• Preview: WorldService Project

    October 2, 2018 - By 

    This Friday, the second of our run of shows co-presented by esteemed Belfast tastemakers Moving on Music takes place at the Black Box, when British punk-jazz quintet WorldService Project make their first Belfast performance. Blending the third-eye-opening freneticism of Return To Forever or late 60s Zappa with an acerbic surrealist Britishness that’s one of few ties to any place of origin – look for a cameo from nightmare fuel himself, Mr Giggles. A fine example of nominal determinism, their rootlessness & contempt for genre classification has led to a confluence of math-rock, prog, punk, and the kind of contemporary, groove-laden fusion carried out by the likes of Snarky Puppy, rooted in the playfulness of Mingus & Coltrane to counteract their clearly schooled…

  • Julien Baker w/ Becca Mancari @ Vicar Street, Dublin

    September 30, 2018 - By 

    There’s a medium-sized crowd at Vicar Street to welcome Julien Baker and her support act Becca Mancari to Dublin. Opening the night on a lovely note, Mancari’s mostly acoustic songs are simple yet emotional and her passionate takes about performing on a tour of two queer women are both endearing and inspiring. She’s a perfect compliment for Baker’s style with just enough hope to balance out the sadness of the latter’s music. There’s something incredible about Julien Baker and her talents. Baker has a particularly special type of stage presence. The atmosphere she controls and creates is impenetrable – every…

  • One Vision: An Interview with 20:20

    September 30, 2018 - By 

    Tucked away in a side-street of bustling Belfast City is Accidental Theatre, a relatively-fangled DIY space that plays hosts to a cavalcade of events, both illustrious and wonderfully unassuming. Sitting somewhere in between the two is 20:20, a monthly charity songwriter night that takes over the venue’s upstairs – and singularly cosy – book bar. Giving rise to a whole new kind of “intimate” gig experience, the night takes place on the second Wednesday of every month and – full testament to its stripped-back, yet carefully-curated M.O. – delivers something special, time and time again. Ahead of its next outing on October 10th…

  • Low – Double Negative

    September 29, 2018 - By 

    In a world that loves labels, being unclassifiable can be a heavy cross to bear… Long lumbered with reductive and largely meaningless tags like “Slowcore” (or worse still “Sadcore”), Low’s elegant sound has all too frequently been banished to the realms of what Jack Black’s character in High Fidelity might have dubbed “Old, sad bastard music”.   Such curt dismissal though, does a great disservice to Low’s intricate and deceptively chameleonic songs which, over the course of 15 albums, have run the gamut from chilly post-rock and spectral folk to buoyant indie pop, throwing in the odd The Smiths cover…

  • Christine and the Queens – Chris

    September 29, 2018 - By 

    Taking control over identity and self expression is a trait we saw so vividly when Héloïse Letissier initially broke onto the scene in 2016 as Christine and the Queens. Her androgynous fashion, tell-all lyrics and gusto along with her seamless flitting between singing in French and English made her the divergent pop star of the year. Where she boldly claimed ‘I’m a man now’ on Chaleur Humaine’s ‘iT’, the French performer continues to tackle gender binaries on her second album by taking on the identity of ‘Chris’. It’s an obvious forward step away from her debut with more funk and…

  • Track-by-Track: Villagers – The Art of Pretending To Swim

    October 4, 2018 - By 

    Ahead of recording a session for Radio Ulster’s Across The Line at Belfast’s Start Together Studio, Villagers’ Conor O’Brien sits down with Brian Coney to talk through the writing and recording of his stellar, self-produced new album, The Art of Pretending to Swim. Listen back to the ATL Live Session here. 1. Again The underlying beat on ‘Again’ gives a real subtle, nocturnal club vibe. Did you intend that or was it accidental? It was probably a bit of both. I wrote the riff and realised that it was basically 120 BPM, and I was like, “Cool, that will work…

  • Night School

    September 28, 2018 - By 

    From: The Administrative Office, Movie House Academy Subject: Group Assessment Feedback Dear parents, As you are aware, your children’s class was asked to submit a group project for end of term assessment. The marks for this piece of work, entitled Night School, will help determine end of year grades. Please find feedback on this project below. Mr. and Mrs. Hart: your son, Kevin, was shown he can be an amiable, if comicly scattershot presence, especially as part of a solid double-act. But if he is to improve his work he needs firmer direction: his role here, as Teddy Walker, a high school…

  • Cold War

    September 28, 2018 - By 

    The crystalline Ida (2013), about a novitiate nun in 1960’s Poland, whose discovery of a family secret provided a window into her country’s dark heart, helped establish Pawel Pawlikowski as a critical favourite, and a film-maker adept at using classical cinematic beauty to express historical discontent. His follow-up, Cold War, dedicated to Pawlikowski’s parents, is not explicitly religious in the same way. Set in Poland, just as the World War shifts into the Cold one, the film’s first and only strikingly denominational image is the bombed-out dome roof of a church. Most of the story takes place on the other side of the Iron Curtain, in nightlife spaces of cosmopolitan…