Who’s Your Forbidden Fruit?

Tick Tock Festival O’Clock … It’s just a few steps to festival heaven as we approach the Summer month of June, with its beach-friendly, blue-skied days and long, balmy wine-friendly nights, or are we mistaking Ireland for a different more azure-dazed location?

Nothing says the start of Irish Summer like the klaxon-call of the first of the season’s festivals and while for many that siren is sounded by the annual bougainvillea bedecked Bloom, for others the de facto season opener is the capital’s Forbidden Fruit festival. Operating from its base in the gorgeous surrounds of the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, FF runs across the Irish June bank holiday weekend – Saturday 3rd to Monday 5th inclusive, to be precise.

With a range of artists from across the full sonic spectrum on it’s three day programme, FF is a valued showcaser for an idiosyncratic rainbow made up of eclectic and left-of-centre genres. Not for them the boybands, Rihanna wannabes or faux-leather clad rock anthemers. Instead, their line up features both emerging and successful talents from the non-mainstream fields of alt-pop, folk, experimental techno and Chilean improv.

So, with a host of music acts ranging from the sublime Lisa Hannigan’s enchanting folk-pop to the ridiculously innovative Aphex Twin, who are the acts in the Forbidden Fruit orchard whose music you’ll want to bite into and chow down on.  Let’s take a look wander through the three day a la carte …

Saturday 3rd June

Musical Bill of Fare protocol pretty much dictates the same hierarchical structure as a Michelin starred menu – starters, entrees, mains with dessert being optional and left to your own late night delectation!

As you would expect, the festival opens with a wealth of emerging Irish talent including Dublin purveyors of delish dance-pop ‘n’ house Le Boom, RTEs rainbow DJ Tara Stewart and rapidly rising rap-poet Jafaris, whose sound is more East Coast than East Wall.

Moving up a flight to the next level, we find the student-run, salubrious Trinity Orchestra, (tune in below to see what these guys can do to a Gorillaz track!), block-rocking beatmaster DJ Mall Grab, techno-house homie Jax Jones, and mistress of wonky funk, Londoner Nao. British hip-hop funksters Hot Chip close out this second tranche as it were, with their #DJSet.

Up at mezzanine level, FF fest-goers will find Peckham born street rapper Giggs, ambient-pyschers San-Fran based Tycho (a must for all your Tame Impalers), and those maestros of electronic choreography Berliners Booka Shade. Saturday night title of Chief electronic cooks and deck virtuoso goes to the Hartnell bros, more commonly known as Orbital.

Sunday 4th June

Day 2 in the FF pleasuredome is a veritable riot of Irish talent from unorthodox creative Aikj through Dub alt-rockers Heroes in Hiding to the amazing Ships whose album Precession is a wonderland of enigmatic electronica. One younsgter you should keep an eye out for is Soule, a singer fast making a rep for herself with her soul-electro-pop fusion.

The name Motor City Drum Ensemble is enough to catch the eye, but one whiff of the beat driven meld of drums, tech and jazz-soul is enough to hook the ear. German Danilo Plessow is at the helm of this unorthodox outfit with a global vision.

Sirens Press Shot Uncredited

At the top table you’ll find 21 year old Guersney native Mura Masa, a NAME+, in the world of hip hop cum R&B production and songwriting, another set of Berlin boyz and yet another experimental-electro duo Moderat, and the totally bloomin’ amazing Chilean Nicolas Jaar #nowords

With the head honcho title being allocated to homeboy Irish born, English raised electro-genius, Aphex Twin, Saturday night is a must for the electro-nuts amongst you.

Monday 5th June

Probably D-Day for folksters, Monday 5th wraps up Forbidden Fruit with a sparkling array of ambience, ethereal and kaleidoscopic.

Twenty year old Galwegian Laoise is one of the newer stars of the festival’s final line up.  With a blend of dreamy pop that flows in and out of shadows, hers is a sound with more than a little darkness to its seeming iridescent perfection.

Cork man Eoin French will showcase his Talos project, whose strikingly beautiful debut album Wild Alee had Irish media in raptures earlier this Spring.  He’ll be followed by Choice Music Prize Winners Rusangano Family, whose Afro-beats based experi-rap has provided a much welcome breath of fresh air to the local scene.

