Reviewed: Rachid Taha, Kaiser Chiefsand Megumi Tokuoka
Rachid TahaDún Laoghaire Festival of World Cultures, Dublin
Even the dogs were dancing in Newtownsmith on Sunday evening. Rachid Taha (right) is an Algerian musician with a contentious mix of punk, funk and reggae coursing through his veins. Mostly singing in Arabic, Taha and his band slowly built up a head of steam as they thundered through a set list that swung from the insistent trance-like Meftuh to the slow burning Rani.
The sound coming from the Festival of World Cultures outdoor stage might have been ropey enough to sling a trapeze artist from here to Timbuktu, but Taha evidently didn't mind, nor did his audience, who had had an entire day of uninterrupted sunshine to get their mood right for the occasion.
Taha's band had one foot firmly planted in Africa, with mandola and hand drum (the latter bearing a remarkably close kinship to our bodhrán) and the other buried deep in the American rock format of drums, bass and guitar. Taha's grip of his material was at times tenuous, and he relied hugely on his mandola player, Hakim Hamadouche, to keep the drawstring pulled tight, as he sometimes literally stumbled through his own Barra Barra and Ah Mon Amour, all snapshots from his latest, incendiary album, Diwan 2.
Taha's performance proved the ideal backdrop for an audience whose attention was split between what was happening on stage and the many diversions of the seafront. Less a spectacular detonation than a moderate fizz, Taha and his band bore some of the signs of road weariness, but it all evaporated when they launched headlong into Taha's Arabic reworking of Rock the Casbah (called Rock el Casbah), invigorating that Clash classic with all of the venom and vitality that Mick Jones and Co conjured all those years ago.
After that, Taha had the punters in the palm of his hand and that's where they stayed as he romped home on the back of Kifache Rah, all the while declaring his undying love for us, his newly-converted disciples.
This was a ragged-edged evening, then, that sated appetites in search of a tincture of punk, reggae and even a little blues on the way. - Siobhán Long
Kaiser ChiefsMarlay Park, Dublin
It is testament to their constant touring schedule and radio-friendly singles that the Kaiser Chiefs have graduated from sweaty indie bars to headlining outdoor events such as this in a mere four years and two albums.
Blessed with a warm sunny evening in Rathfarnham, it would be easy to think that this is the start of the summer rather than the final night of the now annual season of concerts in a close-to-capacity Marlay Park.
With the mostly teenage crowd already elated from sets by the Fratellis, Ash, the Blizzards and Royseven, the Leeds five-piece waste no time in keeping the mood on a high. Taking to the stage in a haze of flashing strobe lights and opening with Everyday I Love You Less and Less from their three-million-selling debut album, Employment, the standard rarely drops throughout their slot.
Proving that difficult second-album syndrome does not always strike, the Kaisers have a knack of writing ridiculously catchy songs that sound perfectly at home in these surroundings, while in Ricky Wilson they have one of the hardest working frontmen in any band.
Dispensing with the self-righteous pomposity of Razorlight's Johnny Borrell or the detached coolness of Arctic Monkey Alex Turner, Wilson is the consummate crowd-pleaser. Dressed in his customary attire of waistcoat, short-sleeved shirt, jeans and winkle pickers, he is rarely standing still, preferring to charge across the stage, climb into the crowd and even scale the side of the stage during mid-set show stopper I Predict a Riot.
Newer tracks such as Everything is Average Nowadays and I Can Do It Without You as well as new single The Angry Mob are treated as reverentially as their earlier material, proving there's a lot more to the band than the dismissive Madness and Britpop-lite comparisons thrown at them when they first emerged. Returning for an encore of High Royds and Oh My God, the band inveigled another round of audience sing-alongs and guaranteed a few hoarse throats in the morning. - Brian Keane
Megumi Tokuoka(organ) St Michael's, Dún Laoghaire
This recital by Megumi Tokuoka from Japan brought to 21 the number of countries represented by organists in the Dún Laoghaire series since its inception in 1974.
Tokuoka has amassed various international prizes to her credit since sweeping the board at the 2001 Schnitger competition in Alkmaar (won this year by Ireland's Simon Harden).
She is now a lecturer at Tokyo's National University of Fine Arts and Music, and her delivery of a chiefly Baroque programme revealed a strongly didactic aspect.
The emphasis in Frescobaldi's playful Bergamasca variations was on cool efficiency, in Bach's wistful An Wasserflüssen Babylon BWV653 on studious ornamentation, and in Alain's mystical Choral Dorien on maintaining a super-regular slow tempo.
There was sustained interest in Buxtehude's discursive and seldom-heard Te Deum laudamus, although here, Tokuoka's habit of applying a hesitant start to almost every phrase became predictable.
Her focus on the application of interpretive principles, rather than on a merely visceral response to the music, brought cut-glass elegance to the quasi-vocal polyphony of Buxtehude's Praeludium in G minor BuxWV149.
But it kept any impulsiveness strangely out of the picture until the precipitous cascades of Bach's "Wedge" Fugue BWV548, where a dangerously brisk tempo had its exciting rewards.
David Adams gives the final recital of this year's series on Sun - Andrew Johnstone
