Ones To Watch Festival @ Whelan's, Dublin

The Ones To Watch Festival is a brand new event, but here’s where they’ve got you New Year scrimpers and lamewads tied: it’s an absolute steal.
The idea is this: 30 ripe young bands play the Wexford St. venue over four days, and punters are invited to sample every single one of them for a ten squid note. Bearing in mind that a bargain fee for a terrible gig is not a bargain at all, I was thrilled to see some tried and tested live faves (Squarehead, Grand Pocket Orchestra, Planet Parade), and some top notch record-makers (Owensie, Jennifer Evans, No Monster Club) gracing the bill, along with a few acts I was not yet acquainted with.
The week following the festival begins with Blue Monday – the most depressing day of the year, if you’re to believe the PR hooey (I don’t). What’s not up for debate is that this town needs this event to give the sleepy month a kick up the proverbial behind.
Criminally, I’ve only been able to make it to one quarter of the festival, and I’ve picked an evening laced with electronica. National man of mystery Hunter-Gatherer is first on the main stage and the spooky production whiz has really stepped up his game. Spellbinding, shapeshifting visuals are projected at the front of the stage and the effect is massively sinister. Converging high-pitched chimes, scuzzy beats and curious hisses into one melodious sound, our faceless master of ceremonies is never more captivating than when howling out from inside his hood.
Upstairs, Dublin duo Datadrip are creating an altogether more industrial sound, with both members fusing their talents on electric guitar and synth. It’s pulsating, it’s futuristic and it moves so fast, we don’t have time to take stock of what’s going on. Very clever indeed.
Next, we’re treated to the truly menacing electronic stylings of CatScars, aka Robyn Bromfield, with Patrick Kelleher on drum machine. Based around sparse bleeps and relentless thumps, there’s something terribly threatening about the CatScars sound. Are CatScars after my blood? Is the beat mad at me? Maybe, but any artist that can incite this much paranoia while I’m still (mostly) sober, deserves a hearty pat on the back.
Elsewhere, Cloud Castle Lake are going down a storm with complex, swelling melodies, trippy guitar and delicate vocals courtesy of Dan McAuley keeping the Whelan’s massive very happy. No moment is wasted and the foursome seem to be getting tighter by the week.
Some haunting trumpet is the star of the Thread Pulls show and along with energetic rhythms and sky-skimming vocals from Gavin Duffy, makes for the brashest and most dynamic set of the evening.
But the award for performance of the night must go to big beat overlord Toby Kaar for giving an unwitting audience the most pleasant of surprises. Cork-based Kaar comes equipped with a musical buddy known as the monome – a glitch sequencer that defies explanation (if I’d been too lazy to Google it, I would have called it an enchanted wonderbox that blinks). Kaar glides over its 64 buttons with almost impossible speed, looking part stressed, part delighted with himself. And so he should be. The crowd has fallen hook, line and singer for his hybrid of groovesome hip-hop and thundering dance. Most tellingly, the punters are looking equally enthralled at the front, marvelling at his mad scientist routine, and right at the back, busting a move.
The Blue Month just got interesting.