RECEPTION WEEKENDER CELEBRATING TEN YEARS OF RECEPTION

words: Adhamh O’Caoimh

Dublins finest proponents of sounds most abstract and pioneering have returned in 2026 for the fourth Reception Weekend, celebrating ten years of Reception itself, with an incredible lineup and collaborations to mark a decade in bringing the strange and sublime to Irish stages.

This year's programme takes place in the Project Arts Centre, and showcases a carefully curated lineup of Irish performers that includes Natalia Beylis, Ultan O’ Brien and Anna Clock, alongside and international innovators like American violist Joanna Mattrey, Berlin experimentalist Teresa Reimann and American writer and musician Seymour Glass.

This year, Reception have invited three of Ireland's most forward thinking record labels, Krim Kram, Fort Evil Fruit and the mighty Nyaah Records to offer exciting handcrafted programmes, as well as offering the Irish debuts of Bitchin’ Bajas, Rafael Toral, and Beam Splitter, to name just a few.

We spoke to Reception mainman and guitarist extraordinaire, Aonghus McEvoy, ahead of this year's sterling programme, to glean a little more on what it takes putting something of this scale and scope together.

Reception Weekend has returned with perhaps its most impressive lineup yet, which is saying something. Especially considering the state of things. Have you found it more challenging this year? When it comes to the international side of things, how have you found that as a challenge for costs, for example, bringing people over?

It's definitely our biggest one to date. But travel costs have been hugely affected, and last year as well.

I mean, I understand why the system works like this, and budgets need to be made nearly a year in advance, and they don't account for these sorts of changes. Thankfully, a lot of the people we work with, we have had some kind of personal relationship with us, or they understand that we're an artist-run collective who are transparent in how we operate, so there can be workarounds, but it is increasingly becoming a problem in terms of the funding system, travel and fuel costs, and in the Irish context, accommodation costs are completely unpredictable. That's just a challenge we have to manage every year.

Thankfully, I've never ended up with a problem where we couldn't pay an artist or couldn't do the event the way we wanted to, but the current geopolitical situation demands this kind of flexibility. We've had to get into a mindset over the past few years of let’s not be surprised if accommodation is extra €100 and flights are another €200 at the end of it all.

Operating in a city as expensive as Dublin is difficult. Sometimes, to people who haven't been involved in acquiring funding, it might seem like there’s the money to cover everything and anything, but in actuality it can be very very difficult. The cost of accommodation and travel introduces parameters, so we end up dealing a lot with small ensembles, solo players and trios. I'm happy to work within those parameters, and would love to expand from that, and hopefully we can but those come into play when dealing with a very expensive city. With limited accommodation and limited venues. The limits on all these things also drive the prices up.

We've been supported by the Arts Council for what we do for a few years, and it's been amazing to make these things happen. However, it is still challenging to operate in a city where you're trying to put together a high-level production with fly-ins and one-offs.

And this year you’ve returned to the Project Arts Centre.

Last year was our first year working with the Project Arts Centre, but it turned out to be a really good fit. They have been great in terms of helping us promote to their internal audience and helping us get the message across to a more general audience, including theatre and visual arts audiences. A lot of the program has a cross-disciplinary quality. There are shows this year from people like Daniel Löwenbrück that would be equally appealing to people interested in sound, performance art or theatre.

It's been really helpful to let their audience see the link between what we do and the other events that happen there. In Dublin, venues don't necessarily have to be supportive of you. Some, you just give them the money and do what you want. It's nice to work somewhere that shares a belief in the festival, and who actually wants us in the space.

They’ve had some very interesting people over the years, and the folks I’ve spoken to have always lauded the people there.

The Project is great in that it actually operates as an art centre that wants these things to be there. The staff are actively interested in what's happening in Ireland, which is really helpful. It's great to have a venue whose staff attend events around Ireland, want to know what's going on, and look for what might suit their space. I think it's always a great sign when a venue wants to have a meeting to see if it will suit, rather than just saying, 'X amount of money, please.'

This year, you’re boasting some guest programmes, Nyaah, Krim Kram, Fort Evil Fruit. Can you tell me a little about how that came about?

