• Live By Night

    January 15, 2017 - By 

    Ben Affleck wants you to take him seriously. He’s sorry about the whole Gigli thing. He’s sorry about Daredevil. He’s done his penance and channelled his humiliation into a professional second act, growing a prestige beard and directing safe but highly competent book treatments. They even gave him an Oscar for one of them! When a film journo presented him with Batman v Superman‘s damning reviews and the internet glimpsed the emptiness behind the eyes, the implicit logic was that he was supposed to be above this shit. But even reliably workmanlike directors can make mistakes. Dennis Lehane’s writing has provided several film-makers…

  • 88mph: David Bowie – Low

    January 14, 2017 - By 

    Bowie had faced his demons. He was running from L.A. and cocaine. He had decided to save his own life from drugs. His marriage was ending. He was wrangling legally with his former manager. He was escaping from the celebrity he had created. He dressed down and fitted in. He lived in anonymity. He hung out and worked with Iggy Pop. He painted. He rode a bike. For Low, Bowie invented no character for himself. He abandoned any hope of commercialism. He suffered from writer’s block. Low was both result and cure. He made the record imagining it would never…

  • Silence

    January 14, 2017 - By 

    Martin Scorsese has to be commended for taking on the adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s 1966 book of the same name, as Silence requires a deep understanding of Japan, its history and its people. And while what he achieves is impressive with the overall outlook and feel of the film, I have to admit that I felt there was problems with the representation of the Japanese Christians for the first half, along with some of the more grim scenes of violence and torture later on. If you are familiar with some of the many classic Japanese films of this era like Rashomon…

  • Half Japanese – Hear The Lions Roar

    January 13, 2017 - By 

    You know when you’re at a party, enjoying a group conversation and a member of your gaggle makes a private joke, the meaning behind you’re not privy to? It creates this terribly awkward and uncomfortable feeling as you’re left wondering what is so funny. From context and reaction, you can infer that something enjoyable, or at the very least interesting has occurred, but you’re completely at a loss as to what that is or what it even could be. Half Japanese is the musical equivalent of that sensation. Within their repertoire, you can hear the stylistic hints from the likes…

  • Premiere: Feather Beds – ‘Headache Dreams’

    January 13, 2017 - By 

    Back in August of 2015, we premiered Ah Stop, a stellar, four-track EP from Dublin producer Michael Orange AKA Feather Beds. Seventeen months on, Orange has resurfaced with the news that he will release a new album, Blooming, later this year. To tide us over in the meantime, we’re very pleased to premiere its first single, ‘Headache Dreams’, a whirling, tripped-out surge of electronica summoning Porcelain Raft, Jape and Panda Bear. We’re big fans. Feather Beds should and hopefully will be massive. Have a first listen below.

  • Video Premiere: Saramai – Heavenly

    January 13, 2017 - By 

    Having popped up on the likes of Hard Working Class Heroes and Other Voices last year, Co. Meath duo Samarai straddle a wonderfully inviting line between longing chamber pop and straight-up balladry. The third track on their sublime Magnetic North EP, the ‘Heavenly’ distils the duo’s essence to a song conjuring the subtle, gossamer-like emotive power of This Mortal Coil’s ‘Song to the Siren’ and ‘Mysteries of Love’ by Julee Cruise. Currently working on a new single which they will release in the coming weeks with their eyes on a full-length album, Saramai play Dublin’s Workman’s Club on Tuesday for Syrias…

  • The XX – I See You

    January 13, 2017 - By 

    The XX are a band that harness negative space within music to create an atmosphere so chillingly retrospective that in most cases it need only be listened to underneath moonlight. The trio slid anxiously into the industry with their debut, XX, an album that, unbeknownst to them, would become an international success. The suave blend of spacious indie-electronic beats provided by Jamie (xx) Smith and the minimal vocals of Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim proved them to be the perfect vessel for conveying the vernacular of heartbreak and loss. Following this was 2012’s Coexist, an even more stripped back, sparsely…

  • Album Premiere: Nomadic Rituals – Marking The Day

    January 12, 2017 - By 

    We’re over the moon – and indeed, the universe and its eventual demise – to premiere the gargantuan second album from one of the heaviest bands on this rock, Belfast-based heavy primal doom trio Nomadic Rituals. In the band’s own words: “‘Marking the Day’ was created as a concept album envisioning the birth and death of the cosmos, and ultimately focusing upon our subsequent place within it. From the formation of physical matter and structure of the universe; to the division of the first single cells and the evolution of the dominant species; to the final and inevitable heat death of the entire…

  • Brilliant Corners Announce 2017 Programme

    January 11, 2017 - By 

    One of the country’s most reliably consistent and forward-thinking jazz festivals, the line-up has been revealed for the fifth outing of Moving on Music’s Brilliant Corners. Set return to various venues in Belfast from March 7-11, the festival pays homage to the inimitable Charles Mingus with I Am Three, get experimental with Sirene 1009 and FAINT+, showcase some stellar local talent with Hands, Organ Failure, and Joseph Leighton, delve into full prog-rock mode with Belgian guitar trio Dans Dans and Norwegian guitar-bass-drum blasters Hedvig Mollestad Trio, before bowing out with Robocobra Quartet and Strobes. Elsewhere, Belfast Film Festival will once again be screening some…

  • David Bowie – No Plan

    January 11, 2017 - By 

    She held out her trembling hand to K. and had him sit down beside her, she spoke with great difficulty, it was difficult to understand her, but what she said Final Sentence of Franz Kafka’s The Castle History is littered with the infinite possibilities teased at within the unfinished work of great artists who died before their time. Think of Elliott Smith’s From A Basement On A Hill, David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King or George Sluizer’s Dark Blood; all released in an awkwardly assembled form, stitched together from whatever fragments the artist had left behind. While they vary wildly…