To mark the show’s monumentally-anticipated return after 25 years next month, Twin Peaks Fest Belfast will take place at The National across May 20-21. Promising screenings, fancy dress, Miss Twin Peaks Pageant, a Lynchian music night, prizes and more to be announced, tickets for the festival can snapped here for such £11.00 including booking fee. Damn fine, etc. As is this poster for the festival courtesy of Belfast’s Kubrix Design.
We say it pretty much every year but the line-up for this year’s Body & Soul is a thing of beauty. Returning to Clonmellon, Co. Westmeath across June 23-25, the festival will host everyone from Sleaford Mods, Austra and Metronomy to Mykki Blanco, Songhoy Blues and The Moonlandingz. With organisers opting, as ever, for sheer quality over any notion of genre-specific necessity, we’re looking forward to joining the thousands who’ll descend upon Ballinlough Castle this Summer Solstice Weekend. But first? Here’s our annual Body & Soul Festival Mixtape, featuring twenty acts we won’t be missing for anything.
Having recently played a Thin Air Tuesday Throwdown at Lavery’s in Belfast, Northern Irish quartet Mons Olympus have announced details of their forthcoming debut album. Produced by their guitarist Stephen O’Hagan and Nathan Murray, (minus single ‘Critical Mass’, which was recorded by Michael Mormecha) the eight-track Vampyroteuthis will be launched and officially released at Belfast Empire Music Hall on May 4. Blending the Rory Dee-fronted foursome’s potent amalgalm of space-rock and neo-prog, it’s sure to establish the band as one of the country’s leading exponents of cosmically-inclined, riff-fuelled alternative rock. With more shows to be announced, Mons Olympus will play the following…
Last month we had the distinct pleasure of premiering ‘Peddle It’ by Cat Palace, a Dublin act with one David Blaney at the helm. Set to release their debut album Why Don’t You // Why Don’t You, Go Off on Monday, new single ‘Don’t Come Around’ is a reflective, two-minute flicker of throwback garage-rock that sees Blaney waxing delirious on backwashed memories of youth, from WWF to Donkey Kong, and later, the dregs of friendship when it goes little pear-shaped (like, totally, man) heading into adulthood. Cat Palace play alongside Junk Drawer, Autre Monde and Oh Joy at Tivoli Backstage in Dublin on April 21. Have…
As Irish music-making monikers go, Final Boss of My Twenties is right up there with the most inspired. The sonic sobriquet (yes, we went there) of twenty-eight year old Dubliner Simon Maguire, the turn of phrase has very recently come to our attention off the back of Murphy latest single, ‘Let Go’. Featuring a rather impressive, Lego-based video – the product of “weeks of moving these little guys millimetres at a time”) – the single is a pretty contemplative affair, and what Maguire calls the “culmination of an ounce of action and a ton of theory; now the seed’s finally in the soil, I’d…
A compelling highlight from her recent live shows, ‘Flint Shingle’ by Belfast-based artist Isobel Anderson is a wonderfully meditative song inspired by the jagged cliffs of her childhood in South East England. The first single to be taken from her fourth studio album, CHALK/FLINT, the track – a “self-proclaimed symphony to the sea” – is a delicately textured, perfectly phantasmal ambient effort written in her birthplace of Sussex and recorded in Belfast. Anderson said, “It is sort of a love song, if only with a nostalgic, almost regretful, sentiment. The idea is that the landscape acts as a sort of sobering force, a marker of…
Arguably Northern Ireland’s most promising new small festival outside of Belfast, Moira Calling have unveiled the acts set to the play the Main Stage when it returns for its second outing later this year. Taking place in the the Co. Armagh village across September 8-9, Eliza and the Bear, Flyte, Emerald Armada, Girls Names (pictured), Stomptown Brass, Brand New Friend and Franklyn will all appear at the Main Stage on the 9th. Organiser Jillian Marsden of promoters Brown Lemonade said, “Last year when we started this we could never have imagined being here a year later, with a full-blown music festival and a host of…
Right up there with our favourite small Irish festivals, Distorted Perspectives – easily the country’s leading bastion of contemporary sound, psych and avant-garde art – will return to Letterkenny’s Regional Culture Centre across April 28-29. Now entering its fourth year, it will host Will Carruthers (Spacemen 3/Spiritualized), K-X-P, Hannah Peel (pictured), exmagician, Robocobra Quartet, SlowPlaceLikeHome, Tuath, Scenery, The Gatefolds, Aul Boy, The Barbiturates and Free Acid Sunshine across the two days. As well as said sonic feast, there will be a host of DJ sets from the likes of Turn It On, Chromaticism and Art for Blind records, as well as free screen-printing workshops courtesy of…
Men at Work frontman and solo artist Colin Hay live at Belfast’s Limelight 2. Photos by Liam Kielt.
With its inaugural outing last year proving a resounding success, Belfast’s Oh Yeah Music Centre has announced the programme for this year’s Women’s Work Festival. A unique festival for the city celebrating women in music, the purpose of Women’s Work is to raise the visibility of women who are generally in the minority in music, by hosting a range of activities that are open to all genders and include showcases, gigs, special events, panels, talks, and exhibitions. This year’s programme includes over 50 acts, creatives and DJs across 6 dedicated days, with additional content across the whole month of May. Up to…