• The LEGO Ninjago Movie

    October 10, 2017 - By 

    While not quite as surefooted as previous cinematic LEGO outings, this family-friendly romp still offers a colourful dose of inspired lunacy. From the outset, it is important to acknowledge that the Ninjago franchise, albeit hugely popular in its minifigure form, is not as appealing as the Batman universe, yet that in itself liberates the filmmakers to try something a little different. At no point does this addition to the LEGO roster claim to be as subversive or slyly satirical as this year’s hilarious puncturing of the Bruce Wayne mythos nor as a piece of animation does it set out to…

  • Kelela – Take Me Apart

    October 9, 2017 - By 

    Sexual freedom, power, and intelligence have long been attributes that women have been denied, unless they expect and accept a heinous label to come with the package. If a woman is sexually confident, she is only granted said trait within social realms at the risk of being labelled: wh*re. This is an even more troubling reality if such a person identifies as queer. If she’s powerful? She is labelled as controlling. Intelligent? Arrogant. Long has the patriarchy overshadowed and demeaned women and non-binary individuals, categorising them in order to maintain dominance. Kelela challenges all of this on her debut LP Take Me Apart, an alluring piece of…

  • Exhibition: Project Cleansweep @ Sirius Arts Centre

    October 18, 2017 - By 

    While the threat of Nuclear war, and the fear of immediate death via a trigger happy world leader, has been trust to the fore of public consciousness in recent months, the threat and danger of chemical warfare via secondary means – the manufacture, storage and disposal of weapons – has been a real and constant concern for over a century. In America the issue over where to store nuclear waste has remail unresolved since the Manhattan project began, with initial efforts of dumping barrels into the waters around New Jersey so unbelievable in the context of modern knowledge that it borders…

  • Delirious Rhythm, 1936 – 2017 @ IFI

    October 9, 2017 - By 

    This week is the last to see the dual-exhibitions featuring the works of Vivienne Dick and Nan Goldin in IMMA. To coincide, aemi are presenting Delirious Rhythm 1936-2017, a personal selection of films that have influenced and inspired Dick’s oeuvre. The film will be shown in the IFI, with this one off event beginning at 6:30pm tomorrow. Artists whose works have been selected include Helen Levitt, D.A. Pennebaker, Len Lye, Sarah Pucill and Chantal Akerman, with the films chosen relating to ‘the street, the domestic and the unconscious.’  Dick will introduce the performance, with full details on the featured films available online here. Her 93% Stardust exhibition, and Goldin’s corresponding Weekend…

  • Marilyn Manson – Heaven Upside Down

    October 9, 2017 - By 

    There comes a point, where a shock rocker needs to stop. You can only frighten the mainstream for so long before you assimilate and your face has been bought and sold a million times. Consider Marilyn Manson. In the late 1990s, there was an aura of mystique surrounding him. At the height of his prowess, the man was able to perfectly encapsulate everything that a certain person feared. Here was a sexually promiscuous, androgynous nihilist who spat in the face of God. This was a man about whom a rumour about having surgery to help fellate himself didn’t seem that…

  • The World Is A Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid To Die – Always Foreign

    October 7, 2017 - By 

    Music is by its nature manipulative. Artists want to make us feel emotions or even lead us to a new school of thought. It is important never to lose sight of this. It’s all too easy for someone to trick you into thinking they’ve unearthed some great unspoken truth, when really it’s sound and fury, signifying nothing. One of the more curious revivals that our nostalgia-driven culture has bequeathed is emo. Not emo in the 2006 sense of eyeliner, fringes and being “non-conforming as can be”. More in the 1990s sincere-to-the-point-of-parody way. Basically, Mike Kinsella’s American Football. It was a resurgence…

  • Four Tet – New Energy

    October 7, 2017 - By 

      Almost two decades since launching his electronic solo career (alongside his work in post-rock band Fridge) Kieran Hebden – AKA Four Tet – has become something of an icon of the genre. Originally pioneering ‘folktronica’ – a label he was never keen on but which attempts to describe his electronic manipulation of acoustic instruments and samples on early 2000s albums like Pause and Rounds – more recent records like Beautiful Rewind have seen him shift his focus from the bedroom to the club, moving further in the direction of downtempo house, all while working on collaborations with the likes of…

  • ¡NO! – Sediments

    October 9, 2017 - By 

    Dublin experimental project ¡NO! have been steadily drip-feeding us their improvised limited edition CDs and cassettes gradually over the last three years, as well as their regular Concrete Soup nights, which feature live collaborations with internationally-renowned artists. Their tenth release in that time is Sediments, released through Little Gem Records. In the same way the late ’60s & early ’70s led Berliners to fluctuate between their own interpretations of psychedelia, jazz & blues, and making experimental, deeply ambient electronic without pause to consider genre restraints and pay heed primarily to creative impulse -leading to the movement known broadly as krautrock, ¡NO! have paid similar heed to expectation and convention. Although…

  • Malojian – Let Your Weirdness Carry You Home

    October 7, 2017 - By 

    While there’s been no shortage of first-rate albums released on these shores this year, Let Your Weirdness Carry You Home by Malojian is a special kind of triumph. The self-produced follow-up to the Stephen Scullion-fronted threesome’s Steve Albini-produced This Is Nowhere, the album is a masterfully mottled effort, veering between wonderfully wistful folk tales, Motorik rhythms, found sound and a whole gamut of forward-thinking textures and ideas. And featuring the likes of Joey Waronker (Beck, R.E.M., Atoms For Peace, Roger Waters), Gerry Love (Teenage Fanclub), and Jon Thorne of Yorkston, Thorne & Khan, the collaborative backbone of the release runs parallel with Scullion’s open-ended, subtly experimental…

  • The Bonk – The Bonk Seems To Be A Verb

    October 7, 2017 - By 

    Having released a string of stellar singles over the last two years, Dublin & Cork-based experimental, orchestral, psychedelic garage rock project The Bonk released their debut LP, The Bonk Seems To Be A Verb, on October 6. Recorded over the last few years while the outfit have been together, it’s released on cassette through Drogheda arts & culture collective Thirty Three – 45. Although the project is based around the compositions of frontman Phil Christie – of O Emperor, the substantial cast of musicians credited on the album includes some of the island’s most respected artists & virtuosi: Phil O’ Gorman – Guitar Brendan Fennessy – Drums Jim…