We teamed up with Belfast’s Oh Yeah Centre on Friday night to present a four-band Independent Venue Week 2015 bill featuring Allez Bartoli, Hot Cops, Robocobra Quartet and headliners Blue Whale. A great night was had and all the acts delivered properly impressive sets. Check out Alan Maguire’s photos from the showcase below.
Our first AAA (Access All Areas) installment of 2015 features Dublin post rockers Subplots as they prepared for the launch of their latest album in the Workman’s club over the weekend, with support from Galway duo Voids. Our photographer Carlos Daly spent the evening snapping away with both bands as they set up and soundchecked ahead of the gig. For a comprehensive overview of the entire night, check out the gallery below.
In the third installment of our Front of House series, we chat to James Feeney, a sound engineer working predominantly at The Workman’s Club in Dublin. He discusses what goes into his job and and his plans for 2015. Photos by Shaun Neary, Carlos Daly and Isabel Thomas. Hi James! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Hello! My name is James Feeney, I’m based in Dublin and currently working as a freelance sound engineer. I primarily work in The Workmans Club but there are a few bands I work with quite often too. How did you become…
Comprised of members of sadly-departed Northern Irish alt-rock heavyweights Fighting With Wire and LaFaro, Goons headlined a genre-spanning Independent Venue Week showcase at Belfast’s Limelight 2 last week. Our photographer Liam Kielt was there to capture the aforementioned new-fangled supergroup, PigsAsPeople, Loris and Waldorf & Cannon.
Having received its premiere on Lauren Laverne’s BBC 6Music show this morning, Villagers have unveiled the video for their new single ‘Courage’. Taken from the band’s forthcoming third album, Darling Arithmetic, the track is a typically exquisite effort from Conor O’Brien and co., beautifully propelled in its harmonic simplicity and lyrical incisiveness. According to the band’s YouTube page, Darling Arithmetic was “written, recorded, produced and mixed by O’Brien at home – the loft of a converted farmhouse that he shares in the coastal town of Malahide to the north of Dublin – revealing a single-minded artist at the peak of…
Within seconds of hitting play on director John Carpenter’s first ‘real’ album, pictures start to form in your head. Kurt Russell, chewing on a cigarette, sullenly peeking out with his one eye, stubble so rugged you could grate cheese on it, and a fashion sense that is questionable, at best. There might never be another Snake Plissken movie, but when John Carpenter is behind the synth, suddenly there doesn’t need to be.In some part due to necessity, Carpenter composed the soundtracks to the vast majority of his films, working quickly and cheaply, utilising basic rock band instrumentation and heavy, primitive…
Best known as frontman of quintessential American indie rock band Quasi, Sam Coomes is our latest willing subject in the often indispensable, always mind-bogglingly tasteful Monday Mixtape. Twenty years into the game, ex-husband and wife duo Coomes (Donner Party, Heatmiser, etc) and Janet Weiss (Sleater-Kinney, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Wild Flag, etc) AKA Quasi are the living, breathing definition of indie rock royalty. Formed in Portland in 1993, the duo’s uniquely infectious, incomparably insightful brand of indie rock has spanned nine studio albums and countless EPs worth of material. Featuring everyone from Serge Gainsbourg to Iggy Pop, Coomes’ mixtape is a sublime, ten-track…
Some news that sadly flew under a lot of radars locally in the excitement running up to this week’s absurd amount of good stuff (which we’ll get to!) was the announcement of the impending passing of sludge/doom lords FIVEWILLDIE on the 20th of February, after their final show/tenth-anniversary show at Mr. Bradley’s. We’ll have a farewell feature in the coming weeks in this space, but suffice to say, a band around which a lot of live activity revolved over the years, such as Pyre Pro, Limerick’s Bad Reputation and the Siege of Limerick are going to be sadly, sadly missed,…
Arguably one of the most exciting and idiosyncratic Irish indie-rock bands of a generation, Belfast-based three-piece Hot Cops are teetering on the brink of some great things in 2015. Released immediately off the back of their stellar double-single ‘Origami/Novelty’, the band’s new four-track EP, #1 Babes, coyly, often cryptically renders instability, heartbreak, and the human condition in first-rate, wanderlust-tinged lo-fi glory. Positively bursting at the seams with fuzzed-out tangents, earworming refrains and masterfully nonchalant hooks, the Carl Eccles-fronted threesome’s cunningly off-kilter, slacker-soaked anti-anthems instantly evoke their main influences in Pavement, Deerhunter and Cloud Nothings. At the root of that is…
In the latest installment of Track Record, The Blades‘ Brian Foley gives us an insight into his record collection, featuring everyone from Hank Williams to The Clash. Photos by Shaun Neary. Hank Williams – The Very Best Of I love traditional country music as sung by Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Don Gibson and best of all, Hank Williams. Some people find his voice a bit jarring but I find it quite appealing and it adds to some of his more bleaker songs. The little yodel he sometimes uses blends in with the pedal steel guitar and the country fiddle. The lyrics are always…