• Premiere: Scenery – Fool For You

    February 10, 2017 - By 

    Counting their main influences as Jeff Buckley, Amy Winehouse, Tame Impala, Matt Corby, Mac DeMarco and The Beatles, new-fangled Derry outfit Scenery have already struck a keen balance between throwback and contemporary. A slickly-produced single conjuring at least a couple of the aforementioned acts, ‘Fool For You’ is a swooning ballad that, falling comfortably into the former camp, reveals the band’s pop prowess and melodic flair. Scenery launch ‘Fool For You’ alongside Orchid Collective and Emer McLaughlin at Bennigans in Derry tonight. Have a first listen to the single via Soundcloud below.

  • Line-up Revealed For Open Ear 2017

    February 9, 2017 - By 

    Having made its sold-out inaugural outing last year, the intimate and independent Open Ear festival will return to the idyllic sanctuary of Sherkin Island off West Cork this June bank holiday (June 2-4). And with its focus on the best experimental, ambient, electronic, neo-classical, hip-hop/beats and noise-based sounds from Ireland and further afield, this year’s line-up – which is as proudly eclectic as the last – features the likes of Mike Slott, Eomac, The Cyclist, Naive Ted, Ambulance, Fixity and Magic Pockets. Here’s the full line-up. Early bird tickets are now available priced at €75. Go here for those.

  • Ban an Tí Exhibition

    February 10, 2017 - By 

    Today and tomorrow are the last days to catch the Ban an Tí exhibition in The Chocolate Factory on King’s Inn Street. The show is a multi-artist response to the home as a female space, and looks at the domestication of femininity and the role of women in modern Irish society. Ban an Tí features a broad range of mediums from a multitude of artists, including Orla Langton, Kathryn McShane and Rachael Kelly – who was recently long-listed for the Aesthetica Art Price 2017. As well as installation work, performance art is also included with tomorrow seeing Léann Herlihy performing A glove is a gift at 3pm. The space is open…

  • Tinariwen – Elwan

    February 9, 2017 - By 

    It’s fair to say that in our Western-centric music industry, few artists from an African country like Mali tend to get much of a look in. With that in mind, for a band of Tuareg musicians like Tinariwen to break through as they have must be a signal that they’re pretty damn good. Formed as long ago as 1979 as political exiles in Algeria but only releasing their first album proper in 2001 after their return to their native country having picked up several new members along the way, their gradually growing international profile culminated in fifth album Tassili –…

  • Christine

    February 9, 2017 - By 

    The line ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ marks a key moment in director Antonio Campos’ (Simon Killer) latest movie Christine, about the grim story of US newswoman Christine Chubbuck. Based on real events, this deeply cynical line is delivered in a time when the news started to turn tabloid in the 70s, and sums up much of what the filmmaker is criticising in this shocking, yet intensely mesmerising, depiction of the reporter’s last days. Rebecca Hall (The Gift) stars as Chubbuck, an intelligent but highly strung news reporter whose personal life and career collide, causing her world to spiral out of…

  • Watch: Gross Net – Still Life

    February 9, 2017 - By 

    An outright highlight from his first-rate debut album, Quantitative Easing, ‘Still Life’ by Belfast’s Philip Quinn AKA Gross Net is a song that wrestles dark tidings and psychic pain in impervious fashion. With its creeping Numan-esque bass-synth climb and stark drum machine patterns, a perfect maelstrom of noise is woven across the song’s masterfully suffocating six-and-a-bit minutes. Check out Autumn Andel’s new video for the single below and make sure to check out Quantitative Easing via Belfast imprint Touch Sensitive.

  • 17 For ’17: Rue

    February 9, 2017 - By 

    With groups like the Gloaming making some not insignificant waves, Irish trad music seems to be gaining more and more ground, in a crossover context. It’s within a framework that a band like Rue can finally get the respect and due recognition they deserve because lord knows the Dublin-based group has earned it. Made up of Lynched alumni Cormac MacDiarmada, Brian Flanagan, and Radie Peat, the trio specializes in carefully crafting their own reinterpretations of classic standards from both sides of the pond. While they may not have much in way of material at present, what they do have is…

  • Cat Power Set For Vicar Street

    February 8, 2017 - By 

    Having last played the city back in 2014, it’s been announced that Atlanta, Georgia indie rock singer-songwriter Chan Marshall AKA Cat Power will play Dublin’s Vicar Street on Thursday, March 16. Tickets for the show are priced €30 and go on sale this Friday (February 10) at 9am.  

  • Watch: BARQ – Bear

    February 8, 2017 - By 

    Having been tipped from many corners for big things in 2017, Dublin’s BARQ commanded our attention early last year with their slick debut single ‘Gentle Kind of Lies’. A busy, increasingly impressive year followed, culminating in the release of ‘Bear’, a single – their strongest to date – confronting themes of loss and coming of age. Recorded at Westland Studios by Alwyn John Walker, mixed by Scott Hallidy and mastered by Andrei Eremin, the single now has a visual accompaniment courtesy of Crooked Gentlemen. Dig it below.