and Thursdays are not the big nights out that they used to be. More and more stuff is happening from Monday to Thursday these days, so as we get older it’s quite hard to keep ahead of different cultural and social changes, if you’re not experiencing them first hand. However, we did start out by running some parties for SUs, and we have always kept up our relationship with them. We still sell hard tickets from the SUs at the student-friendly price of €5… the legacy of the recession (laughs).” So, how can venues and promoters, in cities like Cork, more effectively court a student audience and properly bring out the best in them, in terms of their participation and weekly involvement, making them aware of the wider music community, etc? “That’s a question where the answer could change from one year to the next. I think once you try to give people, or students especially, a top-quality experience; for example the same show they would have got on a Saturday, and to the same standard; then people will feel like they are being catered for properly, and will support more strongly.”
D.I.E. comes to Townlands Carnival to run a takeover of the Hive Stage as part of the weekend’s proceedings. Sykes, Ali Daly (pictured) and other regulars will be overseeing tunes and bringing that trademark diversity to the stage at Rusheen Farm. The community connection at the centre of Townlands was the spark for this collaboration. “So Shiv (promoter/DJ Siobhán Brosnan) got us involved last year, and we approached her about a takeover for this year’s one. For a festival like TLC to happen on our doorsteps is a very special thing. The programming, etc. is different, it’s not the usual big names and suspects that you see at lots of Irish festivals. TLC has a lot of love in it. We were so impressed with last year, we just wanted to showcase at it for this year.”
Mike McGrath-Bryan 