More videos from Myles O’Reilley’s series THIS AIN’T NO DISCO
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Radie Peat
Lankum win RTÉ Choice Music Prize Album of the Year
Folk act Lankum have won the RTÉ Choice Music Prize Irish Album of the Year for The Livelong Day.
The winning album was announced at a ceremony in Dublin’s Vicar Street on Thursday.
Lankum are on tour in the US, so the award was accepted on their behalf by their manager, Cian Lawless.
“They have put so much effort into this, despite the financial hardship, despite the personal hardship,” he told the crowd.
Lankum receive a cheque for €10,000 – a prize which has been provided by the Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) and the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) – and a specially-commissioned award.
Previous Album of the Year winners, as chosen by a judging panel of journalists, broadcasters and other experts in the field, include Julie Feeney, The Divine Comedy, Jape, Delorentos, Villagers and SOAK.
Lisa O’Neill Receives Four Nominations at BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards
Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita, Brìghde Chaimbeul, Ye Vagabonds and Kitty McFarlane also nominated; Dervish to receive Lifetime Achievement Award. Listen to our playlist of all 2019 nominees.
Irish folk singer Lisa O’Neill has been nominated for four awards: Folk Singer of the Year, Best Traditional Track (‘Factory Girl’ with Radie Peat), Best Original Track (‘Blackbird’), and Best Album for Heard a Long Gone Song. The album was released last October on the River Lea label and also received a nomination in the inaugural RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards.
Welsh harper Catrin Finch and Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita have received two nominations (Best Album and Best Duo/Group), and Keita has also received a third as Musician of the Year. Finch and Keita’s duet album Soar has already won ‘Best Fusion’ album in the Songlines Music Awards and the fRoots Critics Album of the Year for 2018. The other nominees in Best Album are Flook’s Ancora and Hide and Hair by The Trials Of Cato. Voting for Best Album is open to the public in the UK.
Along with Finch and Keita, the groups Stick in the Wheel, The Breath and The Rheingans Sisters also received a nomination in the Best Duo/Group category. The other nominees for Best Musician of the Year are Jenn Butterworth, Mohsen Amini and Sam Sweeney.
Emerging artists and songs
Scots piper Brìghde Chaimbeul, who released The Reeling last year, produced by Lau’s Aidan O’Rourke, has received a nomination in the Horizon award (for emerging artists), along with Kinnaris Quintet, Kitty Macfarlane (who features on the Topic 80th anniversary album), and The Trials Of Cato, who won Best Emerging Artist/Band at the first Wales Folk Awards in April.
Ye Vagabonds (below), who received two nominations in the RTÉ Folk Awards last year, have been nominated for Best Traditional Track with ‘The Foggy Dew’ from their new album The Hare’s Lament. ‘Ffoles Llantrisant’ by VRï (which won the equivalent Welsh Folk Award with the same song) and ‘The Reedcutter’s Daughter’ by Jimmy Aldridge and Sid Goldsmith have also been nominated, along with O’Neill and Peat.
Singers and musicians
The nominees for Folk Singer of the Year are Ríoghnach Connolly from Armagh, Olivia Chaney who has released two albums on the Nonesuch label, Gwilym Bowen Rhys (also Best Solo Artist at the Welsh Folk Awards) and O’Neill.
Kris Drever from Lau has been nominated in the Best Original Track section for ‘Scapa Flow 1919’, about the scuttling of a German fleet in the Orkney Islands after World War I. Also nominated are ‘I Burn But I Am Not Consumed’ by Karine Polwart from her album Law of Motion, ‘O-U-T Spells Out’ by Kathryn Tickell and The Darkening (‘An ironic look at borders, walls, barriers, Brexit…’), and O’Neill’s ‘Blackbird’.
It has also been announced that Dervish will received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the ceremony. Commenting on the honour, the band’s accordionist Shane Mitchell said: ‘We are thrilled and so delighted to be receiving this very special honour at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, particularly as this is the 30th anniversary of the band.’ The group will perform on the night.
The BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards take place at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester on 16 October as part of the Manchester Folk Festival. See the full list of nominees and listen to our playlist of all artists below. For more information, visit https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00yrkrj.
EU Funded ‘Avante-Garde Eurovision’ Event EuroNoize To Debut May 2019
This May 23rd at London’s Scala comes the inauguration of an event which promises to turn Eurovision’s concept on its head, featuring a selection of European artists from the world of experimental and noise music.
The brainchild of artist and promoters Pil and Galia Kollectiv’s fascination with the Eurovision Song Contest, this one day conference will bring together a selection of 11 representative “punx and weirdos” to perform a single original song together, all being live streamed to an international audience, who in keeping with Eurovision will have a chance to vote for their favorite act.
Among the acts which will be appearing is Ireland’s Sissy. Known for their outspoken feminist politics and pro-choice activism, the lo-fi punk group may be the most melodic entrants of the bunch. ‘Sail and Rail’, their take on Enya’s ‘Sail Away’, garnered much attention for its brilliant parody of anti-abortion rhetoric. The song featured Radie Peat from experimental folk outfit Lankum, who are also well known for their political engagement. Read Lankum’s interview with Hot Press from earlier this year here. Other entrants in EuroNoize are cult Estonian group Winny Puhh, who actually competed in Estonia’s pre-Eurovision competition in 2013, as well as Russian experimental electronic trio Asian Women on the Telephone.
Pil and Galia Kollectiv are working with The University of Reading, Kunsthall Oslo and ARE Prague, alongside recieving EU funding for the project. Currently living in London, they were born and raised in Israel, ironically the controversial host of this year’s song contest. Seeing Eurovision on television growing up, they were struck by the program’s over the top spectacle: “the requirements on the one hand to represent an increasingly meaningless idea of national identity and on the other hand some kind of recognisabley Anglo-American popular music”. With EuroNoize, they hope to take their Eurovision fascination in a weird and boundary pushing direction. Continue reading