• Belfast Film Festival 2016

    March 10, 2016 - By 

    Comprised of more than 133 films and events from 30 countries around the world, the programme for this year’s 16th Belfast Film Festival is their biggest to date. Set to return from April 14-23 in various venues across the city, an incredible range of premieres, guests, documentaries, shorts, discussions, music, film installations fall under categories including New Cinema, Documentary Panorama, Altered States, Talking Film, TV, NI Independents and Twisted Cornea. Launching with Deniz Gamze’s Mustang on Thursday, April 14 at the Moviehouse, the sheer medley and diversity of this year’s programme is nothing short of a thing of beauty. But don’t take our word for it: you…

  • Cinema 16 For ’16: Hitchcock/Truffaut

    March 7, 2016 - By 

    An alternative guide to this year’s cinematic offerings, we trawl through the dilapidated rows of seats in the back alley ‘art’ cinemas and crumbling picture palaces so you don’t have to. Rescuing gummy Venus de Milos from sticky crevices and fishing midget gems out of cold cups of tea. Diaries at the ready cinephiles. Hitchcock. You barely need to say anything else. In fact, you don’t need to say anything at all, you could just scribble Hitch’s nine stroke signature line drawing – a caricature of the director in profile. No director has cast such a long shadow over the…

  • Watch: Moon City Boys – City

    March 1, 2016 - By 

    Stockholm four-piece Moon City Boys recently released their new track, ‘City’, a song which, for those of us outside of Sweden who haven’t had the pleasure of seeing them live yet, served as only the fifth piece of officially released music to come from the band. Having formed in 2011 but conscientiously taking their time before putting out a lengthy release, the group have released two 7″s to date, the Rockets/Stranger in 2014 and Let My Love Dance/Washing Machine in August 2015. Each of the songs on those releases showcased a group with clear influences taken from the likes of Jefferson Airplane (‘Washing Machine’) and The…

  • Ciara O’Neill – The Ebony Trail

    March 1, 2016 - By 

    The modern folk music scene is all too often seen as the playground of minimal imagination. In recent years it has divided opinion more than most and rightfully so, suffering as it does from sub-par input with lazy, introspective lyrics and generic instrumentation. Such is the dilution of the genre, it takes something special to stand out and demand attention. Ciara O’Neill’s album, The Ebony Trail is a largely sparkling piece of work with inventive themes, ideas and directions yet it is also an album which occasionally fails to match its own high standards. Ciara takes a worn out trope and twists it into something…

  • Rave New World (19/02)

    February 19, 2016 - By 

    Antoin Lindsay and Aidan Hanratty return for their latest look at the very best electronic gigs, tracks, mixes and releases of the week. Gigs Room 19: Byob Party For The People at Jigsaw, Dublin Friday 19 February 2016 This byob “gaff party” of sorts is a fundraiser for the Syrian crisis, specifically for the Dublin Calais Refugee Solidarity Group. Held in an intimate venue on Mountjoy Square, it should be a lot of fun. AH Jackmaster & Fatima Yamaha at District 8, Dublin Saturday 20 February 2016 Jackmaster is a regular visitor to these shores, and he’s a perennial party boy.…

  • No Monster Club – I Feel Magic

    February 19, 2016 - By 

    Magic conjures up images of David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear, David Blaine looking off-his-face with an eye drawn on his palm and saying ‘Shazam’ into a GMTV camera or even an uncle asking you to pick a card, any card, from a messily shuffled deck. In Ireland ‘I feel magic’ is a way of saying that we’re doing brilliantly. That we’re absolutely flying. On top of our game. Although there seems to be more than a hint of irony in that title here on Bobby Aherne’s twelfth release under the No Monster Club banner. He maintains the nursery rhyme-esque beats but gone are the…

  • Mats Gustafsson – Piano Mating

    February 18, 2016 - By 

    Mats Gustafsson is a sax player who has been recording since the 1980s, but for this strange release on Blue Tapes and X-Ray Records, he’s travelling a different path. Tasked by the label’s head with making music using an instrument he’d never recorded with before, he opted for the the Dubreq Pianomate. This is an obscure machine that acts as a kind of keyboard-less synth, generally used with a piano. In Gustafsson’s case, however, he turned the machine on itself, creating sounds that are shrill, calming, enraging, all dragged out in two lengthy sides of grinding drone. Gustafsson is known…

  • Stream: Shrug Life – Making Progress

    February 16, 2016 - By 

    With varyingly mind-numbing electioneering currently frying a good portion of the island’s collective head, Dublin indie-rock trio Shrug Life want your vote… … of confidence pertaining to the release of their excellent new single, ‘Making Progress’. One of our 16 For ’16 acts, the Danny Carroll-fronted maestros set out with the following Five Point Plan in mind: 1. Danny (lyrics, vox & guitars), Josh (drums) & Keith (bass) write song. 2. Get song recorded & mixed by Fiachra McCarthy (HEFTTRAX). 3. Get song mastered by Mark Chester. 4. Get artwork designed by Sean Conroy (deadl.ie) 5. Release song via online platforms. They have succeeded and…