The Murder Capital and Just Mustard at Galway’s Roisin Dubh. Photos by Ciaran O’Maolain.
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Around 1990, a small boy saw Matthew Broderick miming to a Beatles song on a carnival float. Shortly afterwards, he started writing songs, and he’s been doing it ever since. Fast forward a few years and Belfast singer-songwriter Rory Nellis is currently working on his third album, the highly-anticipated follow-up to an LP widely considered one of the strongest Northern Irish albums of 2017, There Are Enough Songs in The World. Capturing an artist whose music stems from carefully-crafted musings on life, death, relationships and – occasionally – politics, forthcoming single ‘The Fear’ finds Nellis at his most musically earworming,…
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Belfast’s Andy Ferguson and Matt McBriar AKA Bicep, with support from Cromby, at Dublin’s Olympia Theatre. Photos by Mark Earley.
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Almost a decade ago, O Emperor released their debut record Hither Thither to critical acclaim. From there, the Waterford-bred quintet would go on to constantly redefine how bands in Ireland could record and share music without, forever shirking the limits and binds of being tied to a major label. From the grandiose psych-folk of their debut to the weird, gritty krautrock, komische, garage rock and psych of Vitreous and the Lizard EP, the five-piece have proved themselves time and time again to be a group who have defied expectation at every turn. The outfit’s announcement in September that they would be disbanding, while disappointing…
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This weekend Belfast will be treated to the second year of WANDA: Feminism And Moving Image, a feminist-orientated mini film festival playing at Accidental Theatre, QFT, the Ulster Museum, Black Box and Beanbag Cinema. Tonight’s opening film is Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s stark, beautiful adaptation of Satrapi’s biographic graphic novel, charting her time growing up in Iran during the Revolution, her teenage boundary-pushing taking place against a backdrop of war, social upheaval and patriarchal religious control. Tilda Swinton fans get four Tildas for one in Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Teknolust, in which the actor plays a scientist and her three cyborg creations, who go around seducing men and extracting…
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Tonight sees the launch of the 2018 edition of HALFTONE print fair in The Library Project in Dublin’s Temple Bar. Running for just over two weeks, HALFTONE features over 70 artists with a mixture of photography, screen printing and multi-media works. There are pieces to suit a wide variety of budgets, and the works are from a broad range of emerging and established artists, including Shane Lynam, Roisin White and Jordan McQuaid. The fair kicks off tonight at 6pm and runs until November 18th, you can browse the artists featured online here.
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A quick search for Irish horror films yields recent films like The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Little Stranger. And fine films they may be, but they are categorised as Irish due to the presence of the Irish actors; Colin Farrell and Barry Keoghan in the first instance and Domhnall Gleeson in the latter. While both of those films are respectably creepy choices (Sacred Deer is particularly uncomfortable watching), the list below contains some lesser-known Irish horror films set in Ireland with a predominantly Irish cast and crew. There are plenty of other great ones out there, but here…
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John Carpenter’s soundtrack to his 1978 classic Halloween remains one of the greatest horror scores of all time – a fact reflected in the many tributes and remixes of its main themes over the years, not least Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ cover of the film’s menacing and instantly recognisable main theme. Last Halloween, Belfast producer Herb Magee AKA Arvo Party offered his own take with a “VHS Mix” interpretation that blended original with a lo-fi, wonderfully warped aesthetic and shuddering synth work more redolent of Carpenter’s soundtracks to the likes of Assault on Precinct 13. Now, in the year of our Lord John Carpenter…
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It’s a chilling story, that of a woman prematurely buried, presumed dead until awoken by a grave robber attempting to amputate her finger to make off with her valuable ring. Often attributed to early 18th century Lurgan woman Margorie McCall, her grave, pictured on the cover of this EP, does indeed state “lived once, buried twice” – though the existence of countless versions of this tale all over Europe, attributed to various different women from anywhere as early as the 14th century, does sow doubt on its veracity. Nonetheless it remains an infamous piece of local folklore, and Belfast’s finest…
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Photo: Colum O’Dwyer Back at the end of 2016, we included Leitrim experimental/psych outfit Woven Skull in our 17 for ’17 round up of acts to watch in the coming year. We like to think we were fairly on the money with the trio, who both on an individual level and as an outfit delivered dividends throughout 2017 and well into this year… Mondola player Natalia Beylis, for one, developed her breathtaking field recordings and drones project with the release of The Sunken Hum Vol 1: Field Rhythms & Drones and Scchh...phh. Guitarist Aonghus McEvoy, meanwhile, continued his solo and…