Something a little different occurring tomorrow night in the Unitarian Church on Stephens Green, all in aid of a good cause and just €10 in with an afters in the new room in Whelans, sure why not….

A serious bit of homegrown genius here. Mmoths is a young guy from Newbridge, when I say young I mean 18 or so, who made most of the ‘ones to watch’ lists for 2012. Not that these ‘ The next big thing’ type of affairs should be paid too much attention to, but this guy certainly should. He started off his current sound in the winter of 2010 when snowed in and stuck with his laptop and a newly acquired software programme, Ableton, he just started messing around and making music, which floats somewhere between ambient and electronica, He’s been courted by XL, the same label behind Gil Scott-Heron, M.I.A., Vampire weekend, Tyler The Creator, Jamie XX, Radiohead etc..He’s been given props by Flying Lotus and played alongside Aphex Twin and Hudson Mohawke. Anyways keep an eye on this guy, if your making the trip to SXSW you can catch him there, otherwise he’s doing it in The Twisted Pepper tomorrow (Saturday 18th) for an early gig….

So we paid a visit to the city of sin there in January, mostly work and a small bit of play. We go twice a year to the tradeshow Bread and Butter which we used to exhibit at, this time we saw another show called Bright which is specifically for street and skate brands like DC, Etnies, The Hundreds, Globe, Vans etc…. In the middle of it all there was this 9 hole crazy golf art instillation by names like James Jarvis (UK), Andy Jenkins (USA), Dennis Chow (Canada), Jaybo (Germany), Leif Podhajsky (Australia), Marok (Germany), Jethro Haynes (UK) and Shake Your Tree (Germany). A nice reprieve from all the hustle of talking shop to salesmen and chancers for 3 days. 

As we’re now selling DC Shoes and clothing in a big way it’s probably the right time to tell their story to anyone unfamiliar with the label. So here it is in brief…

Ken block, a twenty year old snowboarder and one of its founders began making t-shirts for skaters back in 1989 and soon after teamed up with a schoolmate Damon Way, to help create Eightball clothing. They had some successful early innovations like the first water resistant nylon denim for the snowboarding market. A few years of working from the garage, loans from parents and dig outs from friends and they launched a new line of denims called Droors Clothing. By ’93 they were well on their way to being a successful small business, but then they created DC Shoes in ’94 and it all went well beyond that. Its primary focus was designing and manufacturing the highest quality technical footwear specifically for skaters, snowboarders and the apparel came a bit later. The DC initials stand for Droors Clothing (their Droors label was sold off in 1997), and their first collections were produced by the likes of Vans and Etnies until they got their own manufacturer.

By 2000 they had a DC skate, snow, BMX and surf team and from there it just kept steam rolling. In 2003 DC matched funding of up to $250K per year for each U.S. city planning on building a skate park. Their product innovation and talent for promotion are certainly factors why they are so successful. But mostly it’s the fact that the guys who started DC and who still help run and promote the company actually live and breathe the skate, snow, surf, motocross, bmx and rally motor scenes which the label designs for. Luckily for the founders they sold out to parent company Quicksilver for an obscene amount of cash in 2004 but they still push boundaries in every scene their involved in. They have the DC Mountain Lab in Utah, a private snowboard park owned and operated by DC Shoes, for the team of snowboarders that DC Shoes endorses to use and for research and development of new products and ideas. Ken Block is now a professional rally driver with the Monster world rally team, check out what he does now….

Ken Block Drivin like a man possessedDC Mountain Lab

We Got Occupied!!! Our snowflake and Santa themed Christmas window got vandalised by some flower sniffin, slogan chanting, hippy elf freaks. Anyways they did an OK job and we let them camp in the stock room. They’re holding their breath until we pay them off though…Occupy Xmas, Its 99% Good and 1% Baaaaaa

This is the top value Counter Propaganda jacket for the cold season. The Rubble jacket is a well fitting, warm and comfortable ski jacket style jacket. The fabrics a honeycomb ripstop weave,a special reinforcing technique that makes the fabric resistant to tearing and ripping, this special weave gives it a 3-dimensional structure due to the thicker threads being interwoven in thinner cloth. Importantly there’s a waterproof coating on the inside and the filling is just right to keep the heat in and not too much be obstructive. The fit is close and collar is high or low as you please, best of all the price is a very sweet €65. We have it in a Grey Black, Cadium Blue and Camouflage colourway.

So this is a short documentary from Resident Advisor (the electronic music magazine) and Bench (a UK clothing brand we stock) that’s about the Berlin club music scene and how its come to be the centre of that world. It tells the story of its explosion in the early 90′s when the Berlin wall came down, two halves of a city coming together, and the abundance of unused buildings and space around the town. I’ve watched it a few times cause I love the city and the story (unt ze way zee Germans talk) and every time it reminds me where we’re at in Dublin and Ireland right now, loads of unused space, vacant buildings everywhere and more and more people with time on their hands, enjoy…