• Katie Kim & The Crash Ensemble – Salt Interventions

    November 21, 2018 - By 

    Salt Interventions documents a superb live performance by Waterford musician Katie Kim as she teams up with the Crash Ensemble to revisit and reimagine her darkly brooding masterwork, Salt. Casting a new light on the 2016 album’s nine chilling tracks, Kim chooses to divest her compositions of the surging electric guitar figures and stormy electronic textures that were so central to their studio incarnations. Instead, she boils her song’s down to their base emotional bone broth, allowing her authoritative vocals to take centre stage as they unfurl over unfussy piano chords, leaving it to the orchestral 14-piece Crash Ensemble to provide…

  • Florence and the Machine @ 3Arena, Dublin

    November 21, 2018 - By 

    It’s been nine years since Florence Welch and her varied band of musicians burst into the mainstream with their orchestral indie pop and grew to extreme levels of fame. Since then, the indie pop phenomenon has released four well received albums and has developed a reputation for emotional, bombastic live shows. As an artist with a fairly traditional album cycle approach in an era of constant Spotify releases and attempts at social media virality, Welch’s work veers in and out of the spotlight every couple of years so it’s easy to forget just how impactful Florence And The Machine’s back…

  • Bouts Announce Tour, Stream ‘Love’s Lost Landings (Part 2)’

    November 21, 2018 - By 

    Dublin indie rock quartet Bouts are about to hit the road for the first time in almost five years in support of their new album, Flow. The 9-track album – which is released on January 25th 2019 and available for pre-order from today on Wonky Karousel Records – will be available on a limited run of 100 vinyl records. Half of the run will sold exclusively on their UK and Irish tour which kicks off in London with two shows (Lion Coffee + Records and The Finsbury) on Saturday, January 26th. The tour then moves to Ireland for a series of five Irish shows:…

  • The Meeting

    November 21, 2018 - By 

    An uncommon encounter conducted in the keys of grace and dignity, Irish drama The Meeting puts the mechanics of restorative justice on screen in the year’s most extraordinary blurring of fiction and reality. While walking from the bus stop to her Dublin family home one summer night, 21 year-old Ailbhe Griffith is suddenly grabbed from behind and dragged into bushes. Her attacker, who got off the bus behind her, then subjects her to a horrific sexual assault, biting, punching, scratching and penetrating her. “Not so glamorous now”, he hisses. Two passers-by intervene and chase off the perpetrator, very likely saving…

  • Outburst Queer Arts Festival 2018 Film Review

    November 21, 2018 - By 

    Christopher Honoré’s Sorry Angel is an AIDS film where the presence of the virus comes through in tone and colour rather than political sentiment. The writer and director bathes the interiors and costuming of his cross-generational French romance in hues of blue. It is the colour of melancholy, of the autumn sky just before the light gives out — and, crucially, of hospital wards. Jacques (Pierre Deladonchamps) is a mildly successful but emotionally withdrawn Parisian novelist (imagine!) who is HIV positive but still in reasonably good health. But it’s the 1990s, and so his condition is more or less fatal. He has…

  • Anderson .Paak – Oxnard

    November 20, 2018 - By 

    Anderson .Paak, the hardest working man on the southern Californian coast is back. After his breakthrough on Dr Dre’s Compton, he has gone from strength to strength, churning out his own unique hybrid of vintage soul, funk, hip hop and R&B across the so-called Beach trilogy (so far, 2014’s Venice and 2016’s Malibu). Between collaborations with Knxwledge (which bore the excellent NxWorries album), Kaytranada, the late Mac Miller and others, Paak has somehow managed to find the time to pen his latest album, Oxnard, thereby marking the end of the Beach trilogy. Aptly, Oxnard is Paak’s hometown, and as you might expect, the album…

  • Preview: Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids

    November 22, 2018 - By 

    For some people, genius is a bottomless well that flows from within and permeates everything it touches. Like our first co-presented show with Moving On Music back in October – Peter Brotzmann’s Full Blast – we’re delighted to bring an artist to the Belfast, who, despite decades between his inaugural cultural moment and now, continues to create music of astonishing relevance. Idris Ackamoor is a saxophonist, sometime keytarist & artistic director of afro-jazz ensemble The Pyramids. An Angel Fell by Idris Ackamoor and the Pyramids The Pyramids were founded in the early 70s through Antioch College as part of Cecil Taylor’s Black Music Ensemble. Embarking on the kind of pilgrimage that’s the stuff of musical…

  • The Messthetics (feat. Ex-Fugazi) Announce Dublin and Belfast Shows

    November 20, 2018 - By 

    The Messthetics, the Washington DC three-piece comprising ex-Fugazi members Brendan Canty and Joe Lally, alongside guitarist Anthony Pirog, will play two Irish shows next year. As part of a string of UK dates, the band will play Belfast’s Voodoo (alongside Robocobra Quartet) on Saturday, February 2 and Dublin’s Grand Social on February 3. Tickets are on sale now. The band released their self-titled debut album via Dischord Records in March. Read an interview with Canty here.

  • Tickets For KnockanStockan 2019 On Sale This Friday

    November 20, 2018 - By 

    Irish independent festival par excellence, KnockanStockan have announced ticket info for next year’s festival. Returning to Blessington Lake in Co. Wicklow across July 19-21, a limited amount of early bird tickets priced at €99 will go on sale this Friday, November 23 at 9am. Standard tickets will be priced as the following: 3 Day Ticket – €155 2 Day Ticket (Sat & Sun) – €135 1 Day Ticket (Sun Only) – €65 Here was our top 8 sets at this year’s festival.

  • RTÉ Choice Music Prize 2019 Announced

    November 20, 2018 - By 

    Details about next year’s RTÉ Choice Music Prize have been announced. With the Album of the Year shortlist being announced on January 9, and the Irish Song of the Year shortlist being revealed on January 30, the live event will take place at Dublin’s Vicar Street on Thursday, March 7. The latter will be broadcast live on RTÉ 2FM in a special four-hour extended programme from 7-11pm, with a highlights programme going out on RTÉ2 television the following week. This year’s prize was won by Ships for Precession, which beat off stiff competition from the likes of Lankum, Talos and Fionn Regan. Alan…