• Watch: Con Vos – Central Park

    October 10, 2013 - By 

    Earlier this month we featured the enchanting new EP by New York-based singer-songwriter and vocalist Sorcha Richardson. Nine days on we introduce the Dubliner’s new project CON VOS via the Matt Baron-directed video to the sublime ‘Central Park’. Taken from the upcoming five-track EP Cocoon Bloom, the track clings to summer whilst accommodating for Autumnal psychic ruminations, its stomping, shimmering bass-led march – and Richardson’s vocal in particular – suggestive of a very promising extended play on the horizon. CON VOS are comprised of Richardson and Fortunate Ones, a production/hip-hop duo from Fort Lee, New Jersey. Watch the video to ‘Central Park’ below.

  • Glasvegas, Little Bear @ Whelans, Dublin

    October 10, 2013 - By 

    Dublin freelance photographer Ruth Medjber happily toddled along to see fast-rising Derry band Little Bear support Glasgow-based indie rock four-piece Glasvegas at Dublin’s Whelans last night, Wednesday, October 9. Check out here photos from the night below.

  • Watch: Foy Vance – Closed Hand, Full of Friends

    October 10, 2013 - By 

    County Down singer-songwriter Foy Vance has unveiled the video to his new single, ‘Closed Hand, Full of Friends’. The song is the lead track taken from Vance’s second full-length album Joy Of Nothing, released in August via Glassnote Records. Following on from ‘Joy Of Nothing’ and ‘Janey’, it is the third track to be taken from the album, the follow-up to Vance’s 2007 debut full-length, Hope. The piano featured in the video was the focus of a police investigation after police attempted to discover how it was found in the River Tay in Perthshire. Watch the video below.

  • Chequerboard – The Unfolding

    October 10, 2013 - By 

    Back in 1993, Damon Albarn coined the phrase Modern Life Is Rubbish for the title of his band’s second album. Damon, mate, you didn’t know the half of it. 20 years later and modern life is rubbisher than ever. There’s just so much noise: constantly connected to our ubiquitous bleeping smartphones, we’re hit with a non-stop barrage of tweets, texts and emails, while social media sites urge us to ‘like’ and ‘follow’ every two-bit product and adverts blare at us from every conceivable space. Honestly, it’s enough to make you wish they’d just drop the bomb and bring an end…

  • Lesser Known Pleasures: Brian Eno – Music For Films

    October 9, 2013 - By 

    Lesser Known Pleasures is an overdue hurrah for albums that live in the shadow of an artist’s more renowned or successful work. Great records, that for one reason or another, failed to tear up the charts or wow the critics, yet on further inspection are undeniably damn fine indeed. Lesser Known Pleasures are the albums that demand that the scales of justice be re-calibrated. This time around it’s the turn of Ambient pioneer, Art Pop legend and all round musical genius Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno. But you can call him just plain Eno. The album…

  • Track Record: Brendan Fennessy (O Emperor)

    October 16, 2013 - By 

    In the latest installment of Track Record, Brid O’Donovan catches up with Brendan Fennessy, drummer with Cork-based alt-rock five-piece O Emperor as he chooses and talks about a selection of his favourite and most treasured records – everyone from Curtis Mayfield and Tame Impala to Neu! and Harry Nilsson. Some taste on you there, Brendan! Todd Rundgren – A Wizard A True Star I probably picked this up a year ago. I had quite a lot of trouble finding it because there is no version in print at the time so I had to get it online. It was just…

  • Emma Sweeney & Friends @ The Mac, Belfast

    October 9, 2013 - By 

    Fast-rising musician Emma Sweeney and guests will perform a night of cutting edge Irish traditional music at Belfast’s MAC on Thursday, October 10. A finalist at the prestigious BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award in 2003, Sweeney will perform music from her album Pangea, which was released early this year to critical acclaim. Despite her age, Sweeney she accumulated an impressive amount of live experience performing alongside a host of respected traditional musicians including Dick Gaughan, Cara Dillon, Mike McGoldrick and Dezi Donnelly. The performance is part of Not So Trad, a new series of MAC music events offering traditional music with a fresh, modern approach…

  • EP Stream: Skymas – Primer

    October 8, 2013 - By 

    Belfast-based electronic rock band Skymas have unveiled their two-track debut EP, Primer. Led by former Skint recording artist Martin Corrigan with Nick Todd on bass and Andrew Dunbar as operator, the trio “aim to build tracks that will affect both the body and brain”. The EP – featuring the tracks ‘This River’ and ‘Hey Porter’ – is the band’s first release on their own label, OBR. Live dates are soon to be announced. Stream the tracks via Soundcloud below.

  • Rhinoceros

    October 8, 2013 - By 

    Romanian Theatre of the Absurd dramatist Eugène Ionesco’s classic play Rhinoceros will be be staged at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre as part of this year’s Belfast Festival at Queens. Directed by Joanne Allen – an alumni of Queens University – the play centers on the inhabitants of an entire town, in which ‘Rhinoceritis’ has gradually transformed them all into rhinoceroses. All except one, that is, for Berenger remains untouched. In a world in which everyone becomes a rhinoceros and no-one speaks the same language, the question is asked: what is there to understand? The staging takes place from October 25-October 27. Tickets – priced at £12 – are available…