Dublin doesn't usually get a Moodymann club date. Detroit's Kenny Dixon Jr. hasn't played an Irish club in close to ten years, and when Moodymann was confirmed to open this year's Circles festival at The Bernard Shaw on October 16, the tickets were gone before most of the rest of the lineup had even been announced.
That single date sets the tone for an 11-day run, October 16 to 26, that Subject has built in partnership with Bodytonic, Four Four Podcast, Tengu and Syncopated Records: house, techno, electro and funk spread across multiple Dublin rooms, with Circles leaning on both marquee names and left-field bookings rather than a single big stage.
What else is actually on the bill?
The October 23-24 stretch is where the programme gets interesting. IMOGEN plays an all-night set at Tengu on October 23. The next night splits three ways: Leftfield DJ at Centre Point, West Coast electro-funk veteran Egyptian Lover plays the same night, and NYC house and soul artist BRIDGE makes their Irish debut at Fidelity, a show that also sold out.
It's a programme that treats a DJ set from the Leftfield camp with the same weight as a first-ever Irish appearance from a rising New York name, which is exactly the kind of range Circles has built its reputation on.
Why does the Tresor connection matter?
The festival closes on October 25 with something genuinely rare outside Berlin: a collaboration with Tresor, branded T35 for the club's 35th anniversary, landing at Wigwam. Regis and Daniel Bell, performing as DBX, join Fireground Live for a night built on Tresor's own DNA rather than a generic techno headliner slot.
Tresor doesn't export its anniversary programming often. Getting a T35 night in Dublin, in the same week as a sold-out Moodymann show, says more about where Circles sits on the calendar than any press release could.
Tresor turning 35 this year has already produced a marathon lineup in Berlin itself; seeing a branded offshoot travel to an Irish festival is a sign of how far the club's reach now extends beyond its own building.
Who's actually running this?
Subject is the promoter behind Circles, working alongside Bodytonic, Four Four Podcast, Tengu and Syncopated Records, names that between them cover most of the infrastructure Dublin's house and techno scene has built over the past decade. The multi-promoter structure is part of why the programme can stretch from a Detroit house legend to West Coast electro to a Berlin techno institution without any of it feeling like padding.
