• Stream: Any Anything – First Time

    April 13, 2018 - By 

    Galway’s Any Anything formed from out of a shared appreciation of pop music and hash. After the unfortunate disbanding of their former band Drown – who we were fans of – vocalist/guitarist Robert Dalton and drummer Chris Connors picked up the discarded post-punk and shoegaze remnents and sought to reassemble them with a newfound sheen. Spending the past several months recording with producer Owen Geaney, the resulting EP is one that oozes with a rediscovered confidence, as their debut single ‘First Time’ will attest to. With additional vocals and synths provided on the record by former Drown member Laura McGennis and with new recruits Morgan Doogue (Guitar)…

  • Rampage

    April 13, 2018 - By 

    Even in stupidity there can be poetry. In the Midway Games’ Rampage series, released across arcades and consoles since 1986, the player controls a giant rat, ape or alligator whose sole objective is to destroy as much urban landscape as possible. Smash, smash, smash. Totally, blissfully uncomplicated. Things like ‘plot’ and personable characterisation weren’t pressing priorities. But a writer room abhors a vacuum, and the big-screen Rampage, the latest vehicle for one-man industry Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, expands the building-bashing conceit into a messy, tonally wild and strangely restrained man versus monster blockbuster. The focus of Rampage is a hulking…

  • Michael Inside

    April 12, 2018 - By 

    There can be a certain suspicion about films that generate a lot of positive advance word. Can any film really be that good? Is it all hype? Thankfully, the fuss about Michael Inside is justified. This is a terrific piece of film-making about the consequences of one moment in a young man’s life. Michael McCrea (Dafhyd Flynn) is 18 years old and lives with his grandfather Francis (Lalor Roddy) in a housing estate in a disadvantaged area of Dublin. His father is in prison and his mother died from a drugs overdose when he was younger. Michael has plans to…

  • Stream: Arvo Party – Liberté

    April 12, 2018 - By 

    It came as no surprise to us when we discovered that Herb Magee aka Arvo Party was nominated for last year’s Northern Ireland Music Prize. In his review of the Belfast-based producer and musician’s self-titled debut album, Cathal McBride said, “With great Irish electronic acts like Solar Bears and Adultrock having called it a day within the last year, Magee sounds more than ready to take up the mantle they’ve left behind.” Seven months on, Magee continues to uphold this promise in style. A masterfully propulsive six minutes of electronica blurring sonic lines via late 1990s trance worships, simmering ambience surges,…

  • Iron & Wine, WhoMadeWho, Mano Le Tough and More Set for Body & Soul

    April 12, 2018 - By 

    With the likes of Fever Ray, Chronixx and Jon Hopkins making up the first announcement, Iron & Wine, WhoMadeWho and Mano Le Tough are amongst the latest acts announced for this year’s Body & Soul festival. Set to return to Ballinlough Castle in Clonmellon, Co. Westmeath across the Summer Solstice weekend of June 22-24, the festival will also welcome the following new additions – including many Irish acts: Pantha Du Prince, AV AV AV, Tshegue, Riley Pierce, Soulé, Lilla Vargen, Bitch Falcon, Pillow Queens, Barq, O Emperor, R.S.A.G., Bon Voyage, Hvmmingbyrd, Sing Along Social, Reckless in Love, Mano Le Tough with The…

  • Goat Girl – Goat Girl

    April 12, 2018 - By 

    Named in reference to Goat Boy, Bill Hicks’ salacious stage persona, London four-piece Goat Girl give some clue to the contents of their debut album through their own half-abandoned alter egos. Vocalist Clottie Cream (Lottie), drummer Rosy Bones, guitarist L.E.D. (Ellie) and bassist Naima Jelly seem to both crave and dismiss the kind of anonymity that will allow the music to stand entirely on its own merits. Alongside this is a darkly humoured veneer that hangs over the songs, which often masks an incisive sting. Much has been made of the band’s South London origins, and their sonic and geographic…

  • Stream: Deadman’s Ghost – Trip Switch Down

    April 11, 2018 - By 

    Belfast producer and musician Jason Mills aka Deadman’s Ghost has returned with ‘Trip Switch Down’, a track featured in the trailer for this year’s Belfast Film Festival. Also set to feature as the opening track of a new Deadman’s Ghost EP set for release later this year, the track – which unfurls from drifting ambient electronica to full-blown, wonderfully layered Technicolour -was engineered in collaboration with David Baxter, who programmed the beats and had a hand in the overall production. The guitars and ebow drones that colour the track were largely recorded by Simon Mateer at MFR Recordings. Belfast Film festival runs…

  • Superorganism Set For Dublin Show

    April 10, 2018 - By 

    Hands down the buzziest band around, transatlantic indie-pop octet Superorganism will play Dublin’s Academy on Thursday, October 18. Tickets for the show – which are priced at €18.50 – go on sale this Friday at 10am. Taken from their self-titled debut album, watch the brand new video for ‘Night Time’ below.

  • A Quiet Place

    April 10, 2018 - By 

    For anyone forced to do the Sunday visit rounds, the concept of family life as an exercise in barely tolerable, near-silent tension is a familiar one. The pause between programme and adverts. The clacking clock hand on an ugly mantelpiece. The latest in John Krasinski’s canny pivot from straight-to-camera GIF-ery to leading man robustness, A Quiet Place brings high-concept genre logic to family quiet time, positing a near-future in which humanity has been devastated by insectoid alien invaders, so-called ‘dark angels’, with no sight organs but a highly tuned sense of hearing, perking up at minor wallops and bangs a mile away. Krasinki…