Rub Off The Dark

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Rub Off The Dark Presenting beautiful concerts in Berlin and Ireland

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05/08/2026

is thrilled to present a Sligo concert...

&

20.02.2027

'One of our most talented, important and relevant songwriters and song-adapters.' - Folk Radio UK

'Quietly escalating towards Scottish national treasure status' – Mojo

'An artist in consummate control of his art' - Uncut

- Seven Weathers

The duo of Scottish folk musician Alasdair Roberts and Norwegian experimental musician Fredrik Rasten fuses their respective work with traditional music, folk song and microtonal minimalism. Their first encounter was in the septet Alasdair Roberts & Völvur, which released the LP The Old Fabled River on Drag City Records in 2021.The record combined Roberts’s compositions with versions of Scottish and Norwegian traditional songs. On Seven Weathers, their forthcoming double album for Drag City Records, Roberts and Rasten focus on traditional Scottish narrative ballads, typically of long duration, where slowly evolving musical materials build up throughout the strophic verse-structure to emphasise the storytelling. They choose ballads with care, favouring time-transcending narrative themes that both bear witness to the day and age of their origin and are relevant to our times, be that politically, culturally or ethically. Both sing and play a variety of acoustic and electronic instruments, Roberts’s clear and unadorned vocal delivery blending with Rasten’s sensibilities of just intonation tuning and timbral qualities of sound.

Seven Weathers is scheduled for release in January 2027, and Roberts and Rasten will concurrently undertake a short album launch tour. Throughout 2024/5 they have enjoyed concerts in Glasgow, Berlin, Prague, Motvind Festival (Norway), Fanø Free Folk Festival (Denmark), ne:ar Festival (Slovakia) and Frequency Festival (Chicago, USA) in February 2026 as well as a short Norwegian tour in May 2026.

Tkts in bio 🌼

alasdairroberts.com
fredrikrasten.com

31/07/2026

is delighted to present a new Berlin concert...

The Bonk (+ support Dog Plug)


09.09.2026
Doors: 19:30

15 € plus booking fee ...link in bio 🎫🎟

The Bonk is an Irish experimental music project headed by Waterford songwriter and improviser Phil Christie ( ). Gathering influences from 60’s garage, jazz and experimental pop, the band's arrangements bring recursive rhythms and improvised melodies together in loose minimalist song forms, which hit like an odd yet graceful lovechild of Captain Beefhart and Mulatu Astake.

“Never afraid to try something new or opaque, The Bonk are a testament to creativity and the glory of letting go of the chains of structure.” - Clash Magazine

“The Bonk use slinking and jagged rhythms, as well as a complex, melodically dynamic push & pull to create one of the most singular Irish records we’re likely to hear this year – and they’re equally captivating live”. - The Thin Air

Check out their current album ‘Greater Than Or Equal To The Bonk’ on bandcamp. Link in bio 💫

Dog Plug
The trio of Tony Elieh, Mazen Kerbaj, and Maurice Louca did not come together so much as condense. Their histories are braided and repeatedly entangled across years of shared projects, rehearsals, tours, studios, and stages stretching from Beirut to Cairo to Berlin. They have played in larger constellations, in ensembles that expanded and collapsed. They have composed, improvised, dismantled, and rebuilt music together for two decades.
But this is the first time the three of them have lived in the same city. The first time the electricity has had nowhere else to go.
Dog Plug is not a meeting. It is a short circuit.

Their original name, Kilab al Bottariya (“battery dogs”) refers to jumper cables, that essential object in Beirut and Cairo where engines fail, where improvisation is a daily survival skill, and you learn quickly that systems rarely work as designed. You learn to connect things manually. Directly. With sparks if necessary.
Dog Plug keeps this image: three bodies, three signal paths clipped into one another. Energy pulled from one source to ignite another. A music of contact.

24/07/2026

16.09.26 | 20:00
PAS Berlin

Slightly Imperfect perform the songs of Ivor Cutler

Greg Malcolm / Jenny Ward

Slightly Imperfect by New Zealand duo is a sojourn into the strange, wonderful and beautiful world of Scottish poet, writer and songwriter Ivor Cutler.
The songs and poems are placed in a surreal and gentle playground of laughing boxes, toys, whirring pipes and theatrical elements to create an enchanting performance.
Incorporating domestic objects and dance, silence and sound, text and extended
techniques, participants are drawn into a timeless realm, an ode to play, and
absurdity.

