Monday
Blueprint For A Storm
Russell Mills. NCAD Gallery, 100 Thomas St, Dublin Until April 29
ncad.ie/about/gallery
With album covers for Brian Eno, Nine Inch Nails, David Sylvian, Michael Nyman and Peter Gabriel, among many others, book jackets for works by Samuel Beckett, Milan Kundera, Ian McEwan and Jayne Anne Phillips, plus numerous stage and lighting schemes for myriad performers to his credit, Russell Mills is a designer of vast experience and renown. This show brings together a compilation of multimedia installations and interventions, extracts from selected film works and stage visuals and lighting, painting, music compositions and design.
Tuesday
Belfast Film Festival
Various venues Also Fri-April 23
belfastfilmfestival.org
This year's festival has its biggest programme ever, with more than 133 films from 30 countries over its 10 days. In the biggest film bore will surely be sated. Among today's highlights are a public interview with Terence Davies (right), the Internet Cat Video Festival, and screenings of Don Sharp's Psychomania, Embrace the Serpent, Evolution, This Changes Everything and much more. But we had you at the cat videos, didn't we?
The Flamin' Groovies
Whelan's Dublin 8pm €18
whelanslive.com
Lovers of garage rock, proto-punk and pioneers of power pop have been waiting a very long time for this San Francisco band (founded in – good God! – 1965) to return to Ireland. Albums such as 1971's Teenage Head and 1976's Shake Some Action hold a special place in the hearts of original Ramones/Pistols fans. Support act is cult Irish band Female Hercules. One for the connoisseurs?
Wednesday
Explosions in the Sky
Vicar St Dublin 7.30pm €28
ticketmaster.ie
There are quite a few post-rock instrumental-only bands around now, but one of the origins of the species remains one of the best. From Texas, Explosions in the Sky skilfully develop what they term "cathartic mini-symphonies". We really couldn't have put it better ourselves.
Mise Éire
This seminal film by George Morrison, with its renowned score by Seán Ó Riada returns for another revival, following the huge success of its screening earlier this year, with live musical accompaniment from the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, under conductor, David Brophy. With live narration from Cormac De Barra and Clíona Ní Bhuachalla. Back by popular demand.
Thursday
Shakey Graves
Whelan's Dublin 8pm €15
whelanslive.com
As is so often the case with return spring-time visits to Ireland by terrific musicians, we caught them several months previously at Dingle-based Other Voices. One such musician and performer is Shakey Graves (aka Alejandro Rose-Garcia, right), a natural who had the we-want-to-be- impressed audience at St James' Church eating out of his hand with an effortless mix of folk, blues and Americana. The sold-out status of this show proves Shakey's worth – beg, borrow, etc.
Maze
Carbon Galway 11pm €10
carbobgalway.ie
When Cologne natives Simon Haehnel and Tobias Müller decided to make up a yarn about meeting at a sausage-eating competition for their biography, they probably didn't expect the story to grow legs. Today, though, it's the music they make as Andhim which is getting all the shine. The duo's soulful, energetic superhouse, with its nods to their hip-hop past, on tracks such as Hausch has been receiving a lot of attention from labels like Get Physical and Stil Vor Talent.
Hardly audible: Maggie Madden Mother's Tankstation
41-43 Watling St, Ushers Island, Dublin
motherstankstation.com
A virtuoso of recycled, minimalist delicacy, Maggie Madden creates a site-specific installation based on a collection of "particularly coloured" plastic carrier bags that she has built up over a number of years. You could almost miss another sculptural presence in the gallery: poised 3D drawings made with amazingly fine, pared back strands of telephone wiring.
O Brien Felton Jacobson +1
JJ Smyths, Aungier St, Dublin 9pm, €10
jjsmyths.com
Greg Felton, one of the Irish jazz scene's most original piano players, has been largely absent from the live circuit for the past few years but he returns to performance with a vengeance this week, appearing in a new trio with guitarist Tommy Halferty on Friday, at the Listen salon on Saturday and most especially here with a promising new group co-led by bassist Cormac O Brien and drummer Matt Jacobson. Catch him before he disappears again.
