ShivTwenty years deep and still free at the door, the Community Skratch Games returns to The Bierhaus, Galway this weekend, Ireland’s longest-running celebration of scratch culture, no frills, no fuss, just good people and great tunes.
Community Skratch Games turns 20 this year and for anyone who has yet to experience it, this is a sign. The community behind the Skratch Games is a hodgepodge collective of legends from the West of Ireland and beyond, whose love for turntablism and tunes has quietly evolved into one of the best yearly gatherings in Galway, a weekend where world-renowned battle DJs share a bill with local heroes, swapping stories with turntablists and producers from all over the globe.
That’s twenty years of DJ battles, rising rappers, and turntablist supergroups combining skills for performances you’re unlikely to see anywhere else on this island. Throw in the most up-for-it crowd in the west spilling out onto the street and you’ve got yourself a party. All of it free. All of it at The Bierhaus.
Going all out for the big 2-0, they’ve put together their biggest lineup to date. We caught up with the mighty Andy, AKA Unscene Music, to chat through what to expect.
So how did it all start? We asked Andy to take it back to 2007.
It was set up by me and Jimmy Penguin and Mikey Fingers and Danny Deepo. The four of us were all living together, we were all playing together and we were all involved in the scratch scene, which is quite a small thing in Ireland, at any one time there’s never been more than like 20 active people doing it. We’d only ever get to meet up at the battles, the DMC and the ITF, and they were only on once a year each. But they’re really high pressure days, it’s kind of more like doing your Leaving Cert than it is any fun. It’s not quite the best atmosphere to foster creativity.
And also it’s more like sport, we all wanted to make music, we didn’t necessarily want to win medals. There had been a movement from the late 90s, people like DJ Disc, DJ Fouse, Skratch Pickles, who were moving in that musical direction, not battling anymore. We were quite inspired by that and we wanted to have a party where we could just show what we were up to and play music with other people.
We had arranged a house party but we were in Galway in 2007 and word spread and we kept getting asked about it on the street by randomers. We were like, okay, we can’t have a house party now because everyone’s going to wreck the gaff. But our friends had opened the Bierhaus bar and I’d been playing there kind of regularly anyway. I asked the lads if they’d be up for it, they were a little bit skeptical perhaps, but they relented and supported it really well. They gave us a budget too, which was nice, so we were actually able to have a bit of money to pay for people’s travel. We had a free event and it just kind of rolled from there.
The decision to keep it free and accessible from the start was clearly a foundational one, and it was deliberate.
It was important from the start that we weren’t going to do big bookings, we weren’t going to charge people, it had to be free. Part of the mission was to show civilians what scratching is too. So to make it as accessible as possible, you do it during the day for free.
Twenty years on, the event still calls the Bierhaus home. There have been offers to go bigger, but Andy and the lads have always resisted.
When we got to the 10th anniversary, we did an interview and they were asking about expansion. Danny put it really well, he was like, why do you have to expand? What is, as in, this works, this is good. It’s actually feasible and it’s manageable and we can guarantee that this can happen again. We did have some offers over the years to go bigger or to move it or to get more sponsorship, but you’re taking it out. We trust the guys in the Bierhaus a lot. They’re not going to screw us over, they’re not going to kick us out without us knowing, they’re not going to expect X amount of money on the bar or whatever. They’re just happy to do it. And that’s a great comfort.
Sure, we could have maybe made money, but if you’re in the business of making money, you’re also in the business of losing money. I’ve lost too much money on gigs over the years to really go down that route anymore.
The programming at the Skratch Games is unlike anything else, no rigid hierarchy, scratch DJs sharing a stage with live acts. We asked how that evolved.
After the first one or two, we realised that if we were to keep it just to people that scratched, you’re really narrowing what you can do with it, and you’re basically keeping it to men as well. So we opened it up to DJs who, even if they didn’t scratch, still had some connection to the idea of DJing being more than just playing records, an art form kind of thing, or they had links to hip-hop, or they were using a lot of samples. A lot of electro over the years as well, which is very connected to the scratch scene.
