Sea Sessions at Bundoran Co.Donegal featuring live performances from Primal Scream, Badly Drawn Boy, Soule, All Tvvins, Jafaris, Wyvern Lingo, Foy Vance and many more. Photos by Moira Reilly
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Success came to Lorde after her debut album Pure Heroine injected what every youthful spirit needed: A glorious, romanticised, cathartic portrayal of the mundane life that most face at a certain time in their life. At the age of 16 she sang about the superb bland details of life such as taking buses with “the knees pulled in” and “dreams of clean teeth” underneath a blanket of tender beats and adolescence; and from that moment the world was hooked. Lorde makes her sophomore return with Melodrama, literally. The album comes as a thematically packed release, dealing with the ever-expanding house…
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The Sunshine Factory live at the Pumphouse in Kilkenny with support from Laurie Shaw and the Swamp People. Photos by Ian McDonnell
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Unless you’ve been living under a considerably large rock recently, you will know that Twin Peaks has returned and has comfortably re-asserted itself as quintessential (and brilliantly batshit) water-cooler conversation TV. With the North having its own celebration via last month’s Belfast Twin Peaks Fest, the stunning Ballyhook Hill in Grangecon, Co. Wicklow will play host to Twin Freaks Festival on August 12. The one-day Lynchian inspired event will be a celebration of music, art, film and performance, and will feature contributions from Katie Kim, Paddy Kelleher, Cobra Truth, Brian Conniffee and more. Fancy dress encouraged and rewarded. Limited earlybird tickets are priced…
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Having ascended to the higher (and notably more well-attended) ranks of the live scene in the North over the last couple of years, Belfast quartet Mosmo Strange are a band that have always been as much indivisible with the low-end as they are lo-fidelity. A particularly spartan and stripped-back case in point can be found on the band’s new single ‘L’etrange’ – the lead track from their forthcoming Strangetapes release – is an untreated blast of strutting, desert-inflected rock featuring saxophone from Peter Howard of Derry’s Scenery. Have a first listen to the single right below.
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Karl Knuttel – or Bear Worship, to use his professional name – has just released his nine-song debut album, WAS. It’s an exotic, hypnotic record that seems to exist in a time and place all of its own. Here, he talks to David Turpin about the process of making the album. I’d like to ask about the title of the album, WAS. It’s a very emphatic one-word title, and yet it also happens to be a very ambiguous word. I guess what I wanted to represent with the title is that every person wants to feel like they matter. Making…
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To describe King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard as prolific would be an understatement. They’re the sort of band who write, record and release 6 EPs, 2 double LPs and 36 singles in the time it takes you to read this sentence. Having already released one full-length in February of this year, they’re evidently proponents of a more is more philosophy. That belief permeates to every part of the outfit. From their roster of members to the songs themselves which oscillate between folk, free form jazz, psychedelia and good old fashioned 1970s prog rock epics. So how does their second…
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Hands down one of the real musical success stories in Ireland of the last couple of years, we have firmly enjoyed following the rise and rise of Bray alt-pop Wyvern Lingo. With a launch party set for Dublin’s Grand Social on Friday, August 25, new single ‘I Love You Sadie’ is another instant gem bursting at the seams with the threesome’s slick marriage of exquisite, RnB-inflected harmonies, groove-laden patterns and their collective ear for a killer hook. Be prepared to the hit that repeat button as soon as those initial three minutes run out. Tickets for the Grand Social show are…
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Like very others in these parts, Derry/Donegal alternative multi-instrumentalist duo Waldorf & Cannon make a little go a very long way. With both members on vocal duties, Philip Wallace AKA Walford playing a Farmer Footdrum kit, guitar and harmonica, and Oisin Cannon on bass, their sound – bearing the imprint of the Pixies, Devo, Link Wray and Beck – is testament to the fact that the song, no matter how it’s wrangled or performed, reigns supreme. A highlight from their consistently idiosyncratic debut album, Old Dogs New Tricks, new single ‘Omit The Logic’ is an infectious beast featuring a guitar solo from Cahir…
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The Fabric and Fabriclive mix series have been on a roll recently, with stellar entries from Special Request, Call Super and Nina Kraviz recently added to the canon. The latest addition, Fabric 94, is from Dutch DJ, producer and label owner Steffi. A longtime resident at Berlin’s Panorama Bar (the house-focused corner of techno monolith Berghain), she enlisted an intriguing cast of long-time friends and new faces, asking each one to make a track specifically for the mix. What came out of it is a deep and dark journey with plenty of minor key drama, subaquatic basslines and nary a…