• Forward, Together: Meet New Oh Yeah Center CEO Charlotte Dryden

    September 7, 2016 - By 

    My name is Charlotte Dryden. I’m the new Chief Executive of Oh Yeah Music Centre in Belfast, and while I am new to the role, I’m no stranger to the centre. In fact, I have worked here for eight years. I came here in 2008, exactly one year after the project kicked off. Oh Yeah was set up as a music charity and social enterprise and after securing some funding from Belfast City Council and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation; they were in a position to make two staffing appointments. Up until this point the very dedicated volunteers and the founding…

  • Picture This: Your National Visual Arts Guide – Journeys

    August 30, 2016 - By 

    Journeys come in many sizes, shapes and forms. They can be physical, they can be metaphorical, in truth they can be anything. The four shows covered in this edition of Picture This represent four journeys the artists have taken along the way to the final show hosted in each gallery. We see a physical journey in VISUAL Carlow as Enda McCarthy retraces the steps barges took as he travels from Dublin to Carlow. In Dublin we see IMMA’s journey over the last 10 years as she expands her collection in the face of financial adversity. Katrina Palmer takes her audience…

  • Column: Lisa Hannigan

    August 29, 2016 - By 

    Having just released her highly-anticipated third studio album, At Swim, Lisa Hannigan pauses to reflect on her recent string of Irish dates with Ye Vagabonds. I hadn’t played in so long before my Irish shows. So before my new record, At Swim, came out, I just wanted to dip my touring toe back in and play these new songs with a different band and try to figure that all out on stage. Ireland has always been the warmest and most welcoming place for me and I would venture to say most artists, so I just really want to go all over…

  • C.K. And You Shall Find

    August 15, 2016 - By 

    ‘Everything that I did was counter-intuitive…’ confessed Louis C.K. recently while describing the creation and financing of this year’s ten part tragedy series, Horace & Pete. Nothing looked like this minimal television show before and somehow it’s audacious ambition inspired incredible contributions by an immense cast. In the era of massive budget, world-beating, broad-ranging golden age of television, along comes Louis C.K. with a low-budget drama set in a bar and condensed to dialogue, family and isolation. To be so ‘counter-intuitive’ and unorthodox and yet so brilliant is exactly what makes Louis C.K. compelling. He is a comedian comfortable writing…

  • Sparks: Mental Wellbeing & Recovery on The Road with ASIWYFA’s Chris Wee

    August 3, 2016 - By 

    And So I Watch You From Afar drummer Chris Wee reflects on perspective, mental wellbeing and recovery on the open road. October 2nd 2015 : Santa Fe – Denver It is sometimes at our lowest points that we are the most open to experiencing something truly special and fulfilling. 9 shows left out of 31, feeling a little raggedy. We pulled away from last night’s accommodation, a truly soul destroying casino hotel, planted on the dusty nothingness somewhere outside of Santa Fe. Nowhere makes you more homesick than places like this. It was my turn to drive, and despite my…

  • 10 Years of CF Records

    July 29, 2016 - By 

    Sea Pinks‘ main man and CF Records founder Neil Brogan reflects upon 10  years of the Belfast-based independent record label. Ten years ago I was living in London and at something of a loose end. In my boredom I thought it might be fun to start up a label. This was in the distant era of Myspace supremacy. It seems quaint to think of it now but it was the first time DIY bands and labels from all over the place started to connect online and for a brief moment it felt kind of liberating. I was excessively shy about my…

  • Róisín Dubh: A Love Story

    July 25, 2016 - By 

    My first gig in the Róisín Dubh was late November 2005. Back when the Róisín Dubh was still a ground floor only musical abode, not the imposing three and half storey stacked westend behemoth that Eoghan MacNamara AKA Gugai, Kevin Healy, Simon Heaslip & co. present it as today. That gig was Giveamanakick with Redneck Manifesto. I had seen Redneck Manifesto in The Chapel at IADT a few weeks earlier and was blown away by what I’d witnessed. So when my quirky friend Shaw mentioned their upcoming gig in Galway, I jumped at the chance to catch the show again. It’s…

  • Rave New World: Inside Moves, Willow, XOSAR

    July 22, 2016 - By 

    With his handsome and esteemed Rave New World partner Antoin Lindsay AWOL, Aidan Hanratty delivers a look at the very best electronic gigs, tracks and mixes of the week. Gigs Inside Moves – Dan Shake at T13, Belfast Friday 22 July  Inside Moves bring Dan Shake over for his Belfast debut. Hi brand of house is warm, full of samples and soul, and he’s known as being the first European artist signed to Moodymann’s Mahogani Music. Bastardo Electrico presents DJ Bone at Cyprus Avenue, Cork Friday 22 July Detroit don and deck wizard DJ Bone comes to Cork for a…

  • Picture This: Your National Visual Arts Guide – Environment

    July 12, 2016 - By 

    The concept of environments, and environmental impact, resonates across the broad content and diverse mediums featured in this edition of The Thin Air’s Picture This. While this theme is present in the traditional sense of the impact we as a human race have had on the environment, it is more keenly felt in the reverse and the impact an environment can have on us – the subject and the audience. The four shows highlight how it can alter the cultures and traditions of its inhabitants, help formulate ideologies and craft viewpoints. In a broader sense we also see the impact…

  • Who You Gonna Call? The Outraged, Most Likely

    July 10, 2016 - By 

    In Robert Wise’s 1971 movie adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel The Andromeda Strain, one of the four protagonists is a woman. And in the movie, there’s nothing significant or outrageous about this. She is, simply, biologically, a woman. But more importantly, she’s a character. She does stuff, she has feelings, ideas. And when a younger male cast member handles the film’s sole action sequence, it’s not because it’s a job that only a man could do, it’s because he’s younger and more physically fit. In the current era of re-boots, The Andromeda Strain is crying out for a remake, with the 1971-stylings of the film…