• Track Record: Laura Ann Brady

    June 23, 2015 - By 

    Dublin dark ambient folk singer-songwriter Laura Ann Brady is our latest willing subject for Track Record, a regular feature in which we delve into the prized record collections of some of the country’s finest creative minds. Dublin dark ambient folk singer-songwriter Laura Ann Brady Photos by Abi Denniston. Leonard Cohen – New Skin for Old Ceremony Leonard is a hero of a man and this is one of my favourite Cohen albums, which Leonard himself calls a little gem rather than a masterpiece. There is a much bigger sound going on here than on his previous recordings. Lots of lovely woodwind…

  • Belfast Music Club Presents: Tiago

    June 23, 2015 - By 

    Ahead of the latter’s absolutely free show at Belfast’s Lavery’s on Sunday at 3pm (June 28), Mark Manley from Belfast Music Club profiles globetrotting, legendary Lisbon DJ Tiago. ___ Tiago’s arrival in Belfast is very much an indulgence. I hate the term “DJ’s DJ”  as it’s so clichéd but in this instance it’s never been more true. He is one of Tim Sweeney’s favourite DJs, loved by James Murphy, and famous for his genre-spanning, marathon, seven-hour-plus DJ sets at his residency in Lux, a Lisbon club whose interior was designed by John Malkovich. Before I heard him play, everyone I…

  • Watch: Niamh Murphy – We’re No Armies

    June 23, 2015 - By 

    Cork songstress Niamh Murphy AKA Foxglove is one of those artists who just instantly commands a song from the moment her vocals enter into the music. Featuring a suitably phantasmal video by David Nelligan, the beautifully elegiac, chamber-pop tale that is ‘We’re No Armies’ is a perfect example of this seemingly effortless knack in action. Photo by Emma Jervis.  

  • A Jet Setter’s Life

    June 23, 2015 - By 

    With the dust having settled on the experience, Jeff Courtney from Dublin quartet Jet Setter gives us an insight into the band’s recent performance at Westmeath’s Life Festival. Photos by Tara Thomas. So I’m turning the key, trying to get the van to start and the poor things not making a sound – the battery is dead. We’d arrived at the studio in good time on this fine Saturday morning to collect our equipment ready for our Life Festival debut. The van had a reputation for this kind of thing and whilst it came as no surprise; it was all together…

  • Watch: Night Trap – Someone Like You

    June 23, 2015 - By 

    Having delivered a stellar set at our second birthday show at Twisted Pepper back in May, Dublin duo Night Trap have unveiled some delightful throwback electro-pop in the form of ‘Someone Like You’. Propulsive in all the right places, simply grooving forth in honour of the duo’s obvious influences, the song proves uncannily earworming after a couple of listens. Seriously, give it two listens… you’ll be humming it all day. And possibly tomorrow. Night Trap launch the single with Patrick Kelleher, L/B/W and Old Moon at Dublin’s TenterHooks Gigspace on Friday night. Created by Andy Walsh, watch the video for…

  • Stream: GODHATESDISCO – Incredible Technology

    June 23, 2015 - By 

    Melding estranged spoken word meets kosmiche-tinged instrumental psych, ‘Incredible Technology’ by GODHATESDISCO gives a subtly glorious glimmer of insight of what to expect from the Dublin duo’s forthcoming album, Great Radio. Grasping for unseen lucidity, marrying malevolent electronic dissonance with pulsating bass and Motorik groove, the track blossoms and simmers before expiring in a haze of noise and the fractured words of an anonymous female voice. Great Radio is released via Little Gem Records on July 24. Go here to help fund the record.

  • Lavery’s Set For Tall Ships Event

    June 23, 2015 - By 

    With Belfast set for the return of the Tall Ships at the Belfast Maritime Festival from July 2-5, Lavery’s have announced that they will host some of the North’s best live acts on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday at their Continental Market-style beer tent on the Odyssey Arena’s front lawn. With the full timetable to be announced, Runaway Go will play on Thursday, indie pop quartet Go Wolf (pictured )will play on Friday and Wonder Villains will play on Saturday. Elsewhere, Stevie Scullion & co. AKA Malojian, Stephen Macartney and Rachel Coulter, New Ancestors and Chris Wilson, The Salt Flats, Loris, Michael Mormecha and…

  • Sounds Alive @ Odessa Club, Dublin

    June 22, 2015 - By 

    Combining documentaries, an array of found sound and features, Sounds Alive at Dublin’s Odessa on Tuesday, June 23 is set to be an intriguing insight into a world of found, lost, anonymous, weird and wonderful sound. The team be talking to LA based producer David Weinberg (99% Invisible, Marketplace), the creator of RandomTape who are running a competition at this year’s inaugural Tape Fest that’s all about celebrating the audio oddities that can be found in forgotten and abandoned tape. They’ll also be introducing radio series, Zoo Diaries, produced by Colette Kinsella for ABC’s amazing Radiotonic series. The four part series introduces…

  • Stendhal Festival Announces Second Wave of Acts

    June 22, 2015 - By 

    With the likes of Kerbdog and Donovan included in their first announcement early last month, Stendhal Festival of Art have revealed that reggae/dancehall pioneer Macka B (pictured), Dublin singer-songwriter Declan O’Rourke and fast-rising musician Rainy Boy Sleep are amongst the acts included in their second line-up announcement. Also set to play the festival – which takes place at Limavady’s Ballymully Cottage Farm on August 7 and 8 – are Scottish alt-rock band Fatherson, harpist Ursula Burns, Derry’s Making Monsters, Dylan Walshe, Zimbabwean folk band Afresh, Co. Down soprano Maria McGrann, The Hardchargers, The Whereabouts, Exit Pursued by Bear, The Eunan McLaughlin Quartet, Axecatcher, Apartment…

  • Monday Mixtape: Marty Harvey (War Iron/Slomatics)

    June 22, 2015 - By 

    Ahead of supporting sludge-doom overlords Eyehategod at Belfast’s Limelight 2 on Wednesday night, Marty Harvey, drummer/vocalist with Belfast very own behemothic heavyweights War Iron (not to mention the similarly Cyclopean Slomatics) selects and talks about some of his all time favourite tracks. Photo by John Gallardo All these songs for me blend heaviness and melody. I love heavy music with big riffs, noise and walls of sound, but this has to be counteracted with space, room for the music to breath or the chords, vocal harmonies to be heard. The music I prefer to listen to has to have light…