LITTLE FLUFFY CLOUDS
The Orb
The Limelight Belfast 10pm £14 theorb.com
By the looks of things, the 20 Years of Shine celebrations in the city will be going on all month. Tonight, it’s the turn of electronic music pioneers The Orb to bring the wows. For 30 years and 13 albums, Alex Paterson and friends have been finessing splendid sounds to much acclaim. Support from longtime Shine favourite Phil Kieran.
TRAD
Dermot Byrne, Steve Cooney and Trevor Hutchinson
Coughlan’s Live Cork 9.30pm €15 coughlans.ie Also Wed, Dublin
Myths and legends of traditional music tell us that Dermot Byrne’s prodigious accordion playing as a youngster was what lured Australian guitarist Steve Cooney to these parts. Now the pair team up with Lúnasa’s sublime double bassist Trevor Hutchinson for a tour.
LABEL
First Second Label Release Party
Bernard Shaw Dublin 9pm Adm free facebook.com/firstsecond. dublin
Aside from working with All City, hosting the Well Deep radio show and skateboarding far and wide, Daire Carolan is also behind the First Second label. Tonight, First Second join forces with the All City mother ship to mark the launch of the new Minos EP. There's a live performance from Minos, plus DJ sets from Hubie Davison and Carolon.
THEATRE
The Last Hotel
O’Reilly Theatre. Dublin, Oct 2-3 7.30pm €30-€40 dublintheatrefestival.com
Inspired by the grim, true story of an Irish woman’s assisted- suicide in 2002, radically transformed here, Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh’s chamber opera is a work of wide imagination, unsettling meditation and archly quotidian detail. Here, a man who has agreed to kill a loose acquaintance might first rhapsodise about the pleasures of a buffet lunch, or vent frustrations through a violent burst of karaoke. Just as jarringly, the whinnying strings and jittery rhythms of the excellent Crash Ensemble will absorb phrases of elevator muzak, weather reports, or cede entirely to a queasy disco of Louis Walsh hits. In matters of life and death, it seems, everything becomes an absurd collision. To fold such banal realities of life into more other- worldly considerations about death is the high-wire act of this co-production between Wide Open Opera and Landmark. Under Walsh’s direction it often feels like the forging of a modern myth, where Dennehy’s music, following the jittery structures of contemporary composition without shunning tonality, makes it an agitated and seductive experience.
