Going out: the best of what’s on this weekend

Pick of the week  

Irish Design 2015
Who doesn't love a beautiful object? And with the big C around the corner, those of you looking to gift things of an artistic nature can praise the art gods for delivering inspiration directly into your sweaty palms.

This weekend, as part of the View arts and politics weekend, the Temple Bar Gallery and Studios is holding the fifth edition of the Dublin Art Book Fair. In stock will be more than 50 books on art, design, and photography from Irish and international publishers, along with special editions and books on sculpture, painting, curation and philosophy. Among the publishers pitching up are Black Dog Publishing, Bomb, Frieze, Mack and many more.

There will also be a selection of artists’ books and one-off creations, with Irish creators Lee Welch, Lucy McKenna and Susan MacWilliam among those contributing to the fair. Artist Miranda Blennerhassett has created a new wall painting in the gallery and the Market Kitchen will have a café on site. Mind you, if you spill on it, you pay for it.

Apart from the fair, there will be a symposium on the dark arts of photography and politics, featuring Eamonn Farrell, Eileen Martin and Gerard Howlin, and a discussion on the future of Temple Bar, with Brendan Kenny from Dublin City Council, Martin Harte, the CEO of Temple Bar Company, Cllr Rebecca Moynihan and the Gallery of Photography’s Trish Lambe.

If that isn't enough beautiful design for you, Liminal has just touched down at the Design Hub in Dublin Castle. The exhibition has been showcasing the work of 20 Irish designers across a range of disciplines in Eindhoven, Milan and New York, as part of Irish Design 2015. Check out irishdesign2015.ie for a selection of workshops and events taking place around the exhibition.

Friday  

Backstory No 1 with Donal Dineen & Stevie G
The Sugar Club, Dublin, 11.30pm €5 before midnight/€7 
New club night hosted by Donal Dineen. Each week will feature a guest DJ – Cork's Stevie G is up first. In the words of DD himself: "The many shades of soul music and the myriad mysterious ways of the boogie will be the golden thread that runs throughout the night." Are you ready to learn the ways of the boogie?

Van Morrison
3Arena, Dublin 8pm €95/€86/€76 3Arena.ie
In his 70th year – and very soon after the reissue of the peerless Astral Weeks – Morrison shows little sign of slowing down. His onstage, undemonstrative demeanour may irritate some, but he's one of a kind, and for that we should be very grateful, indeed.

Dermot Byrne, Steve Cooney and Trevor Hutchinson
Glór, Ennis, Co Clare 8pm €20/€18 glor.ie 
Donegal accordion player Byrne has played no small part in redefining our conception of his chosen instrument, with some of the most delicate playing imaginable. His extensive tour draws to a close, in the company of Australian guitarist and composer Cooney and Lúnasa's double bass player Hutchinson.

Strut – 3G and Gerhard Ornig; Gabriele Mirabassi & Francesco Turrisi
Peacock Theatre, Dublin 7pm & 9pm improvisedmusic.ie
The pop-up jazz club concludes with two eclectic nights of music right out of the top drawer: Ronan, Conor and Chris Guilfoyle team up with Austrian trumpeter Gerhard Ornig for some blistering improvisation; Italians Mirabassi and Turrisi explore the Latin tinge in jazz; and, on Saturday, globe-trotting Australian threesome The Necks present their unique take on the piano trio.

Ben Sims
District 8, Dublin €20/€18/€15 soundcloud.com/ben-sims
As a DJ and producer, London maestro Sims adheres to a tough techno agenda via nights out like this and releases on his own Theory label as well as Drumcode, CLR and Axis. Support from Randomer.

Catz 'n Dogz
Nerve Centre, Derry 9pm €12/€10 facebook.com/catzndogz.official
Polish pals Grzegorz Demiañczuk and Wojciech Tarañczuk did international business with releases on German labels Trenton and Trapez, before setting up their own label and releasing a couple of vibrant tech-house and deep grooves albums.

