• Slow Place Like Home – When I See You…Ice Cream!

    August 18, 2017 - By 

    Long one of our favourite Irish acts – here they are as cover stars of our fifteenth issue – Donegal-based psychedelic electronic outfit Slow Place Like Home release their new album, When I See You…Ice Cream! on October 20. As with all Slow Place… material to date, it’s written, performed and produced by Keith Mannion. Written between Knather Woods in Donegal’s Ballyshannon, and the Algarve in Portugal, it somehow bears a sun-kissed somnambulance to match the cartography. The second single, ‘Echoes‘, featuring vocals from Fearghal McKee of ’90s cult Irish alt. rockers Whipping Boy, and album artwork comes from Derry artist John Rooney. The album was mastered by Morr Music’s Antony Ryan…

  • Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle

    August 18, 2017 - By 

    In 2015’s Sleaford Mods: Invisible Britain, film-maker Paul Sng used the Nottingham duo to tell a story about British working class discontent in the age of austerity. His new film, Dispossession: The Great Housing Swindle, takes a longer historical perspective, aiming to examine the failures and dysfunctions of modern British housing. As Maxine Peak’s narration outlines, post-war liberalism championed the country’s new council estates as fulfillments of a democratic promise, ambitious concrete guarantors of secure and dignified shelter. How, the documentary asks, did we get to the present moment, when the term ‘council estate’ is mouthed with a sneer? How…

  • Everything, Everything

    August 18, 2017 - By 

    The heroine of young-adult romance Everything, Everything, adapted from Nicola Yoon’s novel of the same name, lives in a bubble. Thanks to a complicated autoimmune condition, Maddie (Amandla Stenberg) is vulnerable to the common bacteria bugs of everyday life. For Maddie’s own protection, her mother, a doctor and her only living family, keeps her inside their specially designed, expensive-looking, air-sealed house. After she got sick as an infant, she’s never ventured outside the home. So she stays inside, reading books and blogs about them on her nice Mac, while dreaming of a life outside of the see-through walls. In concept,…

  • Stream: James Vincent McMorrow – Pink Salt Lake (Kobina Remix)

    August 18, 2017 - By 

    After the release of True Care, James Vincent McMorrow released the stems for two album tracks ‘Pink Salt Lake’ and ‘Holding On’, opening up the floor for remixers to explore and interpret the album in new ways. In an Instagram post he said: “Everything about True Care has been different. I want that reality to extend to the remixes.” Dublin-native Amsterdam-based producer Sean Arthur AKA Kobina has stepped up to the plate with a languid remix of ‘Pink Salt Lake’, taking the hushed, velvety ambience of the original and decorating it with light, pulsing beats, down-pitched vocals and giving the gospel choir backdrop a welcome…

  • Body Of Work – You Are The Light Of The World

    August 18, 2017 - By 

    You Are The Light Of The World is the title of Body Of Work’s new EP, a five track collection of improvisations from the Berlin based duo of UK and Ireland natives Tom Moore and darken malign. Released through the circle of dolphins collective, it’s the first work from this newly formed duo and is complimented by being equal parts a visual and musical project. It’s an interesting work, with the primary tone of the EP being one of unease. Both members are non-binary femmes and ex-catholics, whose interests range from a fascination with “wasted youths festering in subcultures” to “liberating…

  • Brand New – Science Fiction

    August 18, 2017 - By 

    What is it about Brand New that has allowed them to be one of rock music’s most enigmatic bands for 15 years now? Despite being raised from the same scene that birthed acts who’ve experienced fairly minimal critical fanfare over the years, Brand New have managed to eschew traditional press courting and yet maintain their role as a media darlings. And now in a sudden, startling drop, they release their fifth album, Science Fiction, after eight years in relative obscurity. For fans who were worried by their most recent single, ‘Mene’, Science Fiction is a return to the form that has…

  • Stream: Slow Place Like Home – Echoes (feat. Fearghal McKee)

    August 18, 2017 - By 

    Long one of our favourite Irish acts – here they are as cover stars of our fifteenth issue – Donegal-based psychedelic electronic outfit Slow Place Like Home have lifted the cloche on their latest single, ‘Echoes’, featuring vocals from Fearghal McKee of ’90s cult Irish alt. rockers Whipping Boy. As with all SPLH material to date, it’s written, performed and produced by Keith Mannion. Released on August 22, ‘Echoes’ is the second single taken from the band’s next album, When I See You…Ice Cream, which is due for release on October 20, and follows their June single, ‘When I See You‘. The latest LP was written…

  • Robert Plant Set For Dublin and Belfast Dates

    August 18, 2017 - By 

    Following the release of his forthcoming new album, Carry Fire, Led Zeppelin legend Robert Plant will play two Irish dates in early December. Accompanied by the Sensational Shape Shifters -a band comprising John Baggott on keyboards, moog, loops, percussion, drums, brass arrangement, t’bal, snare drum, slide guitar, piano, electric piano, bendir; Justin Adams on guitar, acoustic guitar, oud, E-bow quartet, percussion, snare drum, tambourine; Dave Smith on bendir, tambourine, djembe, drum kit; and Liam “Skin” Tyson on dobro, guitar, acoustic guitar, pedal steel, twelve-string – Plant will play Belfast’s Ulster Hall on Saturday, December 2 and Dublin’s Bord Gáis Energy…

  • England is Mine

    August 17, 2017 - By 

    Present-day fans of The Smiths, embarrassed by Morrissey’s descent into unfashionableness, usually preface their admiration with the disclaimer that it’s ‘about the music, not the man’. England is Mine provides the reverse: the man, not the music. Mark Gill’s unlicensed biopic is a portrait of the artist as a moody young man, covering the early stages of Steven Patrick Morrissey’s artistic development, before he began building his first tracks with Johnny Marr (Laurie Kynaston). Basically, it’s a music biopic without the music; in a genre well known for coasting on familiar beats, this is, at least, something new. Played by…