• Guardians of the Galaxy

    August 4, 2014 - By 

    Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel’s big summer movie, is a hot-blooded, swaggering space-opera blockbuster and a finely-judged exercise in controlled chaos. On the one hand, it’s another big-budget, aggressively promoted film from the production factory of Marvel Studios, which has achieved unprecedented box-office success through shrewd creative decisions and a tight-fisted promotion of a ‘house style’ across their properties. On the other hand, they chose as writer-director (with co-writer Nicole Perlman) James Gunn, whose CV includes Super, in which a psychotic Rainn Wilson dresses as a superhero and runs around smashing people’s faces in with a wrench, and Tromeo and…

  • Interview: No Age

    August 4, 2014 - By 

    Three years on from unleashing the nuanced noise of their stellar third album, Everything In Between, Los Angeles duo No Age re-affirmed their reputation as one of the most accomplished experimental punk outfits around with the masterfully minimalist An Object, released in August last year. Propelled by its candour and bare-boned urgency, it galvanised guitarist Randy Randall and drummer/vocalist Dean Allen Spunt’s effortlessly off-kilter craft, the fuzzed-out forays of old taking a back seat in favour of a markedly more inconspicuous approach. But for a twosome so apparently motivated by and inclined towards impulse, one wonders: was there much intention at the…

  • Happy Days Festival: Donal O’Kelly reads Samuel Beckett’s Sedendo et Quiescendo

    August 4, 2014 - By 

    For some, purgatory might well be a dawn rise to catch a 7am boat on Lough Erne, one that ferries you to an uninhabited island for a reading of Samuel Beckett’s lesser known work. Lough Erne was an ancient pathway for pilgrims from the Shannon heading to the monastery of Devonish and other church sites. But purgatory this is not, for the pilgrims this fresh, sunny Fermanagh morning are all Beckettphiles. The Purgatorio Island Readings have been a constant feature of the first three editions of the Happy Days Eniskillen International Beckett Festival, and hugely popular with attendees as well…

  • Festival Mixtape: Stendhal Festival of Art

    August 4, 2014 - By 

    Headlined by Derry punk pioneers The Undertones and Scottish indie-rock quartet Frightened Rabbit (above), Stendhal Festival of Art returns to the wonderfully scenic Roe Valley this weekend for two days of music, art, theatre, comedy and poetry. With tickets still available to purchase via the official website here, we’ve compiled a ten-track playlist featuring some our must-see acts to catch at the festival – everyone from Malojian and Go Wolf to Making Monsters and Ciaran Lavery.