• Rave New World (17/7)

    July 17, 2015 - By 

    Back together, like electronic music-worshipping brothers in arms, Antoin Lindsay and Aidan Hanratty deliver this week’s Rave New World, looking at some of the very best electronic gigs, tracks, releases and mixes of the week. GIGS Twitch Present: Bicep at Mandela Hall, Belfast Friday, July 17 The last time Belfast boys Bicep played Mandela Hall for Twitch it was a sell out, so expect this to be no different. The duo have cemented themselves as the city’s most prominent global dance music force for a very good reason. Considering how electric Belfast and Twitch atmospheres can be, a homecoming show…

  • Wilco – Star Wars

    July 17, 2015 - By 

    “Why release an album this way and why make it free? Well, the biggest reason, and I’m not sure we even need any others, is that it felt like it would be fun. What’s more fun than a surprise?” So posited the ever quizzical Jeff Tweedy on Wilco’s Facebook page earlier tonight, just when pretty much every Wilco aficionado (especially those of us brushing our teeth before bed) was positively not expecting Wilco’s first studio album in four years to be let loose onto the internet for free. Now, rather than answer his concluding rhetorical question (let’s face it, there’s plenty…

  • Refused – Freedom

    July 17, 2015 - By 

    Refused are fucking alive. Or so we’re told. One of the most powerful, vital and cathartic hardcore bands of the nineties, the Swedish four-piece created an unmatched legacy by blazing a trail of fearless musical fusion, incandescendent agitprop and a vast palette of cultural influences and reference points, from fine art to the New Romantics, as best encapsulated in seminal album ‘The Shape of Punk to Come’. Then, at the height of their potency and white-hot rage, they disbanded in a storm of shit and failure, and instructed press outlets to delete reviews, promo pics on file, etc. It was…

  • Watch: Clancy & Parkes – Twenty-One Minutes of Music

    July 16, 2015 - By 

    Twenty-One Minutes Of Music is a collaboration between Thomas Parkes (The Jimmy Cake) and contemporary composer Sean L. Clancy, which was recorded during a two day residency at the Moog Sound Lab at Birmingham City University. The aim of the collaboration was to develop new compositions using a large selection of Moog synthesisers which included the legendary Moog System 55 modular synth. With a combination of improvisation and chance techniques they recorded around seven hours of material which will eventually be whittled down to an album’s worth of material in the coming months. The piece in this video is a…

  • The Hefty Fog: Growing Out of Metal

    July 16, 2015 - By 

    The metal internet collectively lost its shit recently when Mastodon’s Brent Hinds (pictured) admitted that he never really liked metal and has been, in his own words; “trying to get Mastodon to not be such a heavy metal band.” And so it was that every Mastodon fan would experience that same feeling of blighting abandonment we have all gone through at one time or another in our early years. Some have claimed that Hinds is taking the piss to an extent, that it’s unthinkable for someone to do something they don’t truly enjoy for as long as he has. I…

  • Stream: Replete – Day Off

    July 16, 2015 - By 

    One of our Acts to Watch in 2014, Kilkenny producer Pete Lawlor AKA Replete recently delivered two stellar sets in Belfast and Dublin, in Aether & Echo and the new-fangled Wiley Fox respectively. Having released stuff from the likes of Nphonix, Reagan Grey and Sly-One over the last couple of years, Devon imprint Shifting Peaks – purveyors of half decent bass, house and stuff” – have featured Lawlor in their new five-year retrospective compilation, Bass and Superstructure. A mere flicker at five minutes long, the galvanic ‘Day Off’ emerges from sublime washes of synth to form a fleshed-out gem of finespun, glistening House.

  • Roving Eye: Le Galaxie in Brighton

    July 16, 2015 - By 

    The latest Roving Eye trip took me to Brighton to get a little taste of The Great Escape with party time favourites Le Galaxie. Brighton – nicknamed “London by the Sea” – has witnessed huge gentrification over the last decade, albeit without losing its notorious licentiousness. It has a charming seaside resort exterior, with beautiful Regency architecture converted into guest houses or pied-à-terre for London bourgeois weekenders. However, a gentle scratch of the surface reveals an undercurrent of bohemian non-conformist attitudes and the UK’s largest recreational drug market. Seemed like the perfect location for the UKs leading music industry festival,…

  • Watch: Brian Conniffe – Mercy Mine

    July 16, 2015 - By 

    When he’s not playing with Patrick Kelleher, Catscars (feat. Robyn Bromfield of Everything Shook’s) and Tenro AKA Marc Aubele of Nanu Nanu and Bell X1, Dublin cross-genre, experimental musician Brian Conniffe is concocting his own warped, psych-soaked brand of electronic noise. According to Conniffe, his new track ‘Mercy Mine’ is a “surreal, ghostly and strangely misshapen take on elements of contemporary electronic pop fused in deep darkness with a distinctly vintage warped VHS video, producing a luminous and poisonous, kinetic and frenetic result.” Took the words right out of our mouth. Delve in below. Photo by Maricarmen Copca

  • Midweek Mixtape: Songs To Lament Life To When The Party’s Over But You’re Still Awake

    July 15, 2015 - By 

    It’s 3.30 am and you’re sitting alone at the kitchen table in the house of friend. It’s deadly silent apart from an occasional snore from the living room where most of your friends passed out a few minutes ago. You’re surrounded by empty bottles of cider and are still cradling your last paper cup of wine. You had been excited about going out but it was average and the exact same as every other night out. The silence and the sickly yellow filter on everything in the room caused by overly harsh lighting and the smell of cigarettes and stale…

  • Interview: Deerhoof

    July 15, 2015 - By 

    Last year, Californian experimental indie rock quartet Deerhoof released their twelfth studio, La Isla Bonita, having spent the last twenty years unfailingly re-inventing themselves as one of the most exciting and downright inimitable bands of their generation. Ahead of Cork, Dublin and Belfast shows on Tuesday, August 18, Wednesday, August 19 and Thursday, August 20, the band’s vocalist/bassist Satomi Matsuzaki and drummer Greg Saunier about their legacy, their expectations and memories of playing Ireland and their mantra of always looking forward. Photo by Chad Kamenshine Hi guys. What stage are you at right now as regards another album? as soon as one comes out, are…