Archive News
Floor-fillers the Sleep Thieves to showcase debut album in Galway
Date Published: {J}
Hotly tipped electro-pop band the Sleep Thieves play the Róisín Dubh this Saturday night at a free gig to showcase their much-anticipated debut album, which hits the shelves on Friday.
The release of Heart Waves is a milestone for the Dublin-based trio, whose acclaimed live performances saw the Irish Times proclaim that the group had played one of the top ten gigs of 2010 alongside the likes of Blondie and Snoop Dogg.
The band will hope that it has transposed onto record some of the energy of their live performances, having succeeded in unleashing an infectious floor-filling contagion at venues throughout the country.
The story of how the Sleep Thieves got together is as unusual as their unique blend of guitar and vocals against a lively, synth-laden backdrop of electronic clashes and beats. They’re not childhood chums, they didn’t go to school together and as far as they know they’re not related.
In fact, when Sorcha Brennan, Wayne Fahy and Derek Murphy formed an electronic pop band in 2009, they had never set eyes on each other before. If band membership were marriage, then the Sleep Thieves are mail-order brides.
“We got together in response to an advertisement that Wayne had posted on a music message board looking for new members of a band – we were complete strangers,” recalls Sorcha, the group’s lead vocalist and synth player.
“But we still clicked right away and one of the first songs that we ever did together, Osumi, is actually on the new album. In one way, the fact that we knew absolutely nothing about each other was a good thing and it gave me a lot of confidence because the lads had no preconceived notions about me and I’m sure it was the same for them.”
Composed of spare parts from a number of defunct bands that had run their course, the Sleep Thieves had an eclectic chemistry that has given them a unique sound of irresistible electronica and the silken vocals of their leading lady.
“I became the main singer and wrote all of the lyrics, which was a big jump for me,” she says. “In all three of the bands that we came from, none of us were the front person so when we got together each of us had an equal say. That’s one of the good things about being a three-piece: it’s majority rule and it just takes two people to agree for a decision to be made.”
Bass guitarist Wayne had been playing with a heavy rock band called Mendoza before being inspired to post the advertisement on the ‘Lonely Hearts Club Band’ message board. He bought his first synth player and fell in love with the sound.
“He decided that he wanted to do electronic music, while the others wanted to continue with indie rock. He left and they went on to form I Phoenix,” explains Sorcha.
“For my part, things were going pretty well with a band called Butterfly Explosion and we were trying to finish an album but we couldn’t agree on certain things and it began to look like we’d never get it finished. I wasn’t enjoying it anymore and I had always said to myself that, if I wasn’t having fun, I would stop doing it.”
She hasn’t looked back. “I’m very happy doing what I’m doing now and it’s more representative of me and representative of my experiences,” she says.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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