• Docs Ireland: 2040

    June 14, 2019 - By 

    The screening of 2040 was packed with schoolchildren thanks to the involvement of Into Film, a Northern Irish charity focused on film as an educational tool, and it’s easy to see why Docs Ireland extended the invite. The film, presented and directed by Australia’s Damon Gameau, is a layperson’s guide to the causes of, and urgently needed possible solutions to, rapid climate breakdown, and a love letter to his daughter and the possible futures she will inhabit. There is a breezy pedagogical tone to the film, in which Gameau, via to-camera testimony, narration and slightly hokey visual aids, outlines the physical…

  • Docs Ireland: The Silence of Others

    June 14, 2019 - By 

    “Spain is covered in mass graves.” Buried wells of grief and pain stir underneath Spain’s transition from decades-long dictatorship to holiday destination democracy in Robert Bahar and Almudena Carracedo’s El silencio de otros (The Silence of Others), a sobering, difficult documentary with deep resonance for our own state and its preoccupation with protocols of remembering and forgetting. Mass executions, concentration camps, torture stations, stolen babies. Francoist Spain was a horror story, one that occupies less space in cultural memory than comparable collections of atrocities. Part of the reason for this is the so-called Pact of Forgetting, a bill passed following…

  • Deerhunter to Play Whelans

    June 12, 2019 - By 

    Deerhunter will play an intimate show in Dublin later this year. Having last played the city back in 2015, the Bradford Cox-fronted band will play Whelan’s on November 2nd. Tickets are priced at €35.00 and will go on sale on Friday at 9am. Back in January, Deerhunter released their eighth studio album, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? Watch the video for single ‘Death in Midsummer’ below.

  • Watch: HEX HUE – Numbers

    June 11, 2019 - By 

    In the short time that it’s been out there, ‘Numbers’ by Belfast’s Katie Richardson aka HEX HUE has caught the attention of tastemakers further afield, including Clash and The Line Of Best Fit. It stands to reason: as debut singles go, it’s a luminous burst of alt-pop from an artist that we’ve long come to associate with earworming and emphatic sounds. Filtering the influence of everything from percussive-centric electronica and Scando pop to introspective indie, the single comes accompanied with a video courtesy of Jonathan Beer. Delve in below.

  • Mixtape Preview: 30th Century Man @ Oh Yeah Music Centre, Belfast

    June 11, 2019 - By 

    Some things just bear repeating: between Aretha, Bowie, Leonard Cohen and Prince, popular music has lost some towering and boundlessly influential figures in recent years. In March, perhaps the most inimitable of them all passed on, leaving behind a legacy that, above all else, remained impervious to second-guessing. Over six decades, Scott Walker emerged as an auteur effortlessly wielded progression, enigma, and subtlety like no other. From fronting L.A. pop trio The Walker Brothers in the 1960s right up until his sublime score for Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux last year, he steadfastly broke new ground, contorted boundaries and followed one of most remarkable trajectories in popular music.…

  • Sounds Of The Undergrowth: Open Ear redefines what an Irish festival can be

    June 11, 2019 - By 

    If there was ever a space to disprove the absurd notion that the world of Irish independent music is disjointed or lacks community it would be Open Ear – Not that it needed disproving. For the past four years, the small festival on Cork’s Sherkin Island has shone a light on a countrywide scene that has, for some decades now, been quietly growing – thriving in the undergrowth. Expanding this year to a capacity of roughly 600 attendees, Open Ear’s celebration of Ireland’s experimental music scene, from its stalwarts to its adventurous young artists, is a testament to the unity and…

  • Festival Mixtape: Knockanstockan 2019

    June 11, 2019 - By 

    Easily one of the country’s very best summer festivals, Knockanstockan will return to the shores of Blessington Lake in Wicklow across July 19-21. Without question, this year’s line-up is their strongest and most eclectic to date. With just over one month to go, we’ve compiled a thirty-track Spotify playlist featuring some of our must-see acts, including Robocobra Quartet, Powpig, Just Mustard, Bats, Dowry, Post Punk Podge & The Technohippies, No Spill Blood, Kitt Philippa, Myles Manley, Silverbacks and many more (The Bonk aren’t on Spotify but miss them at your peril.) Go here to buy tickets to Knockanstockan 2019.