For anyone who has attended our previous weekend adventures on Sherkin you will know how intrinsic the island is to the festival. Simply put, Open Ear would not exist as it does anywhere else in the country. Throughout the last ten months since OE ‘17 we have been visiting the island regularly and planning on how we can bring Sherkin and Open Ea...
Closing off our look back at Open Ear 2017 is one more recording, taken from the Saturday night of the Festival. A bewildering, intimidating and utterly raucous blend of turntablism, wrestling, shattered beats, techno and fuck knows what else at times, Ted took to the stage, the tent structure, the dancefloor and anything else he could get a hol...
As we come near to the end of our dig into the 2017 archives we go look back to the future with Eomac's dj set from Friday night of last year's festival (does that sentence make sense? Hmmm). From noise to ferocious abstract techno, to gut clenching acid and even a lil bit of italo along the way Eomac showed the OE dance floor why he's become on...
Most of our news updates over the last month or so have focused on our festival archive but its time now to look to the future and we are stoked to announce our latest addition to this year's festival - A very special, intimate Sleep Concert by Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound, which will take place on the Thursday night of Open Ear '18. Continue reading
Simon Conway may be better known these days for the Forza Italo and Out To Lunch parties but for certain factions of the dance floor (and Team OE) he will always be associated with Electric City, the now legendary weekly club night he ran with Giles Armstrong, and his dedication to electro music. When asking him to close the Friday night of last...
All City records - and its accompanying store - has risen to prominence over the last 10 years in the Irish electronic music scene, releasing music across the board, from its roots in the beats / hip hop world through to left field house and techno and further beyond. All of this is filtered through Olan O'Brien, who supplied us with a head-soot...
Once again this year we will be teaming up with the Silk Road crew to provide some creature comforts for your weekend on the Island. The tents come with a carpeted floor, decorated table and a lantern, plus a selection of bedding options. These are so comfy some people struggle to make it out of them over the course of a festival weekend.
<...Early on the Saturday afternoon of last year's festival we got a call from Whirling Hall of Knives saying they would be unable to perform on the Sunday night. We quickly threw on our thinking caps to figure out how to fill their late night slot. One of the first names that came to mind was Barry Greaves, arguably one of the country's most under-...
Greetings everyone and welcome to our new website! It's been all go in the OE offices over the last few weeks in preparation for this announcement of the 2018 edition of Open Ear. From trips to the island in the dead of winter (and even getting stuck there), to meeting and chatting with artists of many disciplines far and wide, to last minute do...
As the finale of the festival started to close in on us, Cáit Fahey took to the stage of a packed tent on the Sunday night for the penultimate Dj set of the festival. Rave stabs and breakbeats collide with electro funk, acid squelches and the odd techno classic, priming the dancefloor for the end of the festival in fine, fine style.
And...
