• Clark – Feast/Beast

    September 2, 2013 - By 

    The success or failure of a remix compilation can be entirely down to the approach of the label and artist responsible for the output. One approach, which favours commercial acclaim over artistic integrity, can fairly easily culminate in a product that ultimately brings on the same harrowing feeling as finding the biscuit tin devoid of all deliciousness and filled with fig-rolls instead; a dark hour in the lives of many. Think Sasha’s latest Involv3r monstrosity. Actually, don’t do it to yourself. You deserve better. Thankfully though, Clark (Chris Clark) has taken the more fruitful direction with his latest effort Feast/Beast,…

  • Recap: Tim Hecker, Frankie Rose, September Girls, etc.

    September 2, 2013 - By 

    In the latest installment of our weekly recap of the best in brand new music just released right across the world, we eagerly traverse and contrast urgent Northern Irish punk rock, Canadian drone, kaleidoscopic English lo-fi, American garage rock, delirious Swedish synth-pop and all kinds of everything in between. As ever, if you want to get in touch about great new music – either yours or someone else’s – hit us up at newmusic@thethinair.net and we will get listening, stat. In the meantime, sit back and enjoy our top ten tracks of the week. ___ Mons Montis – Swept Swedish trio Herman Båverud Olsson,…

  • Festival Gallery: Electric Picnic 2013

    September 2, 2013 - By 

    With the celebratory dust having settled on Stradbally Estate this morning, Electric Picnic celebrated its tenth anniversary in typical  style at the weekend. One of a number of attendees that lapped up hundreds of acts and happenings on the festival’s countless stages and platforms, our photographer Alan Maguire captured the whole story. Dig the almost uncanny similarity between Sinead O’Connor and Savages‘ Jehnny Beth and the sheer frequency of hats on display…

  • Obituary: Seamus Heaney

    September 2, 2013 - By 

    ‘Earth receive an honoured guest..’ The opening of Auden’s famous tribute to Yeats, with its distinctive rhythm which Heaney dubbed ‘Wystan Auden’s metric feet’ seems appropriate as the poet makes his final journey back into the landscape that inspired so much of his best work. For Heaney was a poet formed out of the claggy clay of his home, not just an Irish poet, or a Belfast poet, but a mid-Ulster poet. In his work I recognise the expressions and above all the accent that I grew up with, its mix of the clumsy and the lyrical, ‘demesnes stalked out in consonants’, flooded by…

  • LAD.I.Y: Investigating gender imbalance in Northern Irish rock music

    September 2, 2013 - By 

    “Recently I had a sound engineer explain to me how to use a microphone. He told me he didn’t know how the girls on TV did it, but it wasn’t ‘the way they do it in the real world.’” Katie Richardson, Katie and the Carnival. I’ve been aware of a quiet phenomenon in the Belfast music scene for years, but it wasn’t until recently that the full picture was revealed to me. In my day job, I do PR and artist development for several local musicians. We were building a band around one of the artists and required a new…

  • Interview: Astralnaut

    September 2, 2013 - By 

    Laying claim to being one the downright heaviest bands in the country right now, Keady sludge-doom band Astralnaut breed groove, weight and haze to produce a sound that that is ever-increasingly all their own. Masterfully veering between pummeling downtuned riffs to stoner-rock mini-odysseys, we cannot recommend catching the Thomas Mallon-fronted act highly enough. We talk to Thomas and Pearse from the band about the past, present and future of Astralnaut,”an unspoken bond of sheer riffage and groove”. ___ Early stirrings: Stoned Messiah, Third Harvest and onwards: Pearse (Donnelly, rhythm guitar): Astralnaut formed as many bands do, from the ashes of previously formed groupings. Thomas…

  • White Lies – Big TV

    September 2, 2013 - By 

    “All this eighties indie/it sounds like shit to me/because I don’t like Joy Division/I don’t like Morrissey” – ‘Crushed Under The Weight of The Enormous Bullshit’, Reuben For several years, that line summed up my feelings towards contemporary music. In recent years though, my views have mellowed. While I still hold Morrissey with the same contempt that G. G. Allin held for showers and human decency, Joy Division eventually clicked with me, due in no small part to Anton Corbijn’s Control. With this thawing of my icy relationship, I was able to listen to bands like Interpol and Editors with new ears. I still hate them, but now it’s because I think…