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Culture File

RTÉ lyric fm

Luke Clancy's culture come-all-ye, featuring bright spots in music, performance, film, tv and art from Ireland and the world. Broadcast Saturdays at 6.30pm, repeated Wednesdays at 9pm on RTÉ lyric fm.

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  • 22 episodes
  • Avg 39 min
  • English

Episodes 22

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  • August 21 · 1 hr 13 min

    Culture File Presents Fictions: The Circular Ruins

    Culture File's August reading club featuring the Fictions of Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges. Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy are joined by poet and novelist, Susannah Dickey, for Culture File's latest voyage into Borges' short stories. This time, they find themselves on a mysterious island dreaming new life into being, while wondering is art even worth making. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • August 19 · 28 min

    Why are we like this? | CFDS

    Art as history, and history as art in the research-driven, karaoke-spiced work of artist duo Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty, showcased in a provocative new exhibition, A Disentailing Deed, at Project in Dublin. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • August 6 · 1 hr 23 min

    Fictions: Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (XXXL) | Culture File

    Culture File's August reading club featuring the Fictions of Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges. Luke and Colm welcome a special guest to discuss one story from Borges's collection Fictions. This time, we're on the trail of Pierre Menard, an improbable literary figure who has re-written Don Quixote from scratch. Poet, Ella Frears, and composer and improviser, Olesya Zdorovetska, join the search posse. Presenters: Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy Associate Producer: Niamh Daly Producer: Luke Clancy See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • August 5 · 31 min

    Counting Bashō | Culture File

    Translator and poet, Andrew Fitzsimons on translating the complete haikus of Basho, the 17th century master of the form, and on the work of one unfortunate contemporary follower, The Haiku Killer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • July 31 · 56 min

    Fictions: The South | Culture File

    Culture File launches a summer reading club on the fictions of Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges. Each week, Luke and Colm welcome a special guest to explore a story from Borges' collection, Fictions. First up, The South, a dream-like mystery tale of a man held somewhere between life, death and Buenos Aires. Joining the pursuit this time, scholar and author, Patricia N. Klingenberg. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • July 24 · 40 min

    Do Bugs Need a Glow-Up? | The Culture File Debate

    Luke Clancy and panel make the case for loving some teeming critters of the invertebrate kingdom. Advocating for their favourites are: Rachel McKenna (shieldbugs); Liam Lysaght (wasps); Cassia Gaden Gilmartin (earwigs); and Nessa Darcy (woodlice). Recorded live at National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin as part of Dublin Book Festival. First Broadcast: 151125 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • July 17 · 56 min

    Beau Travail: with Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil

    The Comfort Zone: artist, writer and filmmaker Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil leads Colm and Luke into Claire Denis’s 1999 film Beau Travail, a kind of waking dream of a movie about jealousy and justice and the wages of colonialism, explored, in part, through the medium of contemporary dance. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • July 15 · 10 min

    Comfort Zone Pick of The Week | CFDS

    Something for the weekend? Colm Tóibín inserts the Kanneh-Mason sibling's take on Fauré's Après Un Rêve into his dinosaur (car); Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil plugs the poetry and YouTube performances of Joelle Taylor, while Luke Clancy suggests a trio of compilations from Swedish label, XKatedral, on which you may hear, among other sounds, organ chiffing. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • July 2 · 43 min

    The Shape of Jazz to Come: with Olesya Zdorovetska

    The Comfort Zone: musician, composer and improviser, Olesya Zdorovetska encourages Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy to encounter the many freedoms offered in Ornette Coleman's 1959 free jazz throwdown/manifesto album, The Shape of Jazz To Come. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • June 25 · 29 min

    Still In A Dream with Simon Reynolds | Culture File

    Simon Reynolds has made a habit of writing books that offer to rethink the histories of popular music, such as Rip It Up and Start Again, his keywork on Post-Punk, and his story of electronic dance music, Energy Flash. Now, he's back with a highly personal history of the shapes of music from 1984 to 1994, from the hazy 'snowdrift' assaults of My Bloody Valentine, to the paraslacker aesthetics of The Smiths he calls Still In A Dream: Shoegaze Slackers and the Reinvention of Rock. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • June 19 · 1 hr 6 min

    Culture File

    The Comfort Zone: writer, Emma Dabiri invites Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy to get with the subversive allure of Carl Anderson's Judas, and other hidden treasures in the 1973 film version of the Rice and Lloyd Webber musical, Jesus Christ Superstar. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • June 17 · 30 min

    The Musical Universe of Daisy Press | CFDS

    Growing up on tour with Neil Diamond gave Daisy Press a unique outlook on the magic and mysteries of music, and started a journey that leads from Indian Ragas via the 12th century chant of Hildegard von Bingen -- all the way to the engaged minimalism of Frederic Rzewski, whose work she performs at this weekend's Louth Contemporary Music Society festival, Coming Together. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • June 15 · 29 min

    Culture File

    A soft walk with artist, Ciara Rodgers, whose soft sculpture will scatter through the streets of Cork Midsummer; writer and performer, Day Magee on their bus stop-set performance, On The Way: An Artist's Sermon; the latest postcard from the islands from Patrick O'Laoghaire See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • June 10 · 7 min

    Culture File Digital Single: Comfort Zone Pick of The Week

    The Comfort Zone panel pick some things worth your time, with Colm Tóibín opting for Raphael's Young Man Carrying an Old Man on His Back (at The Met, NYC, but also on the internet); Luke Clancy bigging up The Cosmic Tones Research Trio's eponymous second album of neo-cosmic jazz; and musicologist, David Beal suggesting João Gilberto equally eponymous collection of shimmering whispery bossa, João Gilberto, from 1973. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • June 8 · 1 hr 1 min

    The Music of Docteur Nico with David Beal

    The Comfort Zone: writer, musician and archivist, David Beal leads Colm Tóibín on a rumba/cha cha into the music of Congolese guitar hero, Docteur Nico. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • June 8 · 8 min

    Orit Gat's Voice Notes | Culture File Digital Single

    Orit Gat wanders the many venues of this year's Venice Biennale of contemporary, catching boycotts, footballing triumphs and work from Irish artists Isabelle Nolan, Rachel Fallon and Alice Maher. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • May 29 · 29 min

    The Future Sound of James Holden

    Culture File | 1990s teenage trance prodigy and superstar DJ, James Holden on lighting out for the territories of modular synthesizers, spiritual jazz, Moroccan ceremonial music and Live Coding. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • May 22 · 58 min

    M.I Abaga's "Illegal Music 3" with Dagogo Hart

    The Comfort Zone: Playwright and performer, Dagogo Hart introduces a classic of Nigerian hip-hop into the Zone, in the shape of M.I Abaga's 2016 "Illegal Music 3" mixtape See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • May 21 · 5 min

    Culture File Digital Single: Comfort Zone Pick of The Week

    Marking your cards for some time well spent, Colm Tóibín suggests getting down to zero with Shostakovich's last string quartet; Canadian poet, Karen Solie points out Nathalie Léger's 2012 book, Suite For Barbara Loden, to be enjoyed along with Loden's 1970 classic, Wanda; and Luke Clancy is learning to assemble a soundsystem in the Moroccan outback with the help of director Óliver Laxe's 2025 film, Sirā See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Showing 1–20 of 22 episodes