• Track Record: Dan Walsh

    April 1, 2014 - By 

    In the latest installment of Track Record, our photographer Brid O’Donovan meets with Cork musician Dan Walsh – primarily a drummer, who performs with Cork-based bands including Grave Lanterns, Elastic Sleep, The Great Balloon Race and STINK! – to have a look at some of his favourite records. Some fantastic music awaits. Billy Joel – The Stranger This is a record I got off my Dad. I’ve been listening to this since I was tiny but it took me years to come back to it and realise that it wasn’t just background noise. I knew all the songs from having them…

  • Album stream: Ginnels – A Country Life

    March 31, 2014 - By 

    Just over three years on from the release of his self-titled debut album, Grand Pocket Orchestra and No Monster Club guitarist/bassist Mark Chester AKA Ginnels has returned with his fourth album, A Country Life. Released via the wonderful Popical Island, the fourteen-track release was recorded, mixed and mastered by Chester at Rialto Cottages and The Pop Inn during the winter just passed. With the likes of ‘Car’s Parked’ and ‘God Botherers’ standing out on first listen, the record is seemingly a more fleshed-out and less (albeit wonderfully-woven) haphazard concoction of sounds, all propelled Chester’s instantly recognisable brand of restless, somewhat melancholic indie rock.…

  • Interview: Therapy?

    March 31, 2014 - By 

    Following on from Mike McGrath Bryan’s dotingly extensive Complete Guide To Therapy? over the last seven days, we’re happy to present our feature-length Q+A with the band’s boundlessly inimitable frontman, Andy Cairns. Featuring some superb photos by Liam Kielt, Brian Coney talked to Cairns about the brand new reissues of their albums Troublegum and Infernal Love, plans to tour the reissued material later in the year, how things are going with album number fifteen and much more besides. Hi Andy. First things first: it is, of course, two decades since the release of Troublegum. One suspects it doesn’t quite feel like…

  • Stephen Millar: The Jazz of Shapes to Come

    March 28, 2014 - By 

    All but coinciding coinciding with this year’s Brilliant Corners jazz festival, Belfast-based visual artist Stephen Millar chose an opportune time to hold his latest exhibition, ‘The Jazz of Shapes To Come’, at Belfast’s Waterfront Hall. With its wonderfully-contorted nod to Ornette Coleman’s groundbreaking 1959 album, The Shape of Jazz to Come, the exhibition features twenty-six A-Z paintings, each based around a particular jazz piece. An ambitious project and no mistake – but one that very palpably paid off for the painter and illustrator. With Joe Laverty having stopped by to take some photos of the artist and his exhibition, we spoke to Millar about…

  • Stream: Master & Dog – Candlelight

    March 27, 2014 - By 

    The long-awaited follow-up to their 2012 self-titled debut album, Belfast-based alt-folk band Master & Dog are streaming the wonderfully delicate and understated ‘Candlelight’, the first song to be taken from their new EP, Things You Should Know. Recorded and mixed at the band’s Graham House Studio, the full four-track EP is currently available to download as a digital release for £5 via Bandcamp. ‘Candlelight’, the first track on the release, is a paced and weaving ode evocative of early Elbow and the more placid tales of Wilco and Sparklehorse. Following a string of German dates in April, the band will play two…

  • Video exclusive: Sullivan & Gold – Nobody Loves You

    March 26, 2014 - By 

    Our second video exclusive from a Northern Irish duo this week comes courtesy of Derry singer-songwriter two-piece Ben Robinson and Adam Montgomery AKA Sullivan & Gold and their heartfelt cover of Reuben’s ‘Nobody Loves You’. Filmed by PIGMINTFILM, the video features Ben and Adam – previously of The Good Fight – performing their rendition of the song in Coleraine’s The Stables Flower Co. Sullivan & Gold will play the following dates over the next few of weeks: April 4 – Flowerfield Arts Centre, Portstewart April 12 – Whelan’s, Dublin April 24 – Cafe Nero (Lombard St, Fountain St, Botanic Av), Belfast April 25 – Cafe…

  • Stream: Benihana – Machines

    March 25, 2014 - By 

    Featuring a sample of Charlie Chaplin’s famous speech from The Great Dictator, Kildare electronic duo Will Molloy and Billy Archbold AKA Benihana have released a new track titled ‘Machines’. Speaking of current plans, the pair said, “We actually havent played any gigs yet so at the moment we’re  working on a few tracks with the hope of building up enough material for a decent set. We’re also starting to look at how exactly we’re going to play our stuff live – still a bit unsure! Once the new tracks are finished, hopefully we’ll be able to start piecing together our next…

  • Causeway @ Ulster Hall

    March 24, 2014 - By 

    On Wednesday, March 26, Belfast’s historical Ulster Hall will play host to the premiere of Causeway, a special orchestra-electronic tribute to the Northern Irish coastline. The third commission undertaken by Ulster Orchestra and Associate Composer Ian Wilson, the production is “firmly rooted in the mythos and history of Northern Ireland, in this instance taking its inspiration from the formation of the Giant’s Causeway.” Speaking of the event, the Ulster Orchestra said, “In order to depict the three geological processes which helped form the Causeway – shifting tectonic plates, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes – Ian, for the first time in his work, has combined…

  • Gig of the week: Joshua Burnside, Affleck & Carriages @ White’s Tavern

    March 25, 2014 - By 

    Our gig of the week will see Northern Irish alt-folk troubadour Joshua Burnside release his new single, ‘Desert Wine/Platonia’, at White’s Tavern on Thursday, March 27. Supported by electro-pop trio Affleck and Dublin electro-folk duo Carriages, it will mark Burnside’s return to the venue, where he launched his exquisite EP, If You’re Going That Way, last June. ‘Desert Wine/Platonia’ is Burnside’s first release via Broken Melody Records. Check out our interview with them here. Entry is £4, doors are at 8pm. Go here for the show’s Facebook event page and stream ‘Desert Wine’ and ‘Platonia’ via Bandcamp below.

  • Watch: Fight Like Apes – Crouching Bees

    March 24, 2014 - By 

    With their forthcoming new EP, the altogether interestingly-titled Whigfield Sextape set for release on May 12, Dublin electro-pop four-piece Fight Like Apes have unveiled the video to their  new single, ‘Crouching Bees’. Directed by Grey Sun, the video shadows a disenchanted and onesied urban flâneur on a bicycle-based, sea-sprayed mystical adventure featuring the band’s frontwoman May Kay. Check out the artwork for Whigfield Sextape (created by none other than our photo/visual editor Loreana Rushe) and the video for ‘Crouching Bees’ below.