“There is no friend as loyal as a book.” The astute words of Ernest Hemingway – and there’s a fair chance he wasn’t wrong. To coincide with this year’s World Book Day, we’ve set aside our latest read – Murakami’s South of the Border, West of the Sun, if you must know – to compile a ten-track playlist featured artists named after novels, including The Fall, Pylon, Soft Machine, The Blue Nile and The Art of Noise. Delve in to the literarily-leaning sonic wielders so.
For someone like me who has only ever had a passing interest in music-buying and hit puberty around Napster’s ascendance, the record shop as a location resided almost exclusively in the general cultural imagination as opposed to my regular routine. Inevitably my idea of what record shops and the people who work there were like came to align with the enthusiastic but elitist list-making devotion immortalised by Stephen Fears’ High Fidelity (2000), based on Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel, and brought to life by John Cusack’s world-weary shop owner Rob Gordon and his pair of ‘musical idiots’, played perfectly by Jack…
In the latest installment of Front of House, our photographer Sara Marsden popped along to Belfast’s Ulster Hall to capture Sean Pagel, Joe Byrne and Davy McCready from Ireland’s premier lighting company, PSI. Offering a wonderful insight into the industry, Pagel touches on the technical and creative sides of lighting, providing the lighting for the likes of Riverdance, Philip Glass and Live at the Marquee, as well as some personal insight into the peaks and (seemingly very rare) low points of the job. Hi Sean. First off, can you tell us how you first got into the lighting business? When I left school…
Noel Gallagher brought his High Flying Birds on tour, swooping in at Belfast’s Odyssey Arena and Dublin’s 3arena. Photos by Joe Laverty and Aidan Kelly Murphy. 3Arena, Dublin by Aidan Kelly Murphy Odyssey Arena, Belfast by Joe Laverty
Power fists at the ready! Europe and Black Star Riders brought the rock to the Ulster Hall in Belfast on Tuesday night. Photos by Liam Kielt.
tUnE-yArDs live at Vicar Street in Dublin on Tuesday night. We’ll have the full review and an exclusive image in our April issue of The Thin Air magazine. Photos by Aidan Kelly Murphy.
With many more acts still to be announced, the main wave of acts set to play this year’s Electric Picnic has been revealed. Featuring headliners Florence & The Machine and Underworld, the likes of Ride, Jurassic 5, Battles, Low, Django Django, Metz, Future Islands, The War and Drugs and more will all make an appearance. Check out the current line-up below and go here to buy tickets.
You need to be careful when choosing an album opener. The track needs to be the clearly defined mission statement of the album, but also needs to be what you’re willing to hang your hat on if all else fails. First impressions only come once. So it’s odd that, for their latest LP, Fantasy Empire, the noisy, experimental duo known as Lightning Bolt would choose to begin with something as standard as the album opener, ‘The Metal East’. The track is by no means bad. It’s loud and exciting with enough twists and jagged edges to poke your eyes out…
A heaving, cosmically-inclined beast and no mistake, Heavy Electricity, the debut album by Dublin noiseniks No Spill Blood is currently streaming via the Sargent House Soundcloud. Without further ado, we highly recommend that you listen to said psychotic masterclass – set for official release on March 10 – below.
Having featured in the first issue of our physical magazine, Belfast’s finest independent dispenser of wax,Sick Records celebrate their grand first birthday from 2pm on Saturday, March 7. Having steadily established itself as the city’s most comprehensively tasteful record store, psych-inflected rockers Thee Penny Dreadfuls, acoustic doom master Robyn G Shiels, new-fangled Derry duo Fabric and Bloomer White will all perform on the day, with DJ sets coming from Chris Hanna (Oneknown) and Jamie Nelson. Check out a video interview with Sick Records’ owner Kenny Murdock by The Thread below.