Consistently stellar programming across the board aside, if there’s one thing you can rely on Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival for it’s delivering on a solid headliner. This year is no exception. Doubling up as the Ian McCullough-fronted band’s first show in the city since 2015, the Festival Marquee will play host to legendary Liverpool band Echo and the Bunnymen on Friday, May 3. Tickets are priced £25 and are on sale now.
With their second album set for release post-festival season, Strength N.I.A have returned with their first single of the year, ‘Margaret’. A typically idiosyncratic and bombastic effort from the Derry alt-pop project, the track – which has received support from the likes of BBC 6Music – marries drums and thrift-store organ patterns with bobbing bass and frontman Rory Moore’s vocal refrains. Strength N.I.A play the following dates in May. Friday, May 3: Whelans, Dublin Friday, May 17: Venue TBA, Derry Friday, May 24: Roundy, Cork Margaret by Strength N.I.A
‘It’s Darker’, the new single from Belfast-based band New Pagans, has its origins in a messy incident at a house party. A musician, we’re told, became aggressive and wouldn’t tolerate frontwoman Lyndsey McDougall’s opinions. “That’s where the original anger comes from – a confrontation,” says McDougall. “It’s happened to me a few times. It’s like, ‘Oh you’re a girl, you should just shut up’. A feminist anger came from that. Yes, I should be able to have an opinion. And it can be different to yours.” The single wears this defiance firmly on its sleeve. It’s a potent and insubmissive alt-rock blitz from…
You may have caught wind: we’re very excited for the release of the forthcoming self-titled debut album from Dundalk three-piece Larry. Set for release via Pizza Pizza Records on April 26, the nine-track release was recorded by none other than Steve Albini at Electrical Audio, and mastered by the one – the only – Bob Weston. A track we called a “fervent, four-minute paean to freedom and psychic wanderlust” lead single ‘Cocker Spaniel’ packed a big punch. ‘Liar’ goes one further. Capturing the band’s increasingly distinctive and implosive push-and-pull, its skeletal dynamics brilliantly mirror frontman Joey Edwards’ confessionalism. Have a first listen to…
For any number of avertible reasons, there are criminally underrated artists sprawled right across the island of Ireland, and none more than James Joys. The Belfast composer, musician and producer (real name James Thompson) is someone whose emphatic, masterfully-woven craft operates “somewhere between the concrète and the kinetic.” A Constellation Of Bargained Parts takes that particular turn-of-phrase and transmits it as a full-blown reality. Teaming up with the Codetta Choir and vocalist Peter Devlin – who Joys also makes music with via the guise of the exceptional Ex-Isles – the musician spans choral, electroacoustic, postmodern classic and electronic worlds to deliver five powerful “modern lamentations” that,…
We continue 19 for ’19, our feature looking at Irish acts we’re convinced are going places in 2019, with Berlin-based Irish artist Shaun Mulrooney aka TAU. Photo by Brian Mulligan Though it’s early days, come December, you’ll almost certainly find the second album from Berlin-based Irish musician Shaun Mulrooney aka TAU featuring high in myriad end-of-year lists. The follow-up to 2016’s TAU TAU TAU – a release whose recording started on the day Bowie died – TAU & The Drones Of Praise sprung forth last month as a sorcerous statement of intent. The genre-mangling psych experimentalism of TAU (who, with Mulrooney at…
Norman Cook aka Fatboy Slim single-handedly decimating Dublin’s 3Arena. Photos by Leah Carroll.
On Friday night, the packed-out downstairs venue of Dublin’s International Bar played host the first ever music video exhibition by C-47. As well as delivering a stellar debut solo set on the night, Dublin singer-songwriter’s Jake Regan’s ‘Over It’ proved a highlight among the various videos that were screened. Produced by C-47, directed and edited by John D Breen, produced by M.A.K and featuring cinematography by Helton Nóbrega, the video – which features Regan and Eilish Malon from Girlfriend among others – was shot on Wicklow beaches and in the Dublin mountains over two days. While many will know Regan from Dublin band Segrasso, ‘Over It’…
Marrying sublime autotuned vocals with balmy synth-pop production, ‘The Shapes That Bond You’ finds Tipperary duo Joe Geaney and Laura Sheary aka Kyoto Love Hotel confidently expand upon their increasingly distinctive brand of woozy nocturnalism. Doubling as the duo’s strongest single effort to date – and one of the Irish singles of the year thus far – it’s a brisk and nuanced gem that instantly demands a repeated listen. Keep up to date with Kyoto Love Hotel here.
Belfast punk legends Stiff Little Fingers will play two Irish shows in August. The Jake Burns-fronted quartet will play Dublin’s Academy on Friday, August 23 and Belfast’s Custom House Square – alongside New Model Army, Therapy?, The Toy Dolls and a DJ set from Terri Hooley – on Saturday, August 24. Ticket go on sale this Friday at 10am, priced €25 and £27 respectively.