• Inbound: Ex-Isles

    October 31, 2018 - By 

    Last month, Belfast duo James Joys and Pete Devlin AKA Ex-Isles released one of the strongest debuts from an Irish act in recent memory. Masterfully nuanced and politically-minded, the expansive chamber pop of Luxury Mass conjured everyone from John Grant and Scott Walker, to David Sylvian and ANOHNI, all while introducing a project mustering its very own magic. With the pair currently working on the follow-up to Luxury Mass, and a busy 2019 forecast, James Joys talks to us about their “dark swoon”, impetus, collaboration, literary and musical influence, and crafting music that explores our growing alienation from agency over our own lives under capitalism. Ex-Isles…

  • The Specials Announce Dublin Return

    October 30, 2018 - By 

    2-Tone heroes The Specials have announced their return to Dublin next year. Having last played the city back in 2014, the Coventry band will play Olympia Theatre on April 11th. The show is part of the band’s 40th anniversary tour, and coincides with the release of a new album, Encore – the band’s first new music in 37 years. Tickets go on sale on Friday, November 2 at 9am.

  • The Thin Air’s Alternative Halloween Playlist

    October 30, 2018 - By 

    We’ve all been there: the Halloween soiree is well under away and ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’ is on its third outing in two hours. As much as you totally nailed that leg solo the second time ’round, there’s a burning – nay, practically murderous – need for new tunes to see in Samhain in style. Pre-empt that happening all over again by taking advantage of our seventy-five track alternative Halloween Spotify playlist, featuring everyone from John Maus, Broadcast and The Cramps to Flying Lotus, Suicide and Tangerine Dream.

  • Massive Attack Set For Mezzanine XXI 2019 Show in Dublin

    October 30, 2018 - By 

    Bristol trip-hop legends Massive Attack will stop off in Dublin next as part of a tour celebrating their seminal 1998 album, Mezzanine. Promising a “totally new audio/visual production” the show at Dublin’s 3Arena on Sunday, February 24 will also feature Elizabeth Fraser, the Cocteau Twins singer who lent her vocals to the album’s second single ‘Teardrop’. The show will re-imagine Mezzanine via “custom audio reconstructed from the original samples and influences”, and is described by Robert Del Naja AKA 3D as “a one off piece of work; our own personalised nostalgia nightmare head trip”. Tickets are priced €49.50 and go on sale…

  • Mac DeMarco @ Limelight 1, Belfast

    October 30, 2018 - By 

    Why does 28-year-old Mac DeMarco command so much reverence from so many younger fans, right across the world? It’s a question as old as time (or, well, circa 2013), and yet, a definitive answer is still outstanding. Sure, there’s the midpoint he strikes between authenticity and unconcern. There’s the albums and countless live shows that veer between inward-gazing, heart-stung, silly and fun as all fuck (and who, juvenile or flirting with the grave, can’t get behind that?) Then there’s the tattered baseball cap and rollies chic, which is every bit as dominant as a love of the harmonic twists and turns that…

  • Preview: Stick in The Wheel

    October 23, 2018 - By 

    On Thursday, October 25th, we team up once again with the North’s finest promoters of forward-moving sounds, Moving on Music. And it’s all for good reason: the Belfast debut of East London four-piece Stick in The Wheel at the Duncairn. Led by vocalist Nicola Kearey and guitarist Ian Carter, the quartet are widely regarded by everyone from MOJO,  UNCUT and the BBC Folk Awards, to our very own Lankum, as one of the most compelling – and not to mention most culturally and politically switched – folk acts around. Combined, the band’s two full-length albums to date – From Here and Follow Me True –…

  • Idles @ Button Factory, Dublin

    October 23, 2018 - By 

    The accepted trajectory of momentum in modern music can be an almighty fucker. But it’s no indelible law. There are, after all, those artists who somehow manage to ride the killer wave without buckling at the knees, being swiftly consigned to the industry seabed and bid adieu with a muffled chorus of, “See? Told you they weren’t all that.” In the case of the irrepressible Idles, it seems that no amount of five-star reviews or bandwidth-shagging kudos can derail their focus from what they already have: killer songs brimming with pit-starting transmissions of self-love and tolerance, and an ever-growing fanbase whose wide-eyed love of their music outshines the tut and tsk of even the…

  • Manic Street Preachers Set For Dublin Return

    October 22, 2018 - By 

    Four years on from playing the Dame Street venue, Manic Street Preachers will play Dublin’s Olympia Theatre on Sunday, May 12th, 2019. The show will mark the 21st time the Welsh alt-rock heroes have played the capital, with their first show in the city being March, 1992 as part of the Generation Terrorists tour. This new date will come off the back of the 20th anniversary reissue of the band’s fifth album, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. Tickets go on sale at 9am from Friday, October 26th, priced €54.50.

  • Stream: Skelocrats – You’ll Never Make Me Talk

    October 18, 2018 - By 

    Call off the funeral procession: Skelocrats are back. Yes, Popical Island’s finest have returned after four years with one of their strongest single efforts to date, ‘You’ll Never Make Me Talk’. Better yet, the track – which brims with the band’s singular blend of lush baroque and earworming jangle-pop – is the first taste of a new Skelocrats full-length, which is set for release at some point next year. You’ll Never Make Me Talk by Skelocrats

  • Stream: Daithí – Lavender/Orange (feat. Tandem Felix/Sinead White)

    October 18, 2018 - By 

    Daithí has returned with not one, but two sublime new singles. It’s a collaborative one-two from the Galway-based electronic producer : featuring Dublin’s Tandem Felix, the wistful ‘Lavender’ is a stark affair marrying stoic beats, skeletal piano phrases and vocals bearing the imprint of hidden pangs. ‘Orange’, meanwhile, is an open letter penned to another about the end of a relationship. Tussling with a romantic cul-de-sac, head-on yet with subtlety, is no mean feat. For Daithí and Sinead White – whose vocals carry the single – it’s delivered with nuanced grace and earworming aplomb. Out tomorrow, stream both singles below.