Having last played the city back in 2015, Toronto punk rock duo Jesse F. Keeler and Sebastien Grainger AKA Death From Above will play Dublin’s Olympia on March 14, 2018. The band – formerly known as Death From Above 1979 – released their third studio album, Outrage! Is Now, earlier this month. Tickets for the Dublin show – which features support from the mighty Le Butherettes – go on sale on Friday, September 22 at 9am priced €30 including booking fee.
A name like Sløtface tends to be a bit of a giveaway that you might be trying too hard. If you want a title like that, you best have the chops to move beyond it. Fortunately for the Norwegian four-piece, they’ve certainly got excellent cuts in their repertoire. Having made a splash last year with their previous EP, Empire Records, the pop-punksters have set the stage for their, surprisingly solid, debut, Try Not To Freak Out. Taking all the best bits from the ilk of Green Day and Blink-182, the album works because it is unabashedly youthful. This is a…
Belfast-based sludge doom five-piece Elder Druid are self-proclaimed “Occult-laced riff dealers” on a mission. Having impressed with their debut EP, Magicka, in September last year, the band – who count the holy, hazed-out tetrad Black Sabbath, Electric Wizard, Kyuss and Sleep as key influences – will release their pummelling full-length release, Carmina Satanae, early next month. Produced by Niall Doran at Belfast’s Start Together Studio, the record is a fist-clenched, eight-track statement of intent from the fast-rising, Gregg McDowell-fronted band. A highlight from the release, lead single ‘Witchdoctor’ evolves from straight-up riff worship to the slowly bludgeoning self-exorcism of its Electric…
Galway’s Kieran O’Brien has been honing his style for some time now. From the atmospheric folk that defined last year’s After The Storm to the dream-pop leanings of June’s ‘Only A Dream’, the songwriter’s work to date has been explorative, sincere and endlessly refreshing. Returning now with his second EP, Turn, the ventures into a full-band sound are becoming more sure-footed and assertive, taking as many cues from the likes of The War On Drugs and Real Estate as from stalwarts of the Americana folk tradition. Speaking of the new EP’s thematic foundation, O’Brien said: “After The Storm reminisced heavily on the ocean and past events. These songs look ahead, towards…
Mountain Moves is the 14th album in 23 years from Bay Area art-rock stalwarts Deerhoof. Though the band have changed labels, styles and members over the years, they have always retained their singular madcap approach to writing and recording music. They’ve been a stable four piece since Ed Rodriguez joined on guitar before the recording of 2008’s Offend Maggie and have been releasing an album roughly every two years since then. At times this work rate seems to have flattened the quality of the releases, never quite reaching the heights of 2003’s Apple O or 2005’s The Runners Four but always retaining a certain consistency. During this time they’ve…
To aid in writing and recording her fifth album, Nika Roza Danilova – better known as Zola Jesus –returned to the sparse landscape of her childhood in Wisconsin. In turn, the woodland environment itself contributed greatly to the inception Okovi and the soundscapes that pervade it. As a body of work, Okovi is unsettling, unpredictable and conjures the illusion of being lost in uncharted terrain populated by deafening drum machines, sinister synths and, of course, her incredibly powerful vocals. It has been three years since Zola Jesus released new material. The interim facilitated a brief period of collaborating with Dean Hurley – David Lynch’s primary sound designer who recently shared a…
The shortlist for this year’s Northern Ireland Music Prize has been revealed. Set to take place at Belfast’s Mandela Hall on Saturday, November 11, the following twelve albums will vie for the annual prize, as voted for by more than 70 people from the Irish music industry and media: Arborist – Home Burial Arvo Party – Arvo Party Bap Kennedy – Reckless Heart The Divine Comedy – Foreverland Gross Net – Quantitative Easing Hannah Peel – Awake But Always Dreaming Invaderband – Invaderband Joshua Burnside – Ephrata Malojian – This Is Nowhere Our Krypton Son – Fleas & Diamonds Robocobra…
Supported by RTÉ 2fm, Other Voices have launched their Open Call for Irish acts and artists to apply to play the festival when it returns to Dingle across December 1-3. With Perfume Genius, Songhoy Blues, Áine Cahill and Katie Laffan amongst the acts already confirmed to play eir Other Voices, you can throw your or your band’s proverbial hat into the ring right here. Entries close at 6pm on September 22. The winning applicant will be offered a coveted chance to play the IMRO Other Room in front of a live audience in Dingle. Applicants must apply with an original piece of…
“Imagine you have no objects, well, all I can do with no objects is pick up none of them.” It sounds like a teasing philosophical line from Waiting for Godot but in fact, it’s part of the logic used by Bristol University mathematician Conor Houghton to explain the inner workings of Samuel Beckett’s 1981 play for television, Quad – Beckett’s only play to be inspired by dance. Houghton’s entertaining lecture in Enniskillen’s Ardhowen Theatre is the prelude to a rare performance of Quad, in a joint production by Pan Pan Theatre and Irish Modern Dance Theatre. Houghton’s lecture, however, begins…
For all the grim reality associated with much of Samuel Beckett’s work there is also, frequently enough, a silver lining of humour. This duality is perfectly illustrated in From an Abandoned Work, a prose piece from 1954/5 intended as part of novel that never materialized – hence the title. It took new life as a ‘meditation for radio’ and was first broadcast by the BBC in 1957. Here, it is presented in a secret location as a staged reading, something of an experiment by Director Netia Jones, whose production of Stirrings Still featuring Ian McElhinney proved to be one of…