• David Holmes Announces Late Night Tales Album Launch

    September 8, 2016 - By 

    With support from several acts that feature on the release, David Holmes has announced details for the launch of his forthcoming Late Night Tales curated compilation. As well as a set from the Belfast DJ and producer, Barry Woolnough, Alain Maclean, the legend that is BP Fallon and Belfast drone pop masters Documenta will also perform at the launch at Belfast’s Maple Leaf Club on Saturday, October 15. To seal the deal, Stephen Hackett will be providing films/visuals on a 360 degree film projector and Joe Lindsay will compere the night. There will also be a limited edition free CD from Holmes…

  • Electric Picnic 2016

    September 7, 2016 - By 

    The Holy Grail of Irish music and the summer season is back again with the fastest selling ever Electric Picnic gracing Stradbally in its typically flamboyant style. Despite the speed with which tickets sold out, murmurs of disappointment have been rife all summer due to Picnic’s decision to pull the lineup back slightly from the massive names of the last few years in favour of a roll call of bands that would have been standard in the earlier years of the festival. This change is evident immediately due to the slightly older crowd strolling around on Friday afternoon pitching up…

  • Beat Root 2016

    September 5, 2016 - By 

    Presenting four days of wonderfully diverse roots music, Belfast’s Beat Root festival returns with yet another stellar bill from September 7-10. With all shows taking place in the city’s Crescent Arts Centre, this year’s schedule traverses Scottish psych folk maestros Trembling Bells with support from London-born, Galway-raised musician Brigid Mae Power (above), sublime psychedelic samba, distorted jazz and Afro-punk in the form of Metá Metá, English folk musician Chris Wood with support from Conor Caldwell and Danny Diamond, as well as Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh of The Gloaming and This Is How We Fly, with support from Amy McAllister. Whilst you can pay per gig,…

  • Premiere: SKYMAS – No Easy Way Out

    September 2, 2016 - By 

    One of the country’s most compelling live outfits, Belfast duo Martin Corrigan (ex-Alloy Mental) and Nick Todd AKA SKYMAS are an act that aim straight for the sonic jugular. With their aim to create tracks that “can channel the fundamental, super physical energy from beyond our everyday world” their new Dave Lievense-produced single ‘No Easy Way Out’ bears the hallmarks of their propulsive electro-rock craft to date: pounding rhythms, powerful textures and brazen lyrical gusto. Tipping their hat to musical and philosophical forerunners ranging from Fela Kuti, Steve Albini and John Lydon to David Bohm, Robert Anton Wilson and Alan Watts, Corrigan and Todd’s…

  • Mount Stewart Conversations 2016

    September 2, 2016 - By 

    Promising an inspiring, mind-expanding, one-of-a-kind weekend, 19th Century Co. Down country estate Mount Stewart will play host to a veritable feast of talks, debates, storytelling, art, ideas, music, food and drink, performances and house & gardens across September 17-18. With many wonderfully contrasting cultures converging across the weekend, the inaugural Mount Stewart Conversations is a festival built on the esteemed legacy of Ireland’s secret retreat for royals, leaders of state, influencers and aristocracy. For generations a powerhouse of great thinking, art, music, talks and deliberation, it’s an inspired venue for what’s set to be kaleidoscopic fete of ideas presented by…

  • Inbound: THUMPER

    September 1, 2016 - By 

    Dichotomies can define a band or artist throughout their bodies of work, their lives and their legacies. When things beloved by musicians run in contrast, the results are often frightening, awkward, yet compelling and almost always (sometimes accidentally) in the spirit of their time. Case in point: Dublin quintet THUMPER’s most recent release ‘Magnum Opuss’, thrown out via Little L Records on that label’s customary lash of handmade tapes, as well as via Bandcamp. Sonic Youth might serve as an obvious reference point, but the no-wave tendencies are tempered by a way with hooks best exemplified in ‘Dan the Man’,…

  • Premiere: Invaderband – Ship of Nothing

    September 1, 2016 - By 

    With their self-titled debut album set for release on November 25, Derry quartet Invaderband‘s idiosyncratic brand of garage-laced artrock betrays the hallmarks of a band content in doing things their way without neglecting the power of the hook. Nowhere is that more self-evident than on their forthcoming single ‘Ship of Nothing’, an impossibly earworming three minutes that simultaneously rollicks and lulls via chopping guitar chords, handclaps, seagull samples and organ lines in confident, mercurial synchronicity. Invaderband songwriter and vocalist Adam Leonard, “Lyrically this record covers a number of disparate bases: The invasion of Iraq, ectoplasm, alien attack and Alan Rickman, and that’s…

  • Across The Line at 30 @ Ulster Hall, Belfast

    August 31, 2016 - By 

    Long a bastion of promoting the very best in Irish music, North and South, weekly BBC Radio Ulster programme Across The Line will celebrate its 30th birthday in style with a special live show at Belfast’s Ulster Hall. As well as featuring interviews with many of the acts, The Divine Comedy, SOAK, Therapy?, Villagers (acoustic), R51 and Saint Sister will all perform on the night. Current ATL co-presenter Rigsy said “Rigsy says: “I was practically reared on ATL, with Mike Edgar introducing me to so much amazing Irish music throughout the 90s. So, it’s a real privilege to be presenting…

  • Premiere: Tenro – Vimana

    September 5, 2016 - By 

    Dublin duo Marc Aubele and Brian Conniffe AKA Tenro meld darkcore, ambient techno and deathpop with an outsider fearlessness that isn’t likely to yield to populism or calculable trend any time soon. Taken from their forthcoming debut album – which is set for release via Dublin’s Little Gem Records on October 7 – the pair’s latest track, ‘Vimana’, forges warped, Mogwai-esque modulated vocals with infernal synth textures and perfectly demented samples across five minutes. Accompanied by a suitably tripped-out (possibly seizure inducing – be warned) video, the track sits at the right side of nefarious, each phrase clawing away at some vague malevolent inking just out of view.