I was probably the most resistant of anyone to that at the start, I’d have quite a purist vision of what scratching is, but that was definitely the wise move for the vibe of the whole thing and to actually increase the community engagement with it.
Programming-wise, we don’t really have a hierarchical structure. You might have a headliner playing at 3pm and a total newbie closing it out. It’s more about vibe, it’s about who’s most appropriate at that time as opposed to who has the bigger reputation. It can be quite difficult to program, and I think this year is going to be the most difficult yet. I’ve got a Google spreadsheet that is a shitshow. We have 50 performers this year I think. Ludicrous. But look, it’s a birthday, so you’ve got to do something special.
With 20 editions behind him, we had to ask for a highlight.
I think the first time that I saw Cut Man Doo, so he’s from Poland and he does it using tapes. He actually brought like an old 60s reel-to-reel with him on the plane and did a whole set using a real reel-to-reel. I think everyone that was there will possibly have that as their highlight. That was just a real magical moment. Most of the people there kind of wouldn’t have expected it and they didn’t even know what he was setting up. Just a really cool, chilled-out kind of guy, no ego, just like, I’m just doing my real thing, this is what I do. That’s the very essence of it to me.
I think the best bit for me though is always the after bit, where I’m totally reinspired again every year. There’s kind of a scratch glow that you get. I’ll be in there for the full 48 hours, come home, and I’ll probably have a scratch on Monday.
The event has also quietly inspired a whole network of similar events internationally. We asked Andy about that ripple effect.
The first one to come along was Brighton. I was living there two years previous and the lads came over to ours and then they were like, actually let’s do this in Brighton as well, and it kind of spiraled from there. There’s one in Manchester now up north. They’ve done them in Portugal, Germany, Poland, Chile, California, all over really, Russia, Sweden, Norway. And they’re all run along similar lines, free or else very cheap, minimal sponsorship, just doing the bare minimum to make it happen. After that it’s up to the actual artists and the community themselves. It works off of artist enthusiasm more than any kind of financial compensation.
For anyone thinking of coming down for the first time this Easter, we asked Andy what to expect.
Like a representation of what I guess audio manipulation culture is at this point. You’ll see people who are having their first ever gig outside their hometown and you’ll see people that have been playing for 25 years all over the world. If you’re any way interested in like slightly alternative music there should be something for you there as well which I think that gets overlooked in a lot of scene based kind of events sometimes.
Those performers are all hanging around for the weekend, they’re accessible, you can talk to them, you can learn about it, you can make some friends. It’s a very friendly environment generally, I would like to think it’s quite a welcoming community and a welcoming event. It might be intimidating if you rock in about 10 o’clock in the evening without having any prior experience, right? Because it’ll be absolutely wild and the battle will be on but just but just push your way to the front and you’ll have some fun, you know, or else just stand at the back and observe like just the madness of it.
What you won’t get is a really slick professional event, that’s not what it is. We’ve always gone for the house party in a pub kind of vibe. It’s usually me and Jimmy stressed out of our heads trying to find a cable or a missing DJ or why has his turntable stopped working, we’re now an hour behind schedule, that guy’s not going to play now because his equipment exploded, okay, so now we’ve got an hour back. You’ll see how to run an event anyway.
We finished up by asking if he had a final word for anyone on the fence about going.
We’ll be streaming it live like we have the last few years, so you can watch from wherever you want, but none of the videos or releases actually capture what it is, you have to sit in there for the five or six hours, or the whole weekend if you’ve got the metal for it.
Just go to gigs and go to your events. Give your mate the tenner rather than Spotify. Go down the local pub if there’s even a sing song happening, if you want stuff to happen, you’ve got to go see it. You can’t just wait for it to show up online. It’s a thing that happens in the flesh in the real world, and that’s where it’s best. Most music is best enjoyed in person.
The team have a GoFundMe to help them with the running costs of this year, if you like what you hear, support the crew! More info here.
