• Mission: Impossible – Fallout

    August 2, 2018 - By 

    “I’ll figure it out.” Ethan Hunt’s reassurance, repeated through Mission: Impossible — Fallout, is the mantra of the eternal optimist, one embodied perfectly by Tom Cruise, contemporary blockbuster cinema’s most industrious instrument of can-do energy, only but one of the diligently-spinning cogs in Christopher McQuarrie’s meticulously constructed, if occasionally overwhelmed, return to the Impossible brand. If the traditional, Bondian image of espionage (pre-Daniel Craig anyway) is that of effortless ease — a silencer under a dinner suit, a wry one-liner with alcohol on the breath — then in Cruise we get the opposite: intelligence work as aerobic overkill. Under the instruction of the Impossible series’ five distinct directors (McQuarrie…

  • Help Musicians Northern Ireland Launch Women In Music Fund

    August 1, 2018 - By 

    Help Musicians Northern Ireland have announced the launched of their Women In Music fund. Designed to “support organisations and established collectives working to promote gender equality and the role of women in music”, The fund will provide grants of between £1000 – £5000 to support projects with the aim of advancing the awareness of gender equality and diversity in music in Northern Ireland through education and skills development, support and empowerment. The fund is open to established collectives* and organisations who deliver projects that aim to: promote gender equality actively encourage greater participation of women in live music in Northern…

  • Video Premiere: Post-Punk Podge & The Technohippies – Home Is Where The Heart Bleeds

    August 3, 2018 - By 

    If you’ve been on the festival circuit this summer, you might have noticed a couple of masked, sometimes shirtless dad-bod satirists spitting fire in a nearby tent. Mangling and dragging traditional instrumentation all the way into the 21st century, Post-Punk Podge & The Technohippies are the willing, furious voice for a certain voiceless subsection of Irish people right now. Challenging Jobsbridge disillusionment, corruption at the highest levels, and the media’s compliance with that, their latest single, ‘Home Is Where The Heart Bleeds’ returns to another social issue held very dear to the act – homelessness. Oh, and the music? A heady blend of trip-hop, infused with the band’s trademark Irish Tourist…

  • Festival Mixtape: Focal Festival 2018

    August 1, 2018 - By 

    Across August 30, August 31 and September 1, Focal Festival will return for its third and largest outing in the grounds of Crescent Gardens in Belfast. Approximately 3,500-4,000 people are expected to attend this year’s festival, which was created to celebrate the best of Northern Irish music and industry. This year boasts a genre-spanning line-up of homegrown music, including General Fiasco, Emerald Armada and Jealous of the Birds. As well as music, Focal Festival 3.0 will mix it up with the likes of morning yoga, the screening of two films (including Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, featuring a drinking game) and a…

  • Body & Soul Reveal Electric Picnic Line-Up

    July 31, 2018 - By 

    You only need to hit up the Picnic the once to know that the Body & Soul stage is probably the most rewarding corner of the annual Stradbally festival. Today, B&S organisers have let the cat out of the bag and announced their line-up for this year’s outing, which runs from August 31 to September 2. Including countless TTA favourites including Sleep Thieves, Ryan Vail, Pillow Queens,  SlowPlaceLikeHome, Bad ones, Daithi, Soulé, Paddy Hanna, O Emperor, Laoise (pictured), Hvmmingbyrd, David Keenan and more, you can check out the line-up in full below. Tickets for this year’s Electric Picnic are sold out. Photo…

  • Stream: Kyoto Love Hotel – Still

    July 31, 2018 - By 

    The project of Joe Geaney of Floating Ballroom and former Staring at Lakes member Laura Sheary, Kyoto Love Hotel, we are told, make “songs for thoughts to dance to.” An ambitious M.O. and no mistake, but having stuck their new single ‘Still’ on repeat, we can certainly see the logic. Based in Tipperary, the pair’s latest effort is a sleek trickle of electro-pop that marries low-key trap beats, twinkling synth lines and lyrics courtesy of Sheary which explore “fragmented memories and the disparities that exist between our physical reality and our interior selves.” Delve in below.