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JULIAN COPE

Aiken Promotions presents

JULIAN COPE

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_ Main Venue _

Tickets priced €25 (incl booking) on sale Friday January 30th @ 9am from www.ticktmaster.ie & outlets nationwide Julian Cope is a singer, poet, occultist and photographer who has enjoyed a 30-year career in the rock business, and is described by his Bloomsbury book publishers as a ‘visionary rock musician and musicologist, hip archaeologist and one-time front man of the Teardrop Explodes’. During that time, Cope has released over 20 solo albums, countless collaborative projects, and six acclaimed books, including his autobiography HEAD-ON and the much-lauded KRAUTROCKSAMPLER. Cope began his career in 1977, as bass player in the short-lived Liverpool punk group The Crucial Three, alongside future Echo & The Bunnymen singer Ian McCulloch, before forming the Teardrop Explodes in late ’78. This band’s four-year reign as a Top Ten chart act collapsed at the end of 1982, when Cope’s infamous love of munching LSD onstage proved too much for both his management and record companies. An attempt to re-launch his career ended in disaster in March 1984, when Cope ignored the presence of several important media figures in his Hammersmith Palais audience, and proceeded to lacerate his stomach in a drug-induced frenzy. A brief wilderness period ensued, during which time he and his young American wife Dorian moved back to Tamworth, the Staffordshire town of his childhood. Now remaining indoors for long periods and collecting 1950s Dinky Toys, it was during this time that Cope’s legendary FRIED album was released, featuring his signature death-and-resurrection lament ‘Reynard the Fox’ and clad in a record cover that showed Cope naked save for a giant turtle shell. In the late ‘80s, however, Cope made his welcome return to the charts with the single ‘World Shut Your Mouth’, and attendant album SAINT JULIAN, which was followed in the ‘90s by such acclaimed albums as PEGGY SUICIDE, JEHOVAHKILL and AUTOGEDDON. However, Cope now moved away from the rock’n’roll business and turned his attentions instead to making a detailed first-hand study of the occult, mythology and Britain’s prehistory. Throughout the mid-90s, Cope scoured the British Isles for lost stone temples of the first monument builders, incorporating three tours of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland in the process. After eight years of research, these results were published in his best-selling tome THE MODERN ANTIQUARIAN, a full colour 484-page hardback that shocked the publishing world by selling over 50,000 copies. Five years later, Cope followed up this extraordinary achievement with an even larger sequel entitled THE MEGALITHIC EUROPEAN that covered mainland Europe plus many of its islands. Cope has performed live with Sunn0))), also appearing as lead vocalist on their acclaimed album WHITE ONE, and has recorded three albums with his proto-metal power trio Brain Donor. He has also lectured three times at the British Museum. In October 2007, Cope’s JAPROCKSAMPLER was released to critical acclaim, thereafter he hosted Manchester University’s William Blake exhibition BLAKE’S SHADOW, at the Whitworth Gallery in January 2008. In May of the same year, his new album BLACK SHEEP was released to tremendous acclaim, and has since formed a band of the same name, which in 2009 recorded the massive double-LP KISS MY SWEET APOCALYPSE After a brief hiatus, 2012 saw the release of the well-received PSYCHEDELIC REVOLUTION, while 2013 saw the even better received REVOLUTIONARY SUICIDE, complete with its epic 16-minute lament ‘The Armenian Genocide’. In June 2014, the venerable Faber & Faber published Cope’s debut novel ONE THREE ONE, which received ecstatic reviews. The Guardian described the book as ‘One of the most brilliant, serious, funny, life-crammed novels any reader is likely to lay their mitts on’, while The Quietus declared: “ONE THREE ONE is a triumph’. The Irish Times called the book ‘Beckett on a bender’, Bobby Gillespie described it as ‘a total skullfuck of a book’, while Stewart Lee admitted “I read it in one sitting’. In early 2015, Cope will release a new ‘Best Of’ compilation covering the years 1999-2014, entitled TRIP ADVIZOR. Julian Cope lives in the West of England with his wife Dorian, and daughters Albany and Avalon.

TICKETS

ON SALE FRI 30th JAN, 9AM: €25 available online from WAV Tickets or Lo-Call 1890 200 078 (1-8pm M-F, 4-8pm Sat)

– 50c per ticket service charge applies on phone, internet or creditcard bookings. Final ticket price may be higher from other outlets.

Strictly over 18′s, I.D. may be required.

AFTER THE GIG

Whelan’s Indie Club w/ Late Bar from 10:30pm or check out the bands playing The Midnight Hour in the upstairs venue (FREE ENTRY, 12am).