• Album Premiere and Q+A: Ships – Precession

    April 27, 2017 - By 

    The product of two long years of writing, demoing, debating and recording, Dublin electronic duo Ships will release their debut album – and one of the Irish albums of the year – on Monday. Ahead of its official release, have an exclusive first listen to Precession and read our interview with Simon Cullen and Sorca McGrath from the fast-rising outfit below. What was the writing process like for the album? And are there are any overarching main themes? The songs were written over the space of two years or so and the idea of the album gathered momentum over time.…

  • History Repeating Itself: An Interview With William Basinski

    April 26, 2017 - By 

    William Basinski has just gotten back from running an errand. Sitting on the sunlit porch outside his home in Los Angeles, the setting, along with his demeanour, could not betray anything further from the melancholic, introspective shades of the music he has been composing for over 30 years. In fact, far from being the naval gazing artiste that one may naively expect a composer of such poignantly abstract music to be, Basinski radiates nothing but disarming warmth and good humour. Utterly forthcoming, he jokes about the dread of needing to move home within the year for fear of the effort:…

  • Putting Their Back Into It: We Meet Small Northern Irish Festival Our Back Yard

    April 24, 2017 - By 

    If there’s one thing the island of Ireland isn’t lacking it’s a well-attended and well put-together summer musical festival. But in the North – beyond the sway of Stendhal and Sunflowerfest – there’s still some scope for expansion; a little leeway and growth for annual showcases that put affordability and community at the heart of their manifesto. One such festival currently spearing their own thing is Our Back Yard, a festival that embody the “small but massive” mindset spearheaded by legendary NI DIY festival Glasgowbury. Ahead of its return to Gilford – just outside Portadown – on July 1, we talk to…

  • Whose Subconscious Is This Anyway? – An Interview with Bob Gallagher

    April 21, 2017 - By 

    As you may well be aware from his directorial work on some of the best music videos to come out of Ireland in the past couple of years, Bob Gallagher is not a man to shy away from the unusual or unexpected. Perhaps best known for his Radar award winning video from 2016 for Girl Band’s ‘Paul’ (as well as ‘Pears For Lunch’, ‘Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage’ and ‘In Plastic’), Gallagher has also worked with artists such as SPIES, Floor Staff, James Vincent McMorrow, Naoise Roo, Participant, Saint Sister and Myles Manley, creating visual accompaniments that veer from the…

  • Primer: Clea van der Grijn

    April 25, 2017 - By 

    Cléa van der Grijn – Reconstructing Memory (Image Courtesy of Heike Thiele) Ahead of the opening of Clea van der Grijn’s Reconstructing Memory in Limerick City Gallery of Arts on April 27th, Rebecca Kennedy speaks with artist on voyeurism, love letters, self-censorship and the intersection between life as an artist and motherhood. Who is your favorite artist and what facet of their practice do you find fascinating? Sophie Calle. I think she’s a very interesting person. It’s like her life is recorded in snippets of film. I think I live vicariously through her work. I love that she spies so un-intrusively…

  • Two’s Company: Meet Cork’s Alliance Promotions

    April 19, 2017 - By 

    A pair doing stellar work on the live gig front Leeside, Gordon O’Keeffe and Arlene Murray of Cork based Alliance Promotions sit down with Eimear Hurley to talk about their work in the Cork music scene First off: how did you guys get into music promotion? Gordon: I’ve been doing this for nine or ten years altogether. I started off in the punk scene. More and more people started coming until there wasn’t enough room in Fred Zeppelin’s anymore.  So we looked for bigger venues and it progressed from there. Alliance as it is now started about five years ago,…

  • 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 &…

  • Preview: An Act of War – TANK at the MAC

    April 14, 2017 - By 

    In 1965, an American scientist lived with a dolphin for ten weeks to try and teach him to speak English as part of a NASA-funded research project into human-animal communication. Condemned as an elaborate circus trick, these lessons remain a controversial episode in the space race between the two Cold War superpowers. The critically-acclaimed, Fringe First award-winning TANK rips this history apart to explore the difficulties of bridging cultural divides, the politics behind the stories we tell and what happens when you inject a dolphin with LSD. Ahead of its two-night residency at Belfast’s the MAC across April 20-21, Brian Coney talks…

  • Keeping a Certain Distance: An Interview With Neil Hannon

    April 13, 2017 - By 

    With the release of their eleventh record Foreverland last year, Neil Hannon’s The Divine Comedy continue to deliver witty, literate pop that still dents the album charts twenty years after their commercial peak. Jonny Currie catches up with Neil Hannon ahead of his show at Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter next month to discuss touring routines, growing old with your audience, and the importance of pop stars keeping their distance from fans. The Divine Comedy play Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival on May 3. Go here to buy tickets. You’re playing at the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival next month. When was the last…

  • Inbound: Foreign Owl

    April 11, 2017 - By 

    Foreign Owl is a band whose members have found their musical home in Derry by way of a protracted route through the Southern prefecture of Fukuoka, Japan and the mean streets of Burt, Donegal. Members, Eoghan Donegan (Guitarist/Singer), along with brothers Míchéal (Bass/Singer) and Ciarán McCay (Drums/Singer) struck up a friendship after meeting at Japanese drumming (Taiko) classes in Derry. What started out as a mutual appreciation of film, soon germinated into a real desire to express themselves through music, inspired by their surroundings, art and Japanese culture. Along the way, Radio Foyle’s Stephen McCauley has championed the band by…