Little Shop That Could

Charles Byrne Musik Instrumente has lived inconspicuously on Stephens Street for over a hundred years, but has less German history than the name suggests.

After stretching to press the door bell, we were let in and Charles Byrne himself told us about the beginnings of the shop, "The business started with my grandfather who got it in 1900 for repairing Egan Harps, so my family goes that far back connected with the music world."

Over the years the shop began selling instruments as well as repairing, until someone let fire to the building through the letterbox in 1992. His wife Maria told us, "It was a sad lost. But we were also very lucky. We could've been in the place working."

Geraldine, their daughter, added, "It was an opportunity as well. We had been here one hundred odd years and you do accumulate a lot of junk in that time. Since then there's been a lot of new things, a lot of changes. It rejuvenated the place as well."

Charles said, "After the fire Geraldine said she'd stay with us and help straighten things out. So I grabbed one arm and my wife grabbed the other and we says ‘You're in!’ and we have no regrets. She is excellent.”

You might expect a hundred year old shop to have a sort of dusty charm but Charles Byrne Musik Instrumente also have a website, blog and twitter.

On our visit, Peter Peterson from Washington State visited, “I came here for a low whistle. I've never seen them in a shop before."

But it's not only tourists that visit, Charles says, "I'm seeing grandchildren and great grand children of my first customers coming in so that shows ya I'm getting old. People make a special effort to shop here, that's how we're still in business."

"There's people who trust dad and wont go anywhere else,” beams Geraldine.

As we were leaving, being forced (ok maybe not ‘forced) to take a sweet and a calender, a German tourist inquires about the name, Charles tells her with a wink that he added the name for a laugh with a German supplier.

Patrick Kelleher - Album Review

Setting out to transform an electro-folk album into pure electronica is a brave venture. Particularly when you’re setting out to transform a record as well received as this one. It’s safe to say that Patrick Kelleher’s debut album You Look Cold was enthusiastically praised across the board. His layered approach in combining genres created something quite strange and yet quite beautiful. But less than a year since the original comes the cheekily titled You Look Colder – the remixes. Sequels to greats are often set up to fail but thankfully, You Look Colder is more Godfather II then The Matrix Reloaded. Phew.

Skinny Wolves kick things off with their stab at ‘He has to Sleep Sometime’, which is re-skinned as robotic dance punk you can pogo to. Thread Pulls ‘Finds You’ remix follows, starting out on the minimalistic side of the things only to build momentum with soft then intensified tribal drumming. David Kitt puts on his producing hat for ‘Not Leaving Town’ which at first maintains the haunting tone of the original, before morphing into a lighter, upbeat dance track. The other well-known producer on board is Jape, whose motorik beats establish themselves before relinquishing to an unexpected trance breakdown. Also featuring remixes by Toymonger, Catscars, The Booklovers, Hulk, Fucktotem, Legion of Two and School Tour, You Look Colder varies from mainstream dancey choons to industrial, avant-garde, orchestral, playful and even cinematic tracks.

A diverse experiment that really shouldn’t work but really does, You Look Colder is interesting as a companion piece to the original but can also stand by itself. The brain child of Patrick Henry from Osaka Records, the talents from very different electronic offshoots are pooled together for one mad record. More of this please Dublin.

Dave Clarke - Album Review

Words cannot describe the confusion and horror when the first few bars of Dave Clarke’s album There Was a Girl kicked in. This wasn’t the Baron of Techno, this was the stuff of acoustic nightmares. Er, there’s been a bit of a mix up…

There isn’t much musical crossover between techno Dave and his soft rock alter ego, but it still remains a highly confusing affair – even iTunes has techno Dave’s biography listed under soft rock Dave’s picture. All we know is what we can tell from the album cover; he’s bearded, he likes to wear oversized shades, he likes sitting in cars and, according to Amazon, his album is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media. He cuts a mysterious figure.

Opening with the album’s title track, ‘There was a Girl’ eases us in to the lax pace of the record, albeit with eerie howling. From this introduction we learn that soft rock Dave likes to rhyme. A lot. And he showcases his rigid rhyming skills throughout the album, here’s a sample from track two; “running to hide, running to stay alive/running to keep still/running up a hill” and so on and so forth. This is just a tiny taster of what is an entire album of forced nonsensical couplets.

After that one meanders to a silence, a live track begins with a civil crowd clapping for ‘Paintings on the Wall’. If you never thought acoustic could be proper sleazy, think again and listen here; “bang bang/yes I like it/bang bang all the way together”. The monotonous strum of guitar is violated by the filth that comes out of soft Dave’s mouth. This is pretty much as exciting as the album gets. Aside from a country twinge to ‘Wake Up’ and the brief bizarre ’80s synth intros to ‘The Escape’ and ode to sending an email ‘Lonely Days’, There Was a Girl plods along track-to-track with a faint acoustic guitar strumming mindlessly in the background, while soft Dave moans into the mic. It’s all pretty uninspiring.

Admittedly we got off on the wrong foot, so an external examiner listened to soft Dave to give There was a Girl a fair hearing. After a few tracks they turned and said, “This sounds like something Hugh Grant would’ve wrote in that film Music and Lyrics, doesn’t it?” Sums it up really. Stick to the original Dave Clarke is the recommendation.

Urban Picnic - Restaurant Review

Starved workers have long migrated to the various establishments in and around George's Street Arcade for quick lunchtime eats. Certainly at The Dubliner, we've never been shy about our penchant of our weekly pilgrimage for a Sloppy Joe, but there is a new(ish) dog in town.

Urban Picnic resides in the space formerly occupied by The Bagel Bar with a menu that emphasises flavours from the Mediterranean, Asia and the Americas. On our visit, we were greeted by cheery staff and considering the weather (horrid as usual), I ordered soup of the day (tomato and basil) with brown bread (€4.95), while my companion had a roasted vegetable and spinach wrap with pesto mayo (€5.75).

The seating is communal benches, which I'm a fan of but it is an arrangement that can be divisive - a suit at the end of the bench with his newspaper spread out seemed happy with the extra space. The food arrived quickly, the soup was pulpy, the bread was very lightly toasted, the roasted veg were crunchy and the dressing was delish. On our way out, Chef Vinny asked us for honest feedback, we were able to say we'd definitely be back.

Urban Picnic, 30 Market Arcade, South Great Georges Street, Dublin 2