A weekend is a long time in dance music, and from next Thursday February 5th to Sunday, February 8th, clubbers and rock fans will be doing a serious stretch in Galway, flexing their calf muscles to a variety of live acts and live-wire DJs. Yes, it's the return of the Heineken Weekender, that rather frequent festival of all thing rhythmic, and once again the baton is tossed in the general direction of Galway Bay, as the City of Tribes jumps to the beat of Britain's finest dance merchants.
The journey begins in Leisureland on Thursday night with the return of Primal Scream, whose latest album, Vanishing Point, left a lot of their contemporaries trailing in the dust. Things really start letting off on Friday night, with a powerhouse gig in the Rois in Dubh from Lo-Fidelity Allstars, the brightest new stars in the Skint Records stable. An almost perfect marriage of indie cool and hip-hop suss, the Allstars draw from a creative well so wide it can accommodate everybody from The Happy Mondays to Funkadelic. Later on Friday night, at the Warwick, Jon Carter a.k.a. Monkey Mafia does the funky gibbon, while Adrian Sherwood lays the On-U Sound on you.
Spiritualized reach for the pinnacle at Leisureland on Saturday night, propelled by their gravity-defying third album, Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space. The band, led by wired visionary Jason Pierce, recently played a gig atop the tallest free-standing structure in the world, proving just how high they're willing to go for their art.
The weekend climaxes in a flurry of big beats courtesy of Norman Cook aka Fatboy Slim. The former Housemartin is still at the cutting edge of DJ culture, and his recent high profile remixes include Wildchild's hit single, Renegade Master '98, Cornershop's Brimful Of Asha, and Jean Jacques Perry's 1960s' lounge tune Eva, better known as The Lucozade Ad.
Booking: 01-4569569. Accommodation: 091-563081
