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Can a critic review a club night? Is a club night ‘culture’? Isn’t “a night out” to be simply measured on a scale of one-to-oblivion?
-Yes, YES, and no!
Club Comfort was founded on New Year’s Eve 2018, describing itself as “a Dublin based monthly party and spiritual community”. As part of the nightlife wing of the Dublin Fringe Festival the same “party and thought-collective” hosted Comfort Carnival, a day-into-night event intended to beckon a wider audience than may so far be aware of the collective’s existence and raison d’être. For Club Comfort, its raison d’être is using the ethos of partying to forge space and community spirit to drive forward a new Irish youth identity based on acceptance, tolerance and fun. Likewise, the Dublin Fringe has a mission of supporting future-focused work, and creating urgent events that respond to the questions facing the city of Dublin and Ireland today, offering “sweet antidotes to the fast and standardised”. Further crossover between The Fringe and Club Comfort is made apparent by mutual political engagement—the Fringe this year has been curated around the theme ‘Power and Passion’.
Simply put, this happy collaboration and communion of intention was delivered by a one-day festival comprising of music and talks. The latter were centred around themes of “community, hope and time”, in a programme lineup, named ‘Another Green World’ – which was live streamed by Dublin Digital Radio, furthering the open orientation of the event. The talks made available a deeper sense of understanding of the significance and nuance of club culture – both in its relevance to the present moment, and how it has functioned in other historical and geographical contexts. For instance, DJ Kate Butler, acting as the Master of Ceremonies, movingly outlined the success of rave culture in transcending sectarianism in a Northern Irish context; apt, with the painful unknowns of Brexit drawing ever closer. The same theme, of connection to contexts beyond Dublin, was furthered by DJ and TCD alumn Roo Honeychild, who talked the crowd through present innovation in the DIY rave scene of Limerick City, via the case study of just inaugurated Féile na Gréine. This free music festival was staggered like a “trail of gigs” over the city, with the intention of bringing together musicians, DJs and audiences, more so than turning a profit. Roo also provided illumination on her own methodological practice in DJing – which draws heavily from her academic background in Archaeology. Laetitia Deering (host of womxn platforming Dublin Digital Radio show WWW) also spoke of music emerging from historical context, in particular electronic music vocabulary. She delved into the term ‘hauntology’; a word first used by philosopher Jacques Derrida for use in linguistic deconstruction. It has since been adopted by the 21st Century DJs to describe the possibility of imbuing contemporary music with a deep cultural memory by the sampling of discarded or found sound clips – from sources as varied as old radio or TV adverts, to background retail music to old pulp fiction movie audio clips. This understanding significantly enriched the appreciation or attention paid to the following music lineup for novice clubbers.
From the live performance lineup, a standout and one-off sound intervention piece was created by HEALERS – a three part band of performance artists Dylan Kerr, Cliona Ní Laoí and Michelle Doyle collaborate who produce “ritual noise to cleanse, heal, deliver and end”. This enigma was achieved by the use of what they describe as a mystical “mycelium network” – a performative, percussive ritualistic use of analog noise making tools. The rest of the lineup of DJ sets was fantastically varied and invigorating. A small but energetic group of Irish and Irish-expatriate DJs played sets with hardworking passion and moments of spontaneous improvisation. Audiences both tempered and fresh were engaged by a selection of sound that melded from euphoric trance pop mixes (Roo Honeychild, Dream Cycles) to emotive, switchy techno (Blusher) to deeply mucky grime (Toké Drift) with a particular emphatic focus for the night on hard, uncompromising, percussive drum beats (Syn, Gemma Dunleavy & Baliboc, Wriggle) – appropriate to the percussive and abrupt end this September has slammed on 2019’s ‘Hot Girl Summer’.
The National Stadium was a perfectly chosen venue. Serviced in daylight hours by the seasonal-eating foodtruck of GráLinn, wheelchair accessible, and furnished with a generous outdoor concrete terrace facilitative of social communing. Its interior conveys the feel of a surrealistically transformed GAA club house.
Dancing the night (and morning) away beneath strobes and sounds from heaven gave visitors to Comfort Carnival a buoyant outlook on what new Irish youth identity just might be about. The night, was a necessary and confident assurance that spaces like Club Comfort must be supported for the health of our city. Hopefully, the welcoming, beckoning attitude of the event to newcomers convinced them of its importance.
clubcomfort.org
