• Meb Jon Sol: The Art of Fanciful Begging

    June 23, 2014 - By 

    I felt someone step over me in dark. They slipped quietly out the door and it shut behind them with a soft click, extinguishing the thin strip of light from the hallway that had briefly appeared, casting the room back into darkness. I pulled the sleeping bag tight around me and rolled over, negotiating a fleeting moment of comfort with the unforgiving wooden floor. The room was already stuffy with the early morning heat. I could tell the figure leaving that morning was tense, and I was the reason. I couldn’t blame them. They had generously offered their floor as…

  • Interview: Paddy Hanna

    June 24, 2014 - By 

    A restless artist and then some, Paddy Hanna is deservedly well regarded as one of the most prolific musicians in Dublin and beyond. When he’s not busy singing in Grand Pocket Orchestra or playing in Popical Island bands No Monster Club, Ginnels and Skelocrats, he’s writing, recording and playing his own wonderfully infectious, clever indie pop music. Off the back of the release of his exquisite debut album, Leafy Stiletto, we talk to Paddy about the incestuousness of Popical Island, scraping the “serious misery muck from [his] mind’s floor” and finding the time to commit to so many different projects. Hi Paddy. You released the…

  • Classic Album: Hüsker Dü – Zen Arcade

    June 19, 2014 - By 

    From the moment you press play, you know that you’re in for something special. Those drums, militaristic and intensely precise, ushers you into this false sense of rigidity and form. Then that bass comes in with its thick tone and fuzzy edges, blurring the sound and removing focus while never losing time. We have a second to breathe and adapt before that guitar comes in. Phasered and distorted to all hell with a piercing shrill undertone, its presence is pushing this carefully constructed structure to brink collapse. This wall of sound is finally scaled by an almost nonsensical barking vocal…

  • Fruit Tree: A Nick Drake Playlist

    June 19, 2014 - By 

    “Fame is but a fruit tree, so very unsound. It can never flourish, ’till its stock is in the ground. So men of fame, can never find a way, ‘Till time has flown, far from their dying day. Forgotten while you’re here, remembered for a while, A much updated ruin for a much outdated style.” So goes the now almost mythical opening lines to ‘Fruit Tree’ by English folk singer-songwriter Nick Drake, a song that perfectly encapsulates the peculiar phenomenon of posthumous fame and adulation. Although featuring on his 1969 debut album, Five Leaves Left – the first of three full-length albums he…

  • Inbound: Dear Desert

    June 19, 2014 - By 

    In this installment of Inbound – a feature introducing some of the country’s finest fast-rising musical talent – we chat to newly-formed Dublin-based band Dear Desert about how they got together, their influences and plans for the future. Hi guys. Can you tell us a bit about yourselves individually? Brendan: We are a Dublin based band but we all come from different parts of the country. We’re all working in Dublin and doing our best to make time to write and head to gigs. I work in music, so its easy to keep an ear out for new bands to see.…

  • Inbound: Big September

    June 17, 2014 - By 

    Featuring original photography by Alessio Michelini, we catch up with Wicklow indie rock five-piece Big September to talk about the recording and release of their debut album, the escapism inherent in their music and the band’s ahwe abundance of self-confidence looking towards the next few months. Hi guys. You released your debut album a month ago to a great response. How does it feel having it out there? It feels amazing. We had such a laugh making it and it makes it so much better that it did so well. We’re really thankful to everyone who bought it – it means so much to…

  • Festival Mixtape: Body & Soul 2014

    June 13, 2014 - By 

    Boasting one of the strongest festival line-ups this summer, Body and Soul returns to the labyrinthine and picturesque Ballinlough Castle, Co. Westmeath from June 20-22. Closely connected to the tradition of the Summer Solstice –  a thousand year old celebration to honour the sun – the festival has struck a fantastic balance between the very best acts in electronica (and elsewhere) and visual/performance art over the last few years, increasingly establishing itself as an annual showcase with its very own unique draw and charm. With exactly one week to go to the festival, we have compiled a fifteen-track Body & Soul…

  • A Tribute to John Mills (Panda Kopanda)

    June 12, 2014 - By 

    On Friday, May 30 I received a phonecall to tell me that, after suffering with leukaemia since the turn of the year, my closest friend was now considered beyond medical help and would be dead within a couple of hours. This big, mountainous human being was drawing his last breaths and I could only sit and wait for the next phonecall to confirm such a grim inevitable. It turned out he had quite a few breaths left in him and he would keep us waiting until the following day. But in the end, that end came – much too soon…

  • Choice Cuts: The Best Tracks of May

    June 10, 2014 - By 

    In the latest installment of Choice Cuts – a feature looking at the very best tracks released in the month previous – Belfast-based writer and voracious sound enthusiast Aaron Hamilton takes us a on an eight-track, cross-genre journey, culminating in his top three tracks of the month. Ben Khan – Youth [Blessed Vice] London producer Ben Khan’s recent EP 1992 sees him furthering his warm funk-pop sounds into even catchier and addictive territory with ‘Youth’. Thick synth pads and squealing guitars moan underneath a stomping beat that will definitely see an abundance of replays in summer 2014.   Little Big League…

  • Forty Years of Phantom of the Paradise

    June 11, 2014 - By 

    We open on a blood red, pixilated screen, so tightly rotoscoped that Ken Morse must have had to have a lie down afterwards. As the camera twists away we hear the urgent and distinctly imitable voice of Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling telling the tale of Swan (“he has no other name”), sonic savant and pop pioneer, the man who “brought the blues to Britain and Liverpool to America.” As the camera uncorks, a right handed thread, to a chorus of whining synthesizers, we find that Swan is looking to inaugurate his own Xanadu: “The Paradise – the ultimate rock palace”.…