• Gig(s) of the week: La Dispute, Cloud Nothings, Hospitality

    May 21, 2014 - By 

    With summer festival announcements dropping left, right and center, the proverbial purse strings are undoubtedly a little tighter than usual for most of us. That said, as ever, there’s just some one-off shows on the horizon that fall directly under the downright “unmissable” category. Here’s our picks of a handful of gigs happening across the country over the next few days that we think warrant popping along to. Cloud Nothings, Princess – The Button Factory, Dublin, May 24 With the April release of their third studio album, Here and Nowhere Else, Ohio indie rock three-piece Cloud Nothings  (pictured) all but confirmed their status as…

  • Swans – To Be Kind

    May 21, 2014 - By 

    In 2012 something quite extraordinary happened. After reforming his band Swans following a hiatus of over thirteen years, Michael Gira and his select group of musicians released their masterpiece: The Seer. Hailed as their finest work by many, it was a colossal piece of music spanning over two hours, an extended exploration of the unknowable obscurities and mind-numbing repetitions that had become synonymous with the Swans name. But it was much more than that – it was an evolutionary step into uncharted territory for the band, and for contemporary rock music as a whole. In an age where the synthesiser…

  • In Space, No-One Can Hear You Scream – The Music of Alien

    May 21, 2014 - By 

    In a way, the sheer ordinariness of it all seems like a crime. The death of a person is always a difficult thing, but the death of an artist can sometimes imbue a life with near mythic qualities. So when HR Giger fell down the stairs in his home in Zurich and subsequently died from his injuries, it feels as though the man was cheated of the gruesome, yet appropriate demise many of his admirers may have imagined he’d have preferred.Giger was always a strange fit for our world. A fine artist who scored his greatest success with a sci-fi…