• Her World: An Evening of Björk @ Oh Yeah Centre, Belfast

    March 5, 2015 - By 

    As part of the Oh Yeah Centre’s International Women’s Day on Saturday March 7, five female and female-fronted acts will come together to perform a selection of Björk’s back catalogue. This comes following her new archives book, an exhibition of her career and latest album, Vulnicure, and her emphasis on often-overlooked contributions to women in the art community – a problem she successfully fights through leading by example. Each set will consist of 2 covers of songs by the iconic, innovative, Icelandic artist, and interpreting her music as well as performing their own material on the night are piano-playing songstress Katharine…

  • From Book to Band: A World Book Day Playlist

    March 5, 2015 - By 

    “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” The astute words of Ernest Hemingway – and there’s a fair chance he wasn’t wrong. To coincide with this year’s World Book Day, we’ve set aside our latest read – Murakami’s South of the Border, West of the Sun, if you must know – to compile a ten-track playlist featured artists named after novels, including The Fall, Pylon, Soft Machine, The Blue Nile and The Art of Noise. Delve in to the literarily-leaning sonic wielders so.

  • Screen/Play #2: Record Shop Retail in Empire Records and High Fidelity

    March 5, 2015 - By 

    For someone like me who has only ever had a passing interest in music-buying and hit puberty around Napster’s ascendance, the record shop as a location resided almost exclusively in the general cultural imagination as opposed to my regular routine. Inevitably my idea of what record shops and the people who work there were like came to align with the enthusiastic but elitist list-making devotion immortalised by Stephen Fears’ High Fidelity (2000), based on Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel, and brought to life by John Cusack’s world-weary shop owner Rob Gordon and his pair of ‘musical idiots’, played perfectly by Jack…

  • Front of House: PSI

    March 5, 2015 - By 

    In the latest installment of Front of House, our photographer Sara Marsden popped along to Belfast’s Ulster Hall to capture Sean Pagel, Joe Byrne and Davy McCready from Ireland’s premier lighting company, PSI. Offering a wonderful insight into the industry, Pagel touches on the technical and creative sides of lighting, providing the lighting for the likes of Riverdance, Philip Glass and Live at the Marquee, as well as some personal insight into the peaks and (seemingly very rare) low points of the job. Hi Sean. First off, can you tell us how you first got into the lighting business? When I left school…