• Festival Mixtape: Castlepalooza 2016

    June 28, 2016 - By 

    Set to return to Charleville Castle in Tullamore in Co. Offaly this weekend, the line-up for this year’s Castlepalooza is a perfectly balanced affair boasting everyone from Caribou, Villagers and Jurassic 5 to Cat Power, Field Music and Cian Nugent. Easily their strongest bill to date, this year’s genre-spanning schedule also features the some of the country’s very best homegrown acts including The Altered Hours, I Am The Cosmos and New Jackson. Got your ticket? Stream our twenty-five track Festival Mixtape below.

  • Monday Mixtape: Alison Spittle

    June 27, 2016 - By 

    In this edition of Monday Mixtape comedian Alison Spittle selects some of her favourite songs, including Morrissey, No Monster Club and Everything Everything. Here’s a mixtape of important bits of my life. Some are from my college days, being a child and some that have lifted my mood and comforted me. I fell in and out of love with music as a teen. I was dangerously obsessed with looking for meaning in every lyric but now I’m in my twenties so I’ve calmed down! I look to music now to give me a pick me up and to have the craic.…

  • Rave New World (24/06)

    June 24, 2016 - By 

    There’s a strange mood in the air. All we can do is give you some music to help you get through it, as Aidan Hanratty delivers a look at the best electronic gigs, tracks and mixes of the week. Gigs Inside Moves 1st Birthday with Maurice Fulton at The Belfast Empire Music Hall Friday 24 June The legendary Maurice Fulton is playing this island twice this weekend (he’s in Dublin for Discotekken’s Pride event tomorrow), bringing a wealth of experience to the dance. I only learned this week that he was behind ‘Gypsy Woman’, a veritable classic. That’s on top of his…

  • Watch: Confess The Night, a new short by Dublin director and writer Dave Tynan

    June 23, 2016 - By 

    Featuring music by Dublin duo Simon Cullen & Sorca McGrath AKA Ships, Confess The Night is a brief yet perfectly engrossing two-minute short by Dublin director and writer Dave Tynan. A piece that is, according to its creator, “not exactly a short film but not exactly a music video either”, it is imbued with a curious somnambulist subtlety that has proven a lure in his previous efforts. Watch the film and see our brief Q+A with Tynan – in which he discusses his latest work, his early beginnings and career to date – below. Hi Dave. Can you give us some background…

  • Festival Mixtape: Interlude

    June 23, 2016 - By 

    Following their debut in October last year, Dublin city festival Interlude returns to the RHA Gallery this weekend for three days and nights of first-rate, decidedly eclectic global and homegrown sounds. With art and film also more than accounted for, Grandmaster Flash, Lisa Hannigan, Ships, Exmagician and Booka Brass Band are just some of the names that make up this year’s bill. Ahead of what’s set to be a memorable second outing, stream our twenty-track Interlude Festival Mixtape via Spotify right below.

  • Should We Stay Or Should We Go: An EU Referendum Playlist

    June 22, 2016 - By 

    With the all-important EU Referendum vote taking place tomorrow, we’ve sidestepped the unyielding electioneering to compile a genre-spanning Spotify playlist featuring fifty tracks – from The Fall, Amon Düül II and Galaxie 500 to Neutral Milk Hotel, Minutemen and The Velvet Underground – that we reckon some up the great continent in song.

  • Monday Mixtape: Anton Newcombe (The Brian Jonestown Massacre)

    June 13, 2016 - By 

    Ahead of The Brian Jonestown Massacre dates at Belfast’s Limelight on Wednesday, June 15 and Dublin’s Academy on Thursday, June 16, Anton Newcombe selects and talks about not five, not ten but twenty-three of his all-time favourite songs, featuring 13th Floor Elevators, Joni Mitchell, Dungen, Marvin Gaye, Nina Simone and more. The Doors – The Crystal Ship There’s something about this beautiful love song that touched me when I was very young. Still love it. Dungen – Panda God, when this came out I was taken back – so powerful in any language. Love these guys, love Sweden. John’s Children –…

  • It Hasn’t Got Better: The Pulse Nightclub Shootings

    June 13, 2016 - By 

    I’ll never forget my first time in a gay club. I was eighteen years old and in my first year of college. I’d been clubbing before but had never felt comfortable. The hyper-heteronormativity made me nervous – I could never picture myself dancing as carelessly as the other college kids, all flirting and grinding and at ease with themselves. I could never identify with the people around me and most nights consisted of me standing in a corner, feeling intimidated, looking out of place and humouring the drunken flirting of men who could barely even see me rather than actively…

  • Classic Album: The Smiths – The Queen Is Dead (1986)

    June 13, 2016 - By 

    The Smiths recorded their 3rd album ill at ease with their position in the music world. They were unsure of their record label, frustrated at how the media represented them, and perplexed with the public’s perception of the band. Nevertheless, when The Queen Is Dead was released, it presented The Smiths at their zenith, aware of their astonishing abilities and revelling in utilising them to full effect. The confidence bursts forth from the get-go with a 6 minute plus, unbridled thrash of a title track and is sustained throughout the 9 diverse songs that follow it. The musical landscape displays a knowing maturity;…

  • Inbound: Feather

    May 31, 2016 - By 

    Emma Garnett AKA Feather has morphed again. While many may know her from the punchy, artistic collaborations with Ben Bix this itineration is something of a departure. Now fully backed by an eight-piece band, she and the group are emerging as a blooded, blended new horizon in Irish music so it’s no surprise that they’re signed up with emerging world conscious independent label Hipdrop Records whose slant towards global sounds, funk, soul and jazz distinguish them from the pack. Take their new single ‘Like No Other’ which works its way through three distinct movements without sounding piecemeal. The comparisons to…