Ilenkus offer hardcore feast at showcase night

Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@live.ie

The Feast music showcase returns to Róisín Dubh on Saturday, April 8, when Ilenkus will be launching a vinyl version of their new EP, Hunger.

Established by Josh Guyett and Shane Malone, Feast caters for the niche yet sizable audience in Galway who enjoy genres like punk, math-rock, metal and hardcore.

“We wanted to put on shows for bands,” Josh says. “We’d done a few gigs for friends who were passing through. So, we sat down, because we wanted to make it a recurring thing. We figured we’d put a name on it and try to do stuff regularly. When you’re working with touring bands you can’t say ‘oh we only have a monthly night’. Because you’re working with their touring schedules.”

As a result, the night pops up when Shane and Josh can assemble a line-up they’re happy with, and Feast has now expanded into a collective.

“We built onto the crew,” Josh said. “More people became involved to help out with different things. We’ve had the opportunity to book some really awesome bands; they’ve travelled from America or wherever.”

Feast is now a label too, with Josh taking on that side of things.

“I’d been toying with this idea of starting a label for a few years,” he says. “I’d always thought ‘it’s a lot of work, will I do it, won’t I do it?’ Then, last year, I was preparing for the Ilenkus record.

The way we released it, basically, was instead of one label funding the whole thing, we worked with a few different ones. Small, DIY labels – and that’s where we got the blueprint for what Feast records was going to be.”

With their own label, necessity became the mother of invention.

“We were looking at trying to push up the amount of vinyl we ordered, because the more you order the cheaper it is per unit,” Josh says. “Buying 400 records doesn’t cost much more than buying 200. With Ilenkus, we contacted a number of labels across Europe and sold parts of the vinyl stock. So, we collected money [to fund the album] that way. I thought we’d set up a Feast label and make it one of the contributing parties.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.