• Festival Mixtape: Stendhal Festival 2017

    July 28, 2017 - By 

    Set to return Ballmully Cottage Farm in Limavady across August 11 and 12, Northern Ireland’s only unmissable summer festival – and officially Ireland’s “best small festival” three years running – Stendhal is shaping up to be just as memorable as its last few outings. Ahead of our festival preview next week, we’ve whittled the year’s bill down to a twenty-track festival mixtape, featuring Ash, Joshua Burnside (above), Ryan Vail, Mongoose, Overhead The Albatross, Making Monsters, Ryan Vail and more. Go here to buy tickets.

  • The Fall – New Facts Emerge

    July 28, 2017 - By 

    Constant line-up changes are part and parcel of The Fall, to the point where Guardian journalist Dave Simpson almost drove himself mad trying to track down every ex-member for his book The Fallen. And yet, in the last decade they’ve been strangely stable, releasing an unprecedented four albums with an entirely unchanged line-up, and a fifth that merely added a second percussionist. Now, though, not only are they back to a single drummer, but they’ve also lost Elena Poulou, who’d been manning the keyboards since as far back as 2002, making her one of the band’s longest serving members ever,…

  • Girls Trip

    July 28, 2017 - By 

    Some movies are made for audiences. Not in a buck-passing ‘we made it for the fans, not the critics’ way that follows deserved Tomatometer mauling. It’s rather that in certain contexts, a movie’s qualities can be amplified, and its flaws made to seem less important. The Fifty Shades movies, for example, were marketed as ‘events’, a go-to destination for gaggles of girlfriends on a tipsy, fizzy Friday night out (there were, you may recall, ~scenes~). But the movies themselves — weirdly sexless, soap-opera slow, self-serious mood rock — didn’t live up to this promise. New mad-weekend comedy Girls Trip, though, does: on Netflix it…

  • Premiere: Ryan Kelly – G.O.N.E.

    July 28, 2017 - By 

    Dublin’s Ryan Kelly set out his singer-songwriter stall earlier this year with the piano-driven ‘City Views’, a track which married his recognisable influences with a refreshingly stripped-back take on youth and becoming. New single ‘G.O.N.E.’ goes one step further. An easy-listening ballad, it is simultaneously an effort that is endearingly simple in its composition and tone, as well as one of that’s unashamedly pop at its very core. Sometimes, that’s more than enough. Have a first look at the beat-up VHSesque visuals for the single below.

  • Watch: Sleep Thieves – Is This Ready?

    July 28, 2017 - By 

    Having released one of the Irish albums of 2014 in the form of You Want The Night, Dublin-based synth-pop trio Sorcha Brennan, Wayne Fahy, and Keith Byrne AKA Sleep Thieves has spent the last couple of years concocting a strong return. Bolstered by a sublime short film accompaniment courtesy of Spiceburger, new single ‘Is This Ready?’ exceeds expectations. A simmering, four-minute burst of darkly electro-pop, it sees the band’s sorcerous brand of sonic nocturnalism as potent as ever. Speaking of the track, the band said it was “the sonic realization of memories, visions, emotions, and experiences, set to a backdrop of the…

  • Stream: Ciaran Lavery – Everything Is Made To Last

    July 28, 2017 - By 

    If you’ve been in any familiar with what we’ve done over the last few years, you’ll know that we have a lot of time for Aghagallon’s Ciaran Lavery. A rare breed of artist who navigates sorrow, wanderlust, love and the borderline mystical hidden spaces that both join and keep us apart, his music comes from a place of a potent grasp of the human condition. Having been zig-zagging around the continent playing shows over the last few months, his new single ‘Everything Is Made To Last’ is a four-minute distillation of what has made all previous efforts so profoundly listenable. Triumphant…

  • Body & Soul Reveal Electric Picnic Line-Up

    July 27, 2017 - By 

    Always something of a hugely reliable draw at the annual Stradbally Festival, Body & Soul have revealed the acts set to play its area at Electric Picnic across September 1-3. With Public Service Broadcasting, New Jackson, Donal Dineen’s This Ain’t No Disco, ELLLL (pictured above), Oh Boland, Shookrah, Soulè, Everything Shook and SlowPlaceLikeHome instantly grabbing our eye, here’s the full line-up: The acts will perform at various stages in the Body & Soul village, including the Body & Soul stage, the Peace Pagoda, The Bandstand and The Haunt. Plan ahead below. Body&Soul Stage Line-up Public Service Broadcasting / Moses Sumney / Aldous Harding…

  • Tyler, The Creator – Flower Boy

    July 27, 2017 - By 

    Any artist that enjoys strong commercial success in their teens will, to a degree, grow up in public, and this is especially true for Tyler, the Creator. As the de-facto leader of the anarchic rap collective turned media empire Odd Future, he’s been baiting, and duly receiving worldwide media attention for the best part of a decade, both positively for his growing sophistication as a rapper and producer, and negatively for, well, just about everything. Odd Future were truly an exercise in controversy, and while their punk-inspired, stage-diving live shows may have had them banned from New Zealand, it was…

  • Help Musicians NI Partner with Stendhal Festival for Henry McCullough Stage, Announce New Acts

    July 27, 2017 - By 

    To honour the life and career of outstanding guitarist Henry McCullough, who sadly passed away last year, Limavady’s Stendhal Festival – August 11th & 12th – have announced a Henry McCullough Stage, and new partnership charity Help Musicians Northern Ireland. HMNI curate the stage on Friday night, as well as the Oh Yeah Centre stage, and have announced the first wave of acts for their bill. As well as a distinguished solo career, McCullough was best-known for his time with Wings, and was famously the only Irishman to play Woodstock, where he played with Joe Cocker in one of the all-time great live performances.…