• Avengers: Infinity War

    April 27, 2018 - By 

    Yeah, there’s some spoilers. “We’re in the end game,” announces Benedict Cumberbatch’s Dr. Strange in Avengers: Infinity War. Sure we are Steve, but it’s a long game. For ten years the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been in the group stages. Infinity War is the qualifying round. There’s still the semis to look forward to. The basic narrative logic of Marvel Studios’ unprecedented and profitable experiment in serialised story-telling is that of deferred gratification. Maybe you liked this specific film, maybe you didn’t. But hey, check out what’s coming up next. Here’s Spider-Man. Here’s the Guardians of the Galaxy. Here’s the big bad…

  • Stream: Girls Names – Karoline

    April 27, 2018 - By 

    Belfast’s Girls Names are sitting on one of the Irish albums of the year. Set for release on June 15 via Tough Love, Stains on Silence finds the three-piece at their most vital and experimental to date. Recorded in various locations including Belfast’s Start Together Studio with Ben McAuley, Cully’s home and the band’s practice space, spontaneous creation, cut-up techniques and self-editing took centre-stage for the first time. “We started tearing the material apart and rebuilding, re-editing and re-recording different parts in my home in early Autumn last year,” says frontman Cathal Cully. “When we got them to a place we were happier…

  • Stream: Subplots – Unspeak

    April 27, 2018 - By 

    It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Dublin’s Subplots. Having “formally introduced” drummer Ross Chaney to the fold back in January, the band – now based between Ireland and Canada – spent last year writing and recording the full-length follow-up to 2015’s Autumning. The first single to be taken from that is ‘Unspeak’, a wonderfully-woven six-minute track gem began as a live recording of the trio – on guitar, bass synth and two busted old ARP synthesizers providing bass drum and hi-hat sounds. Vocalist Phil Boughton said, “The song grew around this simple skeletal recording of the three of us playing in…

  • Mercury 13

    April 26, 2018 - By 

    We might not be able to change the past, but there is always the opportunity to learn from it. This is the central theme of Mercury 13, the latest release in Netflix’s original documentary strand. It tells the story of the women who aspired to be among the first astronauts but faced rejection because of their sex. In 1960, 25 women were chosen to take part in a privately funded ‘women in space’ study. The project was organised by Dr Randy Loveless who had supervised the selection tests for NASA’s first astronauts, the Mercury 7. Each woman was a highly…

  • This Ain’t No Picnic: An Interview With Alpha Male Tea Party

    April 26, 2018 - By 

    Alpha Male Tea Party are a three piece math rock band from Liverpool that have made a name for themselves with hard hitting off kilter riffs and an idiosyncratic sense of wit. The lads are about to set out on an Irish Tour in order to promote their latest album, Health, with shows in Belfast, Dublin, Galway, Cork and Limerick. Jack Rudden had the pleasure of chatting to the group’s guitarist, Tom Peters, about their latest release, the math rock scene and Abraham Lincoln before they hit the road. Your five date tour kicks off on the second of May. What has…

  • Spectrum @ Drogheda Arts Festival

    April 25, 2018 - By 

    An outright highlight of this year’s Drogheda Arts Festival, Spectrum aka Pete ‘Sonic Boom’ Kember will perform at Droichead Arts Centre on Friday, May 4. An exclusive Irish date, this is an unmissable opportunity to catch the Spacemen 3 founding member and E.A.R musician’s decades-spanning solo project. Support on the night comes from Drogheda’s very own ethereal down-tempo pop collective We Eat Electric Light, producers and musicians driven by a mutual interest in electronic and organic music, noises and sounds. They are working towards a cassette EP release soon via Drogheda-based thirtythree-45. Tickets – very reasonably priced between €18-€20 – are available…

  • Watch: Pale Lanterns – In The Dark We Are

    April 25, 2018 - By 

    One thing that Northern Ireland produces with astonishing prolificacy is high calibre indie-folk alternative pop, as a cursory glance at the NI Music Prize winner list might dictate. Belfast-based singer-songwriter Darragh Donnelly, aka Pale Lanterns, has released an EP and four singles in the past 11 months, and with each has come a firm compositional forward stride. With long-time production partner Carl Small of Start Together once more at the helm, new single ‘In The Dark We Are’ further broadens the aperture on Pale Lanterns’ sound, as it metamorphoses from somnambulant reverie into crystal clear self-questioning. Melodically, Donnelly’s tied to the earthly Irish indie-folk & pop subtle experimentation of recent years, bordering…

  • Manic Street Preachers – Resistance Is Futile

    April 25, 2018 - By 

    It’s strange to think that of all the bands who could have lasted long enough to unquestionably become an institution, it was the Manic Street Preachers who claimed the honour. The Welsh punk rockers began their career with middle fingers firmly erected and a depth of knowledge to match their vicious tongues. This is a band who on their first album had Public Enemy’s The Bomb Squad and porn star Traci Lords sitting effortlessly alongside Slyvia Plath, Confucius, and Phillip Larkin. They claimed that would sell “16 million copies” of their debut and then break up in the purest distillation…

  • Hilary Woods – Colt

    April 25, 2018 - By 

    Some artists are just destined to wind up on certain rosters. One such act is Dublin’s Hilary Woods, an artist whose solo craft we’ve followed with a certain glee over the last couple of years. On June 8, the musician, ex-JJ72 member and multi-instrumentalist will release her debut full-length album, Colt, via Brooklyn’s Sacred Bones, an indie imprint whose discerning (and, so far, pretty impeccable) penchant for repping acts such as Zola Jesus, Jenny Hval, David Lynch, John Carpenter, Blanck Mass and Marissa Nadler runs directly parallel with Woods’ very own crepuscular craft. Her minimal composition & otherwordly layered atmospherics follow two acclaimed EPs and recent scoring of a horror film for IFI’s Weimar…