• Aphex Twin Set For Forbidden Fruit

    February 6, 2017 - By 

    Set to return for its seventh installment on the June Bank Holiday Weekend (June 3-5), it’s been revealed that  Richard D James will headline the Sunday night of this year’s Forbidden Fruit festival in Dublin. With Orbital headlining the Saturday, Bon Iver topping the bill on Monday night and Flying Lotus, Lisa Hannigan, The Staves, Gordi and Paul Thomas Saunders amongst the acts for set for the Monday installment, it’s shaping up to be the strongest Forbidden Fruit line-up to date. Tickets can be bought here priced €145.50 for a 3-day weekend ticket.

  • Plastik Festival 2017 Launch

    February 9, 2017 - By 

    Returning this March is the biennial Plastik Festival. The weekend long festival was created in a collaboration with London’s LUX art agency, and is presented in partnership with Tempe Bar Gallery + Studios, the IFI and Dun Laoghaire’s iadt. 2015’s edition saw screenings, discussions and exhibitions in Cork, Galway and Dublin and featured a range of artists including Gerard Byrne and Sarah Pierce. 2017’s edition has already seen the announcement of Hilary Lloyd’s new show Woodall in Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, with the show’s opening also doubling as the launch of the festival’s full schedule. Opening tomorrow Friday at 5pm be sure to catch this…

  • Susan MacWilliams @ Highlanes Gallery

    February 14, 2017 - By 

    Opening this Saturday, February 18th, in Drogheda’s Highlanes Gallery is Modern Experiments – a look at the work of one of Ireland’s most intriguing and beguiling artists: Susan MacWilliams. The exhibition features work from MacWilliams’ extensive back catalogue, with focus on her output since 1998 when she began to use video as a medium. The show is a cross-border collaboration between both the Republic and Northern Arts Councils, which saw the show open in F.E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio prior to Christmas, before been shown here in Highlanes, and then moving onto Uilinn in Cork and Butler Gallery in Kilkenny. You can…

  • Stream: Rory Nellis – Casual Discrimination

    February 6, 2017 - By 

    Taken from his forthcoming second album, There Are Enough Songs In The World, ‘Casual Discrimination’ by Belfast singer-songwriter Rory Nellis is a song that wields subtlety like a scythe. With its wonderfully-woven alt-folk brood summoning the likes of Department of Eagles and Grizzly Bear, it’s a very timely song that tackles racism and discrimination with a poise, lyrical finesse and extraordinary harmonic command that we’ve found sets Nellis apart from many of his tale-telling peers. Having already released two singles from There Are Enough Songs In The World (which is set for release on Saturday, November 11) ‘Casual Discrimination’ is the third and latest…

  • Personae @ Butler Gallery

    February 18, 2017 - By 

    Established in 1943, and growing ever since through a combination of purchases, loans and gifts, the Butler Gallery’s permanent collection is both a broad and varied collation of artistic mediums. This year’s collection presentation is entitled Personae and features pieces on loan from the permanent collection at IMMA, with works by Diane Arbus, Louise Bourgeois, Jackie Nickerson and Thomas Ruff. As well as the artwork on display, the show also features the gallery’s on-going collaboration with Arts & Disability Ireland: Discovery Pens. A wonderful initiative that sees audio descriptive pens provided to visitors in order to allow all, regardless of sight, to engage with…

  • Fairport Convention @ Black Box, Belfast

    February 6, 2017 - By 

    Who knows where the time goes? For Fairport Convention, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 2017, and for its legion of fans, Sandy Denny’s song and lyric from Fairport Convention’s 1969 album Unhalfbricking has never been more poignant, or indeed, more haunting. Where indeed? Fairport has played just about every town, city and village the length of breadth of mainland UK since its first concert in 1967, but jaunts to this part of the world have been fairly rare, with this being Fairport’s first Belfast gig since 2010. All the more reason then for celebration. Fittingly, this afternoon’s matinee gig and…

  • Primer: ADW

    February 6, 2017 - By 

    In this instalment of Primer street artist ADW chats about his recent projects & inspirations. Photos and interview by Mark Earley. Hi ADW, how’s tricks? Hiya! I’m great thanks, flying high and life couldn’t be better! Can you tell us about your current work? Last November I completed a new body of work which was presented in the solo exhibition BORN TO CREATE and, as I speak, I’ve just stepped off site from after a commission in the 3Arena, in their Premium Lounge no less. It’s been a hectic few months, but loving every minute. BORN TO CREATE, which was you 4th…

  • Stream: Gadget and the Cloud – And I Told You Something True

    February 3, 2017 - By 

    Outside of her relatively recent music-making as Gadget and the Cloud, Cork’s Kelly Doherty has been an active, respected voice as music writer, critic and campaigner for a few years now. Also an occasional contributor to The Thin Air (full disclosure and all that) Doherty launched the “sad ambient sounds” of GATC in late November, 2015 with October 31st, a debut five-track release of sparse, elegiac drones and bleeping sub-pop. Fifteen months on, released during a period of personal bereavement, ‘And I Told You Something True’ is a similarly minimal effort, bounding with choppy beats, quiet grace and fidgety, shimmering…

  • T2 Trainspotting

    February 3, 2017 - By 

    Danny Boyle’s oddly-titled T2 Trainspotting is a Jonny-cum-lately [sic] sequel to the cult 1996 film. T2 picks up the threads of the saga some twenty years after the events of the first film (or T1, as I’ll call it), stitching together original elements from a screenplay by John Hodge with some bits of the novel Porno, Irvine Welsh’s sequel to his breakthrough 1993 novel. So, having ripped off his friends and fled to the Netherlands at the end of the first film, Renton (Ewan McGregor), returns to haunt Leith, the backdrop of T1’s lurid, heroin-fuelled events. Renton presents himself as…

  • Sleater-Kinney – Live In Paris

    February 3, 2017 - By 

    Anyone who claims that Sleater-Kinney do not belong in the pantheon of great bands should be forced to listen to Dig Me Out, One Beat and The Woods until they can see how wrong they are. With their furiously impassioned lyrics, clever off kilter musicianship and jaw dropping live shows, they’re a trio who belong in every music lover’s heart, not just the punks or riot grrls. Despite their tenure, the group had not released anything which demonstrated how powerful and forceful they are on stage until Live In Paris. Recorded on the tour for their comeback album, No Cities…