An act who’s bound to be a huge draw on the night is Leeds born Paul Thomas Saunders whose voice teeters on the brink of Brett Anderson (listen to his vocal on Appointment in Samarra on our FF playlist and tell me I’m hallucinating).

The only artist to get two tracks posted to said playlist, Paul has just released a stunning new single, Holding On, which if you’re not going to the festival, you can check out here.

Saunders will be followed onto the main stage by rich-voiced, young Australian native Gordi who was hugely impressive when she played Whelans support to Norwegian flyers Highasakite last May.

Lest I forget to mention it, Forbidden Fruit comes replete with inflatable wedding chapel (pictured above), disco dodgems, a wedding disco, bingo loco (for all you clickety click two fat ladies nutters out there), a comedy tent, a funfair and oh, most importantly, a cocktail bar.  Interested much? Full details here … bites of the Forbidden Fruit.

The final countdown sees a rich roll-call of music veterans including English folk trio The Staves, whose vocal harmonies always send shivers tingling down the spine and the utterly delectable, silken-voiced Lisa Hannigan whose 2016 album At Swim was a masterclass in the power of understatement.

The festival folds with the inimitable Bon Iver, legends within the realm of indie folk, noted for their innovative and exploratory creativeness.  Their last album, 22, A Million, was a bit of a ‘departure’ as they say, but a dog can’t chew the same ball for his whole life can he? You can hear 21 Moon Water, one of the tracks from that album on the playlist below. For you ‘folkster’ die-hards (contradiction in terms) here’s something more up your traditional street.

That’s it folks.  65 Music Acts over three days on one of the best Bank Holiday weekends in Ireland.  Forbidden Fruit caters for the wacky, the winsome and the wonderlusters.  It’s line crosses the great divide between avant-garde electronica & ball-breaking techno and feather-lite folk/existential psychedelia.

With artists from as far as Germany and Australia and from so near that they could hop on the 25a and be there in 15 minutes, Forbidden Fruit caters for hungry music fans as anxious to see homegrown talent (and isn’t it wonderful to see a large cohort of Irish acts on the bill), as a flavoursome pick n mix from far off shores.

Whichever side of the coin your tastes lie in, Forbidden Fruit will should provide more than a little something for you to sink your teeth into.

Forbidden Fruit runs from 3rd to 5th June in the grounds of the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham. Full details re tickets, line up, times, areas etc here. Check out our FF playlist on Spotify.

Female Artists Constitute Just 27% Of The LineUp Of The Top 3 Irish Music Festivals – Why?

THERE ARE MORE women than men living in Ireland, according to the Census 2016 results.  

Figures, recently released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that, of the 4,761,865 people in Ireland, 2,407,437 are female and 2,354,428 are male (a difference of 53,009).  Overall, there is a gender ratio of 97.8 males for every 100 females.

So tell me then why it is then that only 27% of the 114 acts playing three of the biggest music festivals in Ireland are made up of females or have a female vocalist/musician at the helm.

While some fare better than others – the EP Main & Other Voices Stages coming in at a ‘colossal’ 33% – the likes of Forbidden Fruit has just a miserly 16% female representation in its lineup.

The reasons for this gender imbalance remain unclear but it must be assumed that the festival organisers along with bookers & promoters, still hold an archaic view of festival going audiences ie. that despite the fact that some of the biggest selling global music artists are female (Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Beyonce) the public preference is for a male driven festival lineup.

With that in mind, let’s look at the current situation in Norway.  Of the acts that have dominated the Norwegian music charts over the past twelve months, the handful of indigenous artists have either been female – Aurora, Frokedal, Astrid S, Susanna Sundfor, Sigrid, Jenny Hval (the latter was the winner of the Phonofile Nordic Music Prize 2016 for her stunning album Blood Bitch) – or female centric – Highasakite, Slotface.  Norwegian, indeed most Scandi music festivals, are crammed with female talent – one look at the Trondheim Calling, by:Larm & Oya programmes for the past few years will tell you all you need to know about Nordic gender balance.  Female headliners – not a problem.

So, who are the special ones? The female chosen few who’ve managed to secure much sought after places in the ranks of the festival lineup elite.

