Gimme some Mor

Billed as a weekend of “audio-visual adventures”, last month’s Mor festival delivered everything on the tin and a few surprises. The plague of wasps (Saturday) and the rain (Sunday) may have been unscheduled, but there was much to keep daring types entertained.

Held in the stately grounds of Tullamore’s Charleville Castle, this was the second year running for Mor – a self-funded festival that’s organised by over 100 volunteers. It’s also one of the only events in Ireland that can truly lay claim to the words ‘independent’ and ‘alternative’.
Featuring over 60 acts, the musical bill was significantly more diverse than last year’s showcase of more electronically-orientated and bigger name acts like Lackluster, Felix Kubin and Max Tundra. The entirely fresh line-up was drawn from an open call for submissions, with a no-repeat policy of Mor ‘03 performers.
With the crowd significantly down on last year, it’s been suggested that the weekend was lacking in focus and, by extension, punter appeal.
Not so, says head ‘Morganiser’ Michael McDermott. He believes that Mor provides a platform for people to experience new, more challenging music – and that there’s still a wealth of bands deserving of that platform. The idea behind the open submissions was to encourage more participation from beyond The Pale.
“We didn’t really do the regional plot too well last year,” he admits. “This year we had three acts from Cork [Rest, Fred and Stanley Super 800], we had Jinx Lennon from Dundalk and Corrigan from Fermanagh.”
Did McDermott think the regional bands attracted more people? “I’d have hoped it would have but the numbers were slightly disappointing,” he admits. “I think one of the things that was definitely disappointing was the fact that the stronger we become - in terms of what we’re doing - the more we can put back into developing an independent music scene. You’re hoping that the bands that don’t get to play will still want to support the initiative. But it’s good to see people getting down to support the bigger picture and there were some new faces around.”
McDermott admits that mounting an independent festival as diverse as Mor holds something of a Catch 22 dilemma: “There’s no other festival like it in terms of being able to look up at a castle and not be crushed by thousands of other people. It’s a difficult one obviously because we need to spread the word and bring in the people but at the same time you do want that feeling of an underground edge to the event itself. For now it’s still a best kept secret.”
For the several hundred Mor-goers who bypassed The Frames at Marlay Park, there was plenty of cutting edge music to be enjoyed. Highlights ranged from dynamic Dublin hip hop crew The Informatics to electronic crowd-pleasers Formica and Dave Donohue and sitar-tabla duo Dara O’Brien & Dermot Sheehan. Warlords Of Pez were in flying form, as were Connect 4 Orchestra, but it was Dublin-based producer Booger that was unanimously declared the king of Charleville.
The visual performances were of the typically excellent Del 9 standard and the hugely entertaining SimpleTEXT took live audio-visual performance to new levels of audience interactivity via text messaging. The Imaginarium tent also invited late night interaction with a theatre ‘happening’ that went well over this post-modern head.
Mor ‘04 was not without its curveballs, and there’s something to be said for keeping the likes of Umbrella Spokes - essentially a man playing an archive of obscure field recordings - out of festival Main Stage slots and in the museum.
By all accounts the Sunday night headliner, Damo Suzuki (ex-Can) and his local ‘sound carriers’, The Weapons Of Mass Destruction Arkestra, went down a storm. Unfortunately the late scheduling meant that the bulk of the rain-soaked masses had already left.
Gavin Prior, who played bass, keys and ‘electric sheet of steel’ with the band, explains the ethos of the Damo Suzuki Network: “He insists that the band don’t rehearse before meeting so it’s all completely improvised. Basically he walked out on stage, jumped in the air and when his feet hit the ground we all started belting away. But the set itself had groove and Damo’s singing was very rhythmic. It wasn’t totally shapeless.”
Prior, who played with United Bible Studies at Mor ‘03, insists that there is an important place for the festival in the Irish music scene. “The fact that it even happened again was brilliant,” he says. “Especially when you compare it to standing in a field at Oxegen, with horrible Guinness and beer signs all over the place.”