• Lana Del Rey – Lust For Life

    July 31, 2017 - By 

    Change is considered an almost essential feature now but it’s not long ago that it was considered undesirable, maybe even impure. Bob Dylan picking up an electric guitar or The Beatles moving into psychedelia are seen as pivotal innovations now but were utterly derided from certain quarters at the time. It’s worth keeping in mind that Keith Richards only recently called Sgt. Pepper’s… “rubbish” (a fact which illustrates, your own feelings about Mr. Richards aside, he’s one of the all-time bad guys in music. It’s not hard to imagine him living with Mike Love in a dormant volcano in the shape…

  • Mura Masa – Mura Masa

    July 19, 2017 - By 

    On his self-titled debut Alex Crossan aka Mura Masa makes intelligent, sophisticated pop writing seem utterly effortless. He does this by seemingly always making the correct creative decisions whether that’s the choice of collaborator, the length of a song or the minutiae of layering across a bar, a chorus or an entire single. This talent or knack or aptitude or god given gift is present right from opener ‘Messy Love’ into the late stages of the album but is transcendent in conjunction with the immense talent of the contributors. Despite being her second best appearance on the album, ‘Nuggets’ featuring…

  • Kamasi Washington @ National Concert Hall, Dublin

    July 3, 2017 - By 

    It’s over two years now since Inglewood native Kamasi Washington soundly and confidently delivered on the titled mandate of his debut record (and instant classic) The Epic. A three-hour behemoth of raucous, deft and daring jazz which took the world by storm and for a long time was all anyone could talk about. So it’s no surprise that tonight in the formal setting of the NCH that there’s an edge of excitement in the air. Not only that but the crowd is decidedly mixed; young and old, rolled up beanies and distinguished greys, distressed denim and well-pressed chinos. Kamasi’s sound,…

  • Forbidden Fruit 2017

    June 7, 2017 - By 

    With photos courtesy of Lucy Foster, Eoghain Meakin reports back from Forbidden Fruit at the weekend, featuring Aphex Twin, Bon Iver, Flying Lotus, Moderat, Orbital and more. Saturday Turn off Facebook, no one needs to see those sunny pictures coming in from Spain. Instead check YR there or Accuweather so we can time the rain falls. Because today is the first day of Forbidden Fruit, the festival on your doorstep and a bit of rain is an inconvenience not an inhibitor round here. However it does have its immediate drawbacks; clogging the entrance system as people attempt to shove their…

  • alt-J – Relaxer

    June 5, 2017 - By 

      Relaxer, alt-j’s third album, opens with the track ‘3WW’. It begins more than reminiscent of Massive Attacks’ ‘Teardrop’, digresses into a passage of medieval-pastoral before flowing into a Kate Bush crescendo à la ‘Don’t Give Up’ courtesy of Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell’s vocal contributions. It’s a good choice of introduction to the album which, over the course of eight tracks, is chameleon in nature, varied in scope and only really held on its axis by the distinct idiosyncrasies of the band. In many ways Relaxer is a raging success as Alt-j take creative risks and come out largely unscathed…

  • Wavves – You’re Welcome

    May 30, 2017 - By 

    There was a moment in time when suggesting that Wavves would have a sixth album was laughable. Such was the breakdown of main man and songwriter Nathan Williams following the breakout success of their first album that led to most presuming that Wavves was going to be a short lived experiment. Yet Williams did manage to make the groups second album King of the Beach; to date the most perfect crystallisation of the groups wailing, bratty skate-punk. Now its seven years later and there’s been four albums in between, all of them decent but none of them truly great. There…

  • J Dilla – Motor City

    May 2, 2017 - By 

    If you ever want to lose yourself on a lazy Sunday just take a walk into the discography of one James Dewitt Nancy, better known as J Dilla. The producer, sometime rapper, beat maker and hip hop arbiter now has a dizzying amount of work available in the public sphere and each mixtape, album and bootleg is worth a listen. First you’d have to consider his massive contributions to The Pharcyde’s essential LabCabinCalifornia, his work with De La Soul, Q-tip and Common. Then you may choose to wade through his work with neo-soul luminaries like Erykah Badu and D’Angelo. All…

  • Up and At Them: An Interview With Thor Harris

    April 20, 2017 - By 

    Thor Harris is a percussionist extraordinaire best known for being the pulsing, rhythmic heart of avant rock legends Swans. Yet he is also a carpenter who crafts his own instruments, an artist and a staunch opponent of the political right. The latter of which got him in a bit of trouble when his tongue-in-cheek video dubbed ‘How to Punch a Nazi’ saw him suspended from Twitter. Though the incident may have been a shock to the Austin based musician it highlighted his particular brand of philosophical, social commentary and political outrage. On April 28 he’s bringing his group Thor &…

  • Laura Marling – Semper Femina

    March 15, 2017 - By 

    There’s a criticism that’s hard to make of Semper Femina; despite tracks that are ostensibly about the breadth of human emotion, chronicling love lost, found and thrown away across platonic and romantic partners there’s a flatness of feeling that permeates the majority of its forty-two minute running time. That may be surprising for any fan of Laura Marling, known especially for her sensitive heart and sage like maturity and wisdom, but here on her sixth album it seems she’s almost sleepwalking through a terrain she’s carefully cultivated over the last decade. Let’s be clear, the record doesn’t come across as…

  • Los Campesinos! – Sick Scenes

    February 22, 2017 - By 

    Remember when we thought George W. Bush was as bad as it could get? What idiots we were. That’s the thing about getting older; hindsight will always make even your deepest insights ridiculous and your perception of what’s truly bad a constantly rising gradient on a graph that ends in a point with a flaming eye at the top. Or something. The point is that looking backwards has a way of creating context but also highlighting some of the folly of our endeavours. So it’s best to take it with a pinch of salt. Case in point is Los Campesinos!…