FORBIDDEN FRUIT (3-5 June, RH Kilmainham) : PROMOTERS, POD – TOTAL ACTS 25, OF WHICH FEMALE 4 — 16%

So far, of the acts announced for FF only 4 – yes FOUR – are female and/or have core female members.  Now four isn’t bad, in comparison with last year’s two, we say without an ounce of sarcasm.  In fact yoy FF seem to be actually doubling their female constituent parts, that number rising from 1 to 2 to 4, so that next year we should expect a ‘great eight’, no?

The Forbidden Fruit Four are – Lisa Hannigan, The Staves, Peggy Gou and Nao.  Not a sniff of female in the headliners Orbital, Aphex Twin, Bon Iver or even amongst the top support acts, Booka Shade, Nicolas Jaar, Flying Lotus.  Hannigan is as good as it gets in the ‘chain of command’.

LONGITUDE (14-16 July, Marlay Park) : PROMOTERS, MCD – TOTAL ACTS 47, OF WHICH FEMALE 12 — 25%

The ‘penthouse’ at Longitude is ‘so macho’ as to be disquieting where the top four tiers are filled solely by male acts.  Headliners include Stormzy, The Weeknd and Mumford & Sons, none with so much as a feminine squeak.  Interestingly, The Weeknd’s other half, Selena Gomez, has the globe’s biggest social media following, clocking up a gargantuan 119m followers.

Be that as it may, here are the results of the Longitude jury – Jorja Smith, Dua Lipa, HVOB, Karen Elson, Lucy Rose, Bitch Falcon, Raye, Sunflower Bean, Aine Cahill, Her, Ray Blk and Norwegian newbie Sigrid.  This year’s distinguished dozen represents a 140% uplift on the 2016 lineup which featured a measly five female artists.  Notwithstanding the large % increase, the figure itself remains paltry at best.

ELECTRIC PICNIC (1-3 Sept, Stradbally) : PROMOTERS, FESTIVAL REPUBLIC – TOTAL ACTS 42, OF WHICH FEMALE 14 — 33%

Top of the Festival Pops, Electric Picnic also tops all others when it comes to female inclusion – but hardly by a noteworthy margin.  Featuring 14 female artists out of a possible 42 acts lined up to play their main stage plus Other Voices, EP2017 is still lagging way behind the national male:female ratios or Scandi fest averages.

Strip out the male centric acts and you’re left with a female inclusive lineup that looks as follows – The XX, Chaka Chkan, London Grammar, Annie Mac, The Pretenders, Phantogram, All We Are, Kelly Lee Owens, Goat Girl; [Other Voices] Saint Sister, Odetta Hartman, Loah, Katie Laffan, Soule.

Big up to EP for the number of Irish females included in this year’s mix but by the same token, a festival as ginormous and important as EP that prides itself as being a leader in terms of diversity and eclecticism should surely, be leading the way in terms of gender parity.  Kudos for having The XX and Chaka Khan on the top rungs of the lineup ladder, but they still only make up 1/3 of the overal top 6 acts featured in this year’s programme.

While it would be easy to lay the blame at the feet of the ticket buying public, frankly in this day and age, that age-old excuse doesn’t quite cut it any longer.  The fact is that in the industry itself there are several women at the top of their game – Jo Whiley, Jenny Greene, Annie Mac, Edith Bowman. In addition, there is a large cohort of female artists dominating music on a global scale – Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, Adele, Selena Gomez, Sia, Carrie Underwood – all of whom are listed in the Top 30 best selling music artists of 2016.  So, saying that women no longer ‘own it’ in a male-dominated industry, is quite frankly, bull.

In an age where women’s voices are getting louder AND being heard, what is it about the Irish Festival scene that appears to be turning both a blind eye and deaf ear to the growing trend of peer to peer, gender to gender equality within the universal music industry.  Frankly Ireland, it’s not good enough.  If we can look to Scandinavia as role models for matters of health and education, and if we are happy to be lead by their example, then similarly we can follow in their footsteps when it comes to equality of status, positioning and recompense when it comes to all things music.

The current trend won’t undergo any seismic shift unless bookers and promoters ‘woman up’ and start putting some serious effort into including more female artists in the lineups of our biggest festivals.  Come on Ireland! Let’s starting putting the ‘equality’ into the gender equality we speak so much of! As the song goes, let’s get the balance right.

To celebrate some of the female acts playing this Summer’s Irish Festivals, we’ve run up a Females for Festivals playlist over on Spotify! Enjoy!!