• Stream: Figure of 8 – The Migrant

    May 30, 2016 - By 

    A five-track release borne from “electronic blood, sweat and tears”, The Migrant is Derry producer Dermot McGowan AKA Figure of 8’s first EP in 4 years. From Trans Am-esque opener ‘Future Needs’ via emphatic highlight ‘Click Here To Save The World’ to restrained house closer ‘Celestial Bodies’, it’s a release illustrating remarkable progression, positing McGowan and his Todd Terje-evoking craft as an act that demands your immediate attention. Irish summer festival organisers: it’s never too late to add Figure of 8 to your bill. The Migrant by Figure of 8

  • Open House Festival 2016 Launched

    May 26, 2016 - By 

    With a host of lovingly-compiled, brilliantly diverse outings behind them, Open House Festival have launched the expectedly stellar programme for their 2016 outing in August. With 125 events taking place in more than 40 venues in the Northern Irish seaside town, music, film, food & drink, theatre, literature, comedy, art, magic, mystery, dance and lectures is – as ever – the perfectly balanced order of the day for the annual Bangor festival. Amongst the highlights in this year’s programme are a 40th anniversary show by The Damned, Iron & Wine, a 70th birthday tribute to former AC/DC frontman Bon Scott, Ian Rankin,…

  • Preview: The Undertones @ The BBC

    May 27, 2016 - By 

    Having formed in Derry in 1976, it’s a fact universally acknowledged that The Undertones have spent the last 40 years establishing and re-establishing themselves as one of the country’s most treasured acts. With their equally enduring legacy, back catalogue and inimitable charm, the band have just marked the milestone by recording a special live show for BBC Radio Ulster in front of a live studio audience at Blackstaff in Belfast. Hosted by Stephen McCauley, the resulting one-hour programme – set to broadcast on BBC Radio Ulster and Foyle at 3pm on Monday afternoon – is a perfect distillation of why the band are still a homegrown live proposition at the peak of…

  • Watch: BAD BONES – WORSHIP

    May 26, 2016 - By 

    Featured in the current issue of our physical magazine (available throughout the country now), Dublin producer and visual artist Sal Stapleton AKA BAD BONES first caught our attention back back in March with ‘Games’, a track that we called “a delicious slice of darkly electronica weaving perfectly-spliced beats, bobbing bass and modulated vocals in a fine, cimmerian mesh of noise.” Having since enthralled at the second installment of Psykick Dancehall – our Bello Bar night co-hosted with Medium Presents – in April, Stapleton is back with her another audio-visual gem in the form of ‘WORSHIP’, the fifth and final track to be taken from her…

  • Watch: Hilary Woods – Bathing

    May 25, 2016 - By 

    As we saw in her Track Record piece in the tenth issue of our physical magazine, ex-JJ72 bassist and solo artist Hilary Woods is an artist with a wonderfully diverse taste in music, a fact very keenly reflected her debut EP, Night. Set to release its highly-anticipated follow-up EP, Heartbox, on June 10, her single ‘Bathing’ is a quietly rapt masterstroke about “that feeling of waiting forever”, a sentiment captured with minimalist panache in its accompanying video, directed by Woods herself and filmed at both Dublin Zoo and Co. Wicklow’s rather beautiful Glendalough one “very cold morning” back in January. With more dates to be announced soon, Woods plays…

  • Innocence of Memories with Grant Gee @ Irish Film Institute

    May 26, 2016 - By 

    Perhaps best known as director of 1998 Radiohead documentary, Meeting People is Easy – as well as the video for ‘No Surprises’ – British film maker, photographer and cinematographer Grant Gee will make an appearance at Dublin’s Irish Film Institute on Sunday, May 29. A highlight of this year’s International Literature Festival, there will be a screening of Gee’s latest film, Innocence of Memories, followed by a Q+A with Grant in conversation with writer and critic Peter Murphy. The event takes place at 4.30pm. Admission is €10/€8. Go here for more info.

  • Watch: Glimmermen – Bang

    May 24, 2016 - By 

    “With refreshingly intelligent guitar work evoking both Television and Maps and Atlases, the four tracks on Satellite People are perhaps best surmised in the title track, a tidy hybrid of Mission of Burma circa Signals, Calls and Marches EP, Pop Group and early Captain Beefheart.” So read our time-confirmed verdict (in our previous guise of AU Magazine) of Satellite People, the debut EP by Dublin’s Glimmermen way back in 2012. Four years on – and three years since the release of their impressive debut album I’m Dead – the band have re-emerged with a new single, ‘Bang’. Taken from their forthcoming second album,…

  • Watch: King Kong Company – Scarity Dan

    May 24, 2016 - By 

    Having built up momentum via YouTube that saw them secure headline slots at Body&Soul and Electric Picnic, the visual element of King Kong Company’s craft has always been an integral part of their appeal. Ensuring they stick to that tried-and-tested track, the Waterford band have unveiled the masterfully disturbing video for their new single, ‘Scarity Dan’. Directed by Jamie O’Rourke of Killer Rabbit Productions, the video – a curious take on the breaking point of the 9 to 5 worker  – “taps into something that might lurk deep within us all, something dangerous and unspeakable waiting to break loose. But even as the vile…

  • Life Festival Announce Site Map, Stage-Times

    May 24, 2016 - By 

    Marking the first Irish music festival of the Summer, Life Festival returns to Belvedere House and Gardens in Co. Westmeath this weekend with their strongest line-up to date. With a small amount of remaining weekend, two day and Sunday tickets still available organisers have just revealed the site map and all-important stage-times for their X1 outing. For all other information, including travel info, please check the Life Festival website.

  • Down With Jazz

    May 24, 2016 - By 

    Returning for their 5th edition, Down With Jazz will once again take over and transform Dublin’s Meeting House Square in Temple Bar this June bank holiday weekend (June 4/5). With a stellar line-up including ambient folk from Dublin-born, London-based improvising vocalist Lauren Kinsella AKA Snowpoet (pictured), “two-horns-no-chords” quartet ReDiviDeR, the masterful, guitar-based Weird Glitches and Dublin guitarist, rapper and composer Zaska, organisers said “we’re following in the centenary theme of 2016, on the basis it is roughly 100 years since the birth of jazz (the early jazz period considered to be 1916-1922) which we feel juxtaposes nicely with the struggle for Irish freedom and…