This is the first year we've done this. It hits on a few things: this being the tenth anniversary of Reception. Not specifically the festival events, of which we've done four, but ten years of the concert series running. We felt it would be good to shake up the programming a bit. We decided to run two concerts curated by ourselves, then give three gigs to three Irish labels. We discussed what we thought would suit, but for the most part tried to give them free reign over what would happen at their concerts.

It felt for the tenure, that it would be nice to have a celebration that was an overview of contemporary, underground and experimental music happening around Ireland that aligns with what we do. Kind of like a survey of what's happening around Ireland at the moment.

It touches on a lot of different bases.

We've always been interested in having different bases. Say, last year we had Orpy Boo, who is a Chicago footwork person, alongside an Elaine Radigue piece, and Alvin Ikorukta, who would play in a lot of psychedelic folk things and also baroque music.

With Reception, there is this area of contemporary music that is hard to define, that I have always been interested in. It’s ultra-focused and ultra-specific, and its practitioners from a very wide range of backgrounds. Some are conservatory-trained, some come from a more punk background. It's a huge array of people who are working within music that has a similar level of intensity and abstraction.

I see Krim Kram, Fort Evil Fruit and Nyaah as people who have a pretty broad take on what constitutes folk, experimental music, noise music , electronic or club music. It was a good way as well to have friends along, make them part of the programme and broaden our own horizons, because the curatorial team for Reception is pretty small.

It is a meeting of kindred spirits for sure. Those guys have been pushing the envelope forever.

Well, everyone that we have curating are long standing friends . Myself and Fort Evil Fruit go back well over a decade, playing in United Bible Studies with Paul Condon. Willie, who does Nyaah, is someone I was involved in Woven Skull with for years, and David, who does Krim Kram, would be a really good friend for the last two decades.

It is a tiny, tiny country.

Well that’s another thing as well, it’s broadening the curation, but also they’re all people who have helped me out, and have had longstanding relationships with, stretching beyond this activity.

It's wonderful to see that collaboration and spirit, where you're inviting people to be a part of it. It seems more intertwined than it does transactional.

It’s important as well, for us, as a promotion. I think giving the programming over to the labels was a way of giving up some control while remaining cohesive as a Reception event. They're labels we interact with. I’ve put out music on Fort Evil Fruit. Krim Kram will soon be releasing ‘Dazzle Incoherence’, my collaboration with [Scottish synth musician] Adam Campbell, who I’m playing with at the festival. We've contributed to compilations on Nyaah. Everyone working on the festival is intertwined, we’ve all operated in the same space for years, so it felt like a good way to keep the programme cohesive while broadening its curatorial reach.

How did you get involved with Bitchin’ Bajas?

I'm really happy to have them over. They tick a certain box for me where they're referential to things like Terry Riley's ‘Rainbow in Curved Air’, things like Harmonia and Cluster, and American spiritual cosmic jazz, but they don't feel retro or spent. It doesn’t feel backward-looking.

Some of the music we programme is challenging, so I felt Bitchin' Bajas were a great booking in that it’s playful and accessible without being too divorced from the other things that we're doing. They're all incredible musicians. We had them over in another context a few months ago. Mike Reed's Separatist Party, and it was a really really incredible show.

I wanted to programme that with Beam Splitter, because they’re a very abrasive trombone and vocal duo.

It's an interesting dichotomy.

Yeah, but I also think it’s their production of sound, I mean, I haven't seen Beam Splitter now, but I’ve seen Audrey play and toured with Heinrich. They’re producing these very very abrasive sounds but using voice and trombone, I feel there's an accessibility there, live, in that you can physically see the sound being produced. I enjoy putting these things together and pulling an audience in, and saying 'Look, just give it a chance', or force them to go through the noise blast.

There's always a payoff.

Yeah, and over the years we’ve realised that a lot of this music isn't super well known in Ireland, but I think people trust our curation, so we may as well push it a little bit.

Reception Dublin presents the 10th anniversary of
Reception Weekend

15 – 17 October | Space Upstairs - Projects Arts Centre, Essex St, Temple Bar, D2

Tickets: www.projectartscentre.ie

RECEPTION WEEKENDER

REALLY GOOD TIME