Saturday

The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock & Electric Guitar Orchestra
Hangar, Andrew's Lane, Dublin 7.30pm €15/€12 tickets.ie
Lockout is a large-scale piece of work performed in full for the first time by The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock, one of Ireland's finest folk/rock fusionists – and an orchestra of electric guitar. Think volume, think big (the piece focuses on Dublin's infamous "lockout" of 1913), think political. Special guest is Donal Lunny.

Chris Wood
Culturlann Sweeney, Kilkee, Co Clare 8pm €20 065-6843103 
A rare opportunity to hear one of England's finest songwriters – a multiple BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winner . Wood's iconic One in a Million is a heart- stopping love song that blows most of the competition clear of the water. Irascible, contrarian and irredeemably egalitarian, Wood is a musician who has always sought to stretch and bend the bounds of his art – with frequently ear-tingling consequences. Unmissable.

Mercury Rev
Strand Arts Centre, Belfast 8pm £25
Some music acts just get it right, and Buffalo's Mercury Rev is one of them. That the band is still able to conjure up and capture the essence of experimental psychedelic music while corralling it into reasonable shape is little short of breathtaking. Inhalers at the ready, folks!

Kiasmos
District 8, Dublin 11pm €15 hiddenagendaclub.ticketabc.com
Following an exhilarating performance at Body & Soul, Icelandic/Faroe Islands duo Ólafur Arnalds and Janus Rasmussen return for an indoor show that promises to live up tothe description of their music as "Sigur Rós goes techno".

Paul Woolford

[ twitter.com/PaulWoolford ]

Sense bring Paul Woolford back to town and you can be sure it will be a classy affair. The Leeds native’s track record when it comes to releases over the years has been nothing short of peerless. Be it his Special Request alter-ago, inspired by jungle, hardcore and rave pirate radio stations, or tracks for Planet E, 20/20 Vision, Pokerflat, Hotflush and Phonica, Woolford always produces the goods.

DJ Koze

[ facebook/djkoze ]

A good night for the folks behind Waterford’s Republik club as they finally get their man. Stefan Kozalla is DJ Koze, the German DJ and producer behind such great albums as Amygdala (2013, which had contributions from Caribou’s Dan Snaith, Matthew Dear and Apparat. Earlier this year, his DJ Kicks demonstrated the Hamburg DJ’s warm, blissful, psychedelic approach to building and fine-tuning a set with room for house, electronica, hip-hop and even woozy shoegaze nuggets. Support from Warren Sauvage and Kenno.

Sunday  

Ardee Baroque Festival
Ardee, Co Louth Also Saturday 087-3434523 ardeebaroque.com
The two-day festival closes today with a guest lecture from Aideen Morrissey on music in the age of the Battle of the Boyne and a closing recital with Malcolm Proud (harpsichord), Roísín O'Grady (soprano) and Aoife Nic Athlaoich (cello) performing works by Gabrielli, Monteverdi and Bach.

Reports to an Academy
RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin Until Dec 20 rhagallery.ie
Ailbhe Ní Bhriain's Reports to an Academy takes its title from a Kafka short story, in which an ape assumes a human identity as a survival strategy. Ní Bhriain's imagination prowls a west of Ireland landscape, the Museum of Natural History, an artist's studio and a library, exploring how our perceptions are shaped by expectation and context.

Spirit Spout with Simon Jermyn
Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin, Noon improvisedmusic.ie
Simon Jermyn plays an instrument of his own devising: a hybrid guitar/bass specially made for him in New York, where the rising Dublin-born improviser is based. Spirit Spout (a Moby Dick reference) explores the intersection where composition and improvisation meet, with new works from David Crowell (Bang on a Can), Caleb Burhans (Alarm Will Sound) and Belfast composer Frank Lyons, linked by Jermyn's own absorbing, utterly unique spontaneous creations.