• Cork Music Trail: Ones to Watch

    November 18, 2014 - By 

    It would seem that MTV have remembered what their (previously-orphaned) acronym stands for, turning their attention away from mouth-breathing reality-show nonsense, and on to music, of all things. With the announcement of the Shepard Fairey-directed Rebel Music calling attention to youth subcultures around the world and the transcendent tunes that soundtrack their lives, the idea hits that the floundering music-channel grandfather has either finally realised the error of its ways and is earnestly trying for relevance, or has just been subject to the law of diminishing returns. Either way, the cable & satellite success story of the 1980s wobbles its way to Cork…

  • Video Premiere: Zaska – Different Light

    November 18, 2014 - By 

    We’re pleased to present the premiere of the new video by eight-piece Dublin supergroup Zaska. Fronted by Max Zaska, the band granted our photographer Tara Thomas behind the scenes access to capture during the shoot. Check out her gallery for more images and watch the video – produced by Stoneface films and directed by Jon Hozier-Byrne – below.

  • Mr. Oizo – The Church

    November 18, 2014 - By 

    Mr. Oizo, the alias of French electro-extraordinaire and director Quentin Dupieux, has come a long way from providing the soundtrack for small-time, petty criminal puppet Flat Eric and his Levi jeans thieving shenanigans. Well known to those who came of age in the late nineties and early millennium, the track ‘Flat Beat’ and its fluffy, yellow mascot, represented a crossover of cultural motifs and fused a relationship between image and sound that is still instantly recognisable over a decade later. More importantly, with ‘Flat Beat,’ Dupieux created a track that was flat-out immense; one that was able to transcend the…

  • TTA Session #004: Robocobra Quartet

    November 18, 2014 - By 

    Undoubtedly one of the more ambitious and inimitable acts to emerge from Belfast this year, jazz-rap-punk four-piece Robocobra Quartet are a guitarless, sax -and-bass led, cymbal-spattered, improv-leaning, off-kilter time and rhyme-melding, Zorn-summoning, Mingus-hinting, Isotope 217 and Soul Coughing-echoing, decidedly forward-thinking force to be reckoned with. In the fourth of many more live sessions in the making, our resident videographer Colm Laverty captures the band perform two of their best tracks, as well as in conversation about their approach to songwriting, their “place” within local music, what the future holds in store and more. Keep an eye out for these guys…

  • Stream: Elastic Sleep – Slip

    November 18, 2014 - By 

    Announced last week through the band’s social media and streamed exclusively last night on UK blog More Than Disco, Elastic Sleep‘s new single ‘Slip’, is a step into more steadfast, strident territory, straying from their wandering dream-pop path, with noisy yet dreamy guitars and a Kim Deal-esque bassline being completely battered around by an unreasonably large (and thoroughly satisfying) drum sound and soothed, the edges taken off by the quiet majesty of Muireann Levis‘ vocals. Following on from the haze of this year’s “Leave You” E.P., it makes for a bold next move. From the blurb: Irish quintet ELASTIC SLEEP’s ‘SLIP’ is the…

  • Smolder and Scully: The Fall Review

    November 18, 2014 - By 

    Your mum’s favourite serial killer is back. At the end of last year’s five-episode run of BBC2’s The Fall, Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan) packed in his moonlighting strangling escapades and carted his family onto the next Stenna Line to the Highlands. But you can’t keep a good stalker down, especially when he’s one half of the BBC’s most locally successful and internationally exportable drama for years. In last week’s sophomore opener, he’s back to eyeing up brunettes on the Larne line. In the meantime, creator Allan Cubbit has had to defend the show against claims that it glamourizes female violence,…

  • Second Chance Cinema Weekender

    November 19, 2014 - By 

    The all-but cinematically-omniscient folks of Second Chance Cinema will host another Weekender at Belfast’s South Bank Playhouse from Friday, November 28 to Sunday, November 30. Fans of pop-up cinema take note: the schedule very nicely traverses cosy matinees, weird romance and the work of local filmmakers across the three days and nights. See below for the full schedule: Friday November 28 Northern Irish Shorts – 8pm Alternative Energies. Produced by DU Dance, 2014 (20 mins) Bombin’, Beats and B Boys, Dir. Chris Eva, 2013 (30 mins) Following the Iron Compass, Dir. Paul McParland, 2013 (15 mins) Same Again, Dir. Aidan…

  • Watch: Jape – The Heart’s Desire

    November 17, 2014 - By 

    What a feast for the senses ‘The Hearts Desire’ by Jape is. Aside from being an incredibly enjoyable slice of fidgety, cosmically-inclined electro-pop, its video – created by Conor Finnegan  – is the most visually satisfying, boundlessly colourful thing we’ve set our eyes on in quite some time. Dig the track? It will feature on Jape’s forthcoming fifth album, The Chemical Sea, which is set for release in January. Watch the video for ‘The Heart’s Desire’ below.