• Getting Re-Acquainted: …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead – Mistakes and Regrets

    August 8, 2013 - By 

    By the end of the 90s, it had all gotten very…safe. Things had settled down after a rollercoaster ride lasting ten years, a journey that had taken in baggy, grunge, shoegaze, Britpop, trip-hop, and a host of other stuff (grebo, anyone?). But in the dying embers of the second millennium, popular music had sunk into a quagmire of worthiness, a sludgy mess of genre hopping experimentalism without form, and of box ticking, perhaps best exemplified by Blur’s bloated misstep, 13. It was all very worthy, it was all perfectly well executed, and it was all very dull. And to top…

  • In Conversation: Kasper Rosa, Lantern For A Gale, Vanilla Gloom

    August 6, 2013 - By 

    Ahead of their show at Belfast’s Limelight 2 on Wednesday, August 7, Ryan McCormick (guitarist/vocalist, Kasper Rosa – pictured above), Danny McConaghie (guitarist, Lantern For A Gale) and Grace Leacock (drummer, Vanilla Gloom) participate in the first ever In Conversation, a feature in which we get members of three local bands to discuss different aspects of writing, performing and touring both at home and abroad – as well what ever conversational tangents take their fancy… ___ The Death Knell of Local Music? Danny: So is the Northern Irish music scene on its knees? Praying for forgiveness? Grace: “Aww, I feel sad when I hear that!Good music comes in…

  • Festival Mixtape: Tanglewood Music and Arts Festival 2013

    July 29, 2013 - By 

    Taking place at the incomparably scenic surroundings of Narrow Water Castle in Warrenpoint, Tanglewood Music and Arts festival returns for its third outing on the weekend of August 3 and 4. Headlined by globetrotting North Coast post-rock quartet And So I Watch You From Afar, the showcase also boasts a line-up including the likes of Thin Lizzy guitarist/singer-songwriter Eric Bell, electronic duo The Japanese Popstars and Belfast singer-songwriter Peter Wilson AKA Duke Special. Several up-and-coming and increasingly established homegrown acts included More Than Conquerors, Pocket Billiards and Hurdles also feature in the line-up, set to take place across four stages. With…

  • Turn It Up: An alternative Blur playlist

    July 29, 2013 - By 

    ‘Girls and Boys’, ‘Parklife’, ‘Songs 2’ – the vast majority of us could hum the choruses to each of these Blur singles in our sleep, night after night, until time itself consumes us and the final under-the-breath muttered “woohoo” for eternity. Which is not necessary a bad thing, of course. In their heyday, Alex James, Damon Albarn, Dave Rowntree and Graham Coxon were collectively responsible for concocting some of the most ridiculously infectious singles of a generation. Lingering beneath that exterior, however, was a considerably more experimental knack spearheaded by the wonderfully wayward playing of Coxon and Albarn’s own brand of…

  • Inbound: Affleck (Exclusive EP stream)

    July 29, 2013 - By 

    Seventy-five percent of sadly-departed experimental pop foursome Eatenbybears, Affleck are a Belfast-based three-piece that have covered quite a bit of ground in the four months since the former outfit’s untimely dissolution back in March. Comprised of Aidan Kelly, Clark Phillips and James Pollock, the electronic pop outfit – dusting themselves down and arguably finding their sound – have been occupied writing and recording their all-too-brief self-titled debut EP, a sublime five-track slab of phantasmal harmonies, shuffling somnambulist rhythms and subtly cascading, wonderfully woven electronic noise. As it so happens, for this week’s special installment of Inbound, we have an exclusive stream…

  • Classic Album: The Blue Nile – Hats

    July 23, 2013 - By 

    Every so often, an album slips through the cracks. It may have inspired quiet critical praise among the attentive, but for the most part the record sinks without trace into the mists of obscurity. Some albums are eventually rescued from this fate – The Velvet Underground & Nico being the most famous example of a record posthumously put on a pedestal – but the majority of these forgotten critics’ darlings are left to be cherished by a devoted few, doomed to pop up occasionally on ‘Forgotten Classics’ blogs or Channel 4 specials before fading away again. Despite having an older…

  • Everything Sucks #002: Sweet ’95 – The Retortening

    July 19, 2013 - By 

    Looking at Dan Hegarty’s column on 1995 recently here on this site, I found that, for all the reminiscing on things like Britpop (which sucked, by and large, not that we knew better) and the WWF of the day (more on that later), it was summarily A Very Good Time for Irish music. Not as fervent and fertile as today’s jubilant mass of DIY gigs and indie labels, but a far cry from the marginalisation of independent and non-commercial music that had gone on a generation previous, where people like Phil Lynott were thrown out of the showband system that…

  • OST: Ciaran Lavery

    July 18, 2013 - By 

    In the latest installment of OST we get totally enchanting Aghnagallon singer-songwriter Ciaran Lavery to select and talk about ten tracks that have irrevocably altered his music listening, loving and making life; everyone from Tom Waits to Travis. ___ The Band – ‘It Makes No Difference’ The Band are a special collective I felt personally proud enough to have ‘got’ in my late teens. Their back catalogue is frightening but the amount of heartbreak in this song has always grabbed me, maybe due to Rick Danko’s vocals or generally the story of possibly one of the most under-rated bands to ever exist. I…

  • Tour Journal: Vanilla Gloom

    July 18, 2013 - By 

    A hotly-tipped “must see” act at the final ever Glasgowbury music festival this weekend, Belfast-based all-female post-punk band Vanilla Gloom have just returned from their first tour across the water – a brief but eventful little stint across Scotland beginning and ending in Glasgow. In the first installment of an occasional tour journal feature, Shannon O’Neill, vocalist and guitarist from the Derry three-piece details the band’s experiences on and off the stage via photos (courtesy of the very talented Ciara McMullan), doodles and day-to-day thoughts from on the road. ___    

  • Tour Diary #001: PigsAsPeople

    July 17, 2013 - By 

    In the first installment of the perhaps not-so-imaginatively titled Tour Diary, our Guide editor and PigsAsPeople axeman Stevie Lennox (above, middle) sums up his band’s recent UK tour was. Driven by More Than Conquerors’ Danny Mo on the tour, PigsAsPeople are: Wilson Davidson, Chris Leckey and the aforementioned, altogether handsome Stevie Lennox. Take it away, Steve… ___ After many, many hiccups when arranging this tour, it took More Than Conquerors bassist and all-around good guy Danny Morton to step in last minute so we could get on the road. We’ve only been together for about 11 months at this point,…