• Blade Runner 2049

    October 6, 2017 - By 

    1982’s Blade Runner was a melancholic neo-noir as impressive for its shapeless sorrow as for its far-reaching influence on sci-fi design and lexicon. In Ridley Scott, Hampton Fancher and David Peoples’ transformation of Philip K. Dick’s story, anyone with sense and money had escaped “off-world”, abandoning Earth to broken boys and their broken toys, the hazy urban air thick with the defeatism of gumshoe vice noir. The electric sheep of an Art Deco future-L.A., along with their shepherds and predators, drifted along in a kind of dreamworld, where identity and memory had turned fluid and suspicious, thanks to the Replicants,…

  • Stream: Wyvern Lingo – Out Of My Hands

    October 6, 2017 - By 

    We’ve watched the rise and rise of Bray trio Wyvern Lingo with absolute glee over the last couple of years. As well as announcing their first Irish show of 2018 at Number Twenty Two at Dublin’s Grand Social on February 23, the trio have just unveiled the masterful ‘Out Of My Hands’. Brimming with the band’s increasingly inimitable brand of harmony-driven alt-pop, it is also the band’s most political effort to date. Speaking about the track, Karen from the band said, “’Out of My Hands’ was inspired by a man I met in a pub, the night of the Home Sweet…

  • Joshua Burnside w/ Ports & Little Rivers @ Studio2, Liverpool

    October 6, 2017 - By 

    Liverpool’s Studio2 is an odd sort of a place. It’s on the backstreet of a backstreet, far away from Concert Square, the main strip and the horror of the bottled Beatles, 80s bars and fake paddywhackery of Matthew St. For the non-scousers among you, don’t Google Concert Square – it’s not what you think it is. In fact, if you ever get to Liverpool avoid the place like the bloody plague. And yet here we are, among the carparks, mechanics and those kinds of places that can just afford the rent around here. This little oasis in the middle of…

  • Album Stream: Malojian – Let Your Weirdness Carry You Home

    October 6, 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), the collaborative backbone of the release runs parallel with Scullion’s open-ended, subtly experimental approach here. Partly…

  • Stream: A.S. Fanning – Never Been Gone

    October 6, 2017 - By 

    Self-produced and recorded in his current home of Berlin, Dublin singer-songwriter A.S Fanning will release his debut album, Second Life, via Proper Octopus Records on October 13. Having made a dent via his debut single ‘Carmelita’ back in late 2015 – a carefully-crafted, almost Cohen-esque track we said “harked back whilst preserving a very present-day resonance” – new single ‘Never Been Gone’ is a deceptively refined effort, whose lilting folk-pop effulgence blends organ, fingerpicked guitar, a sweet little whistle solo and more over three minutes. Few artists can make music with two chords go a long way – Fanning makes…

  • Album Premiere & Interview: The Bonk

    October 6, 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 have released their debut LP, The Bonk Seems To Be A Verb, and we’re delighted to premiere the entire album on its day of release. 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…

  • Album Stream: Elder Druid – Carmina Satanae

    October 6, 2017 - By 

    Recorded at Belfast’s Start Together with Niall Doran, Carmina Satanae by Belfast sludge-doom five-piece Elder Druid marks the arrival of one of the country’s most promising low-end propositions. Officially launched at Belfast’s Bar Sub tonight, the release filters the holy tetrad of Black Sabbath, Electric Wizard, Kyuss and Sleep across eight tracks of psych-dappled, occult-leaning heft. Speaking to us about the dark lyricism that steers the album, guitarist Jake Wallace told us, “It gives the songs a lot more depth having stories being told underneath all the riffs and not just random babbling. Gregg has a very imaginative thought process and…

  • Grizzly Bear w/ Liima @ Vicar Street, Dublin

    October 6, 2017 - By 

    Kicking off the first of a two night stay in Dublin’s Vicar Street, New York indie rockers Grizzly Bear have returned to Irish shores to promote their fantastic new album Painted Ruins. Whilst the band have preceded their show with lots of social media insights into their night before in Whelan’s checking out The Drums, we have a while to wait before they bless us with their presence. As the anticipation builds, Liima (below)perform a support slot of their brand of heavily electronict-inged indie. The Scandinavians’ set is full of energy and they’re an obvious support for Grizzly Bear with…

  • The Mountain Between Us

    October 5, 2017 - By 

    The Mountain Between Us, a disaster-romance directed by Hany Abu-Assad and starring Idris Elba and Kate Winslet, is immediately identifiable as a book adaptation (Charles Martin’s 2010 novel). It feels like a lurid-but-chaste paperback you’d find at a train station reading desk, or on your mum’s bedside cabinet. The cover image would be two handsome lovers, wrapped in ski gear, snuggled up against the warm glow of a cabin fire. In other words, the impression here is not of danger, or life-in-the-balance peril. The only real tension is wondering how quickly they’re going to bang. The mountain, in case you…

  • Basic Space Talk @ Hugh Lane

    October 10, 2017 - By 

    Basic Space Dublin continue their series of talk in Dublin’s Hugh Lane this coming Friday with a discussion with curatorial duo RGKSKSRG. RGKSKSRG is composed of Rachel Gilbourne (IMMA Ireland) and Kate Strain (Grazer Kunstverein, located in Graz, Austria) and over the last number of years they have been curating a host of intriguing and engaging shows, utilising a variety of mediums and spaces – notably 2015’s online installation love story featuring the work of Eilis McDonald and last year’s I like to eat with my hands in Wexford Arts Centre. Places for the talk, which begins at 1pm in Gallery 18, are free but limited to…