• Inbound: Temper-Mental MissElayneous

    June 3, 2014 - By 

    In this installment of Inbound, Loreana Rushe chats to the mesmerising Temper-Mental MissElayneous about her many influences, hiphop culture in Ireland and the power of the spoken word. Hi Elayne. Can you tell us a bit about yourself? (Your background, things you enjoy etc) All I wanted to be since as long as I can remember was different. Spumco’s Ren & Stimpy are my heroes since age 7. I wanted to correlate my artistic motives with their creator, Kricfalusi’s artistic vision to never repeat his characters facial expressions twice. I read multiple books simultaneously. Currently one of those many books is…

  • Choice Cuts: The Best Tracks of… April

    May 6, 2014 - By 

    April has certainly been a busy news month – in sports, we had lifetime bans and huge fines for court-side racism, as well as banana throwing (and eating); in entertainment we had Jeremy Clarkson, mostly just being Jeremy Clarkson; in politics we had a series of PR meltdowns for UKIP, many of them revolving around racism as well. Indeed, intolerance and prejudice has been widespread this month. There was no sparing the music world, either, with both Sky Ferreira and Avril Lavigne being branded racists for their respective music videos. It would be easy to be bogged down by all…

  • Classic Album: David Bowie – Diamond Dogs

    May 2, 2014 - By 

    In Diamond Dogs, with a twisted and sophisticated take on his sound, David Bowie predicted a dark, post-apocalyptic future world. 40 years on, how does the prophecy and the music stand up? In 1974 David Bowie needed to deliver. The Ziggy Stardust album (1972) and accompanying stage show was a whirlwind success and saw Bowie become a significant rising star in America and the most important pop artist in the UK. The follow up, Aladdin Sane (1973), was swallowed up as a straight sequel by a public so Ziggy hungry, they barely noticed the (subtle but not insignificant) musical developments. In time for the Christmas market of the same…

  • Ten must-see shows at Cathedral Quarters Arts Festival 2014

    May 1, 2014 - By 

    Now in its fifteenth year, hands down Belfast’s most exciting, diverse and inspiring festival of music, culture and arts, Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival returns from May 1-11. Boasting a programme featuring everyone from De La Soul and Tinariwen to Simon Amstell, Shonen Knife and Yuck, it is quite possibly the annual festival’s strongest roster to date. At the risk of scaling a mount of hyperbole, we reckon there is quite literally something for everybody at this year’s festival. Whether you look to the words and ideas of the likes of Bernard McLaverty or Mark Ellen, the comedy of Katherine Ryan or Howard Read et al, genre-defining artists such as The Handsome Family, The Selecter and Fuck Buttons or…

  • Inbound: Exploding Eyes

    May 6, 2014 - By 

    In this installment of Inbound we chat to Robbie, Al and Brian from Dublin based psychedelic rock band Exploding Eyes about their involvement in the Irish music scene over the years, their biggest influences and why getting stranded in Switzerland is not an option again! Hi lads, can you tell us about Exploding Eyes and where you got the name? Robbie: We’re a new band from Dublin playing rock music. name? Well I was hoping to call the band Flaming Lips but that seems to be taken so I just went for the next horrible thing that could happen to a part of…

  • Getting Re-Acquainted: Bob Dylan – Jokerman

    April 21, 2014 - By 

    It’s strange how, nearly 50 years after someone shouted “JUDAS!” in the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1966, Bob Dylan still has the power to provoke a reaction. For many people, he’ll forever be the wiry, electric veined pop-provocateur of the mid 60s, re-writing the rulebook on the way to burning himself out, whilst for others, he’s still the prototype folkie, with his work boots and dirty denims, honking on a harmonica whilst calling out injustice wherever he finds it. Dylan’s 70s records are reasonably well regarded, with 1975’s Blood on the Tracks still remaining the archetypical ‘breakup’ album, and his late…

  • Record Store Day 2014 Round-Up

    April 15, 2014 - By 

    Did you know that it was none other than Metallica who kickstarted Record Store Day back in 2008? Yes, James “Yeah-yeahhha” Hetfield and co. spearheaded the tentative inauguration of what has become an annual celebration of all things independent and vinyl-based right across the (ever-increasingly) audibly-appreciative globe. From the rather modest ten special RSD releases from the likes of Death Cab for Cutie, R.E.M. and Stephen Malkmus on its debut, there are hundreds of albums and EPs set to be released this Saturday, April 19; everything from Nirvana’s ‘Pennyroyal Tea’ 7″ to a 5LP Box Set of LCD Soundsystem’s a 5LP Box…

  • Choice Cuts: The Best Tracks of… March

    April 1, 2014 - By 

    This month has been remarkable in terms of the quantity of excellent music releases on all fronts, and summarizing it into a playlist of 10 tracks has proven a tad difficult. As such, there are many notable absentees from this list, but at the same time I can assure you the reader that these ten new releases are not just good, or even great, but downright essential listens if one is to keep ahead of the crowd. I wouldn’t lie about things of such importance. As per usual, the first list of songs is in no particular order, with the…

  • The Complete Guide to Therapy?: Part 6

    April 1, 2014 - By 

    And so we’ve arrived at the final part of our trawl through the Therapy? discography (which has gone over the allotted week owing to time/work commitments, apologies to all reading/following!). As with any band worth its salt, in delivering fourteen albums, there’s bound to be tunes that have slipped through the cracks, been deemed “not right for the album”, or been tried out in various embryonic forms throughout the years only to be recorded by someone in the crowd, as well as supplementary live releases, bonus bits, DVDs, radio-taped bootlegs and much more, all kept in trading circles and generally…

  • The Complete Guide to Therapy?: Part 5

    March 29, 2014 - By 

    PREVIOUSLY: After getting it all out of their systems with Suicide Pact-You First, the band pack up and head to Seattle for two months, and hit the studio with Jack Endino. The result is the oft-derided Shameless, which, in retrospect, is the sound of the band cutting loose and having fun after a long uncertain spell. The promise and hope that emerge after the sessions, however, are tested by record label faux-pas and difficult touring. By the end of 2001, drummer Graham Hopkins quits, and early 2002 sees them without a label again. Moving quickly, the band contacts Keith Baxter…