Alternative Christmas Mixtape: Day 4

10 days out from Turkeyfest 2011, we’re settling into our stride with three top alternative Christmas tunes already in the bag. Today it’s the turn of Jenny Headen… I love this Christmas track by LaptopPunk – a nice bit of a festive intro then a mash up featuring the late great Johnny Cash and Chemical Brothers – with a bit of Kool and the Gang thrown in to boot. It’s taken from the ‘Santastic 4’ album (http://santastic4.com/) – which is well worth checking out. Some of the tracks are belters and a nice change from the usual Christmas fare… It’ll be on full blast at EA Towers for the festive season!   Jenny Headen is the Music Manager at PR, Marketing and Consultancy outfit Entertainment Architects: www.entertainmentarchitects.ie Culch.ie’s Alternative Christmas Mixtape is curated by Sinéad Keogh, Aaron McAllorum and Lisa McInerney. (Yeah, we said curated…)

Leccy Piccy ’11: The Line-up

Continuing the round of festival-related news in these parts, the leccy piccy line-up announcement at POD yesterday. Here’s the festival booking manager talking about the music weekend that put Stradbally on the map: Electric Picnic’s patronising tone of recent years - charging exorborant ticket prices and consistently repelling arguments about lack of musical quality by repeating the now-formulaic ‘it’s all about the atmosphere’ and listing out the festival awards won that year - has come to an end. There can be no complaints this year. Headliners Arcade Fire, Interpol, PJ Harvey, Chemical Brothers and the massive coup that is Pulp, are worthy of a ticket prices alone.Garnish these off with sheer quality mid-afternoon “dragging your friend out of a ditch” background music of Midlake, Beriut and The Walkmen. In an unprecdeneted turn for this festival, which in recent years has had no problems in dredging world music for some truly … There’s more