Suggested donation 10€ - 15€

With assistance by QM Buesselstraße Moabit

10/07/2026

Rub Off The Dark is thrilled to present a Sligo concert...

&

'One of our most talented, important and relevant songwriters and song-adapters.' - Folk Radio UK

'Quietly escalating towards Scottish national treasure status' – Mojo

'An artist in consummate control of his art' - Uncut

- Seven Weathers

The duo of Scottish folk musician Alasdair Roberts and Norwegian experimental musician Fredrik Rasten fuses their respective work with traditional music, folk song and microtonal minimalism. Their first encounter was in the septet Alasdair Roberts & Völvur, which released the LP The Old Fabled River on Drag City Records in 2021.The record combined Roberts’s compositions with versions of Scottish and Norwegian traditional songs. On Seven Weathers, their forthcoming double album for Drag City Records, Roberts and Rasten focus on traditional Scottish narrative ballads, typically of long duration, where slowly evolving musical materials build up throughout the strophic verse-structure to emphasise the storytelling. They choose ballads with care, favouring time-transcending narrative themes that both bear witness to the day and age of their origin and are relevant to our times, be that politically, culturally or ethically. Both sing and play a variety of acoustic and electronic instruments, Roberts’s clear and unadorned vocal delivery blending with Rasten’s sensibilities of just intonation tuning and timbral qualities of sound.

Seven Weathers is scheduled for release in January 2027, and Roberts and Rasten will concurrently undertake a short album launch tour. Throughout 2024/5 they have enjoyed concerts in Glasgow, Berlin, Prague, Motvind Festival (Norway), Fanø Free Folk Festival (Denmark), ne:ar Festival (Slovakia) and Frequency Festival (Chicago, USA) in February 2026 as well as a short Norwegian tour in May 2026.

Tkts in bio 🌼

alasdairroberts.com
fredrikrasten.com

10/06/2026

******* SEAMUS FOGARTY *******

Rub Off The Dark proudly presents by arrangement with Outside Artists Seamus Fogarty.

“One of my favourite artists around at the moment!” - Cillian Murphy

November 13th Fri - 8.30pm
Yeats Building, Sligo

Tkts in bio ✨️

London-based Alt-folk alchemist Seamus Fogarty recently released his new album Ships (6th March) on Scottish label Lost Map Records, in partnership with Swedish label Sing A Song Fighter.

Packed with poignant and funny slice-of-life vignettes touching on everything from Geoffrey Chaucer to DIY coffins, and existing in a wonderful new sonic realm where songs and stories coexist peacefully with fragmentary electronics, drones and field recordings, Ships is his most expansive and uplifting collection of music to date. Singles 'I Passed Your House', 'Fire' and 'Ships' picked up wide support across BBC 6Music, from the likes of Cillian Murphy ('one of my favourite artists around at the moment'), Lauren Laverne, Cerys Matthews, Craig Charles, Huw Stephens, New Music Fix Daily, Radcliffe and Maconie, and Riley & Coe, as well as support elsewhere from Uncut (8/10), Analogue Trash, BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 3, BBC Scotland, BBC Ulster, BBC Wales, Radio X, RTÉ Radio 1, RTÉ 2FM and more... The first single ‘I Passed Your House’ also spent multiple weeks on RTÉ Radio 1’s Recommends list.

Born and raised on the west coast of Ireland but living in London since 2010, Seamus released his debut full-length ‘God Damn You Mountain’ on cult Scottish label Fence Records (King Creosote, Jon Hopkins) in 2012. This was followed by a pair of exceptional albums released via Domino Records – 2017’s The Curious Hand (“magical amplified folk journeys through modern life” ★★★★★ – The Guardian) and 2020’s A Bag Of Eyes (“a gloriously trippy journey” – The Sunday Times). His most recent release, the Hee Haw EP, was released on Lost Map Records in 2023 with the lead single ‘They Recognised Him’ receiving high praise from a range of DJs and personalities across the BBC and beyond, including Iggy Pop.

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Hyde Bridge, Abbeyquarter, North Sligo
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