Two Door Cinema Club announced for GIAF
Two Door Cinema Club is the first act announced for the Heineken Big Top at Galway International Arts Festival in 2019.
Formed in 2007 and made up of Co Down school friends Alex Trimble (vocals), Sam Halliday (guitar) and Kevin Baird (bass), Two Door Cinema Club released their debut album, Tourist History in 2010.
The album, recorded at London’s Eastcote Studios with producer Eliot James, features such massive tunes as ‘Something Good Can Work’, ‘Undercover Martyn’ and ‘What You Know’ and was selected for the Choice Music Prize for Irish Album of the Year (2010) the following year.
The band's second album Beacon, recorded with Jacknife Lee (U2, REM, Bloc Party) at his studio in Topanga, Los Angeles, was released in 2012. A mature, melodic and widescreen consolidation of their sound, with added beats and synth fuzz, it debuted at number one on the Irish Albums Chart and reached number two in the UK Albums Chart.
With a sold out show at London’s O2 Arena in December 2013 and after their headline set at Latitude 2014 was cancelled when Alex was hospitalised with stress-induced stomach ulcers, the band – signed to Parlophone in 2013 - decided to take a lengthy break.
Reconvening mid-2015 largely via email, the band pieced together their third album from their respective bases across the globe.
“We realised, for whatever reason, at that moment in time it wasn’t going to work, the three of us being in a room together trying to write a song,” Kevin explains.
Challenging themselves to indulge a wide and varied range of styles and influences stretching way beyond the traditional Two Door sound to take in Prince, Madonna, McCartney, Chic, Krautrock, neo soul and modernist pop, 2016’s Gameshow, with Jacknife Lee again producing, was by far their most enthralling and danceable record to date.
The first single, ‘Are We Ready? (Wreck)’, which tackled Alex’s discomfort with modern life, debuted on Annie Mac's Hottest Record on BBC Radio 1.
Gameshow further established that band’s reputation with their ever growing legion of fans. The album went top 10 in both the UK and Ireland and charted across Europe, Australia and the USA. Coupled with a string of amazing live shows over the last 18 months, the band have gone from strength to strength.
Two Door Cinema Club will play the Heineken Big Top as part of Galway International Arts Festival 2019 on Friday 26th July. Tickets for Two Door Cinema Club go on sale on Friday 30 November 2018 at 9am, priced at €49.50, from www.giaf.ie and roisindubh.net.
Galway International Arts Festival 2019 takes place from 15-28 July 2019, with more acts set to be announced in the coming weeks.
Galway International Arts Festival would like to acknowledge the support of its principal funding agencies the Arts Council and Fáilte Ireland, its Drinks Partner Heineken and Education Partner NUI Galway.