• An End-of-Year Catch-up With Ray Blackwell of DeBarra’s Folk Club

    December 31, 2020 - By 

    Back in 2015, we had a wonderfully insightful chat with Ray Blackwell, the manager of beloved Clonakilty venue DeBarra’s Folk Club. Five years on, the landscape of Irish live music is – if only temporarily – barely recognisable. Ahead of what will hopefully be the steady resurgence of the live music industry, we catch up with Blackwell to discuss the challenges, highlights and future of De Barra’s in 2021 and beyond. Photos by Bríd O’Donovan Hi Ray. It’s hard to believe that we last spoke to you back in 2015. A lot has changed in the meantime. Before touching on this…

  • Facilitating Connection: An Interview With Fears

    December 15, 2020 - By 

    We can almost count on one hands the acts who’ve truly pushed against boundaries and thrived in the most challenging year for creatives in modern history. One such person is Constance Keane, who – aside from recently reuniting feminist punk act M(h)aol – has started her own record label (TULLE), made some of the most interactive underground radio shows in Ireland, performed several live sets, released single ‘two_’ with top-notch remixes, and today she rounds her year out with the release of ‘tonnta’. The song and video have already started to gain global traction, with plays on KCRW and NTS, and had a bespoke Dublin-wide scavenger hunt for a PR campaign, complete…

  • Q+A: Nathan O’Regan of Songbook

    December 1, 2020 - By 

    We catch up with Belfast-based musician and promoter Nathan O’Regan about the origins, success and upcoming – downright unmissable – festive installment of monthly invitational session Songbook on Tuesday, December 8th. Hi Nathan. First of all, for those not familiar with Songbook, briefly tell us about your original motivations for starting the night back in the summer of 2017. Songbook began with the intention of filling what I saw to be a massive hole in the Belfast music scene. Having started gigging here in 2013, I was lucky to have fallen in with an incredible group of players but was…

  • EP Premiere + Q+A: Badhands – Oceans

    November 26, 2020 - By 

    The popularity of the sea, particularly in recent years, has become somewhat of an astonishing phenomenon. Images shared by friends and acquaintances online of their sea swimming adventures are perpetual, even in cold winter climates. There’s no denying that the activity is both restorative and reinvigorating. For many, it has been a consistent companion in finding a release with anxiety and other personal struggles. A huge aspect to the appeal of the sea is its vastness and unpredictability, your eye can only distinguish so much in the distance and so your imagination is allowed to roam.  This is an integral…

  • LP Premiere + Q+A: Kilian O’Kelly – Luzhny’s Layer

    November 6, 2020 - By 

    It’s been a busy couple of years for Dublin-based guitarist, Kilian O’Kelly. In between joining Girl Band for a few dates on their 2019 tour, releasing a critically acclaimed debut record Fad with his band Silverbacks this past summer and setting up an independent label, Central Tones, he somehow managed to find time to write and record an exceptionally dynamic solo album entitled Luzhny’s Layer. The instrumentally-led body of work contains multitudes across nineteen immersive arrangements. Within, O’Kelly conveys a myriad of moods via floating guitar riffs, unnerving string accompaniments and utterly magical piano lines all masterfully performed. It ventures…

  • Motherhood in the Music Industry: An Interview with New Pagans

    September 21, 2020 - By 

    Belfast’s New Pagans make evocative music, using the tried-and-tested soft-loud dynamic to marry massive riffs with socially-conscious, challenging lyrics with a view to starting important conversations. Catching up with vocalist Lyndsey McDougall over Skype offers just such an opportunity. Forming in 2016; Lyndsey’s recollection of the band’s formation makes it sound like it was an inevitability. “I met Cahir (O’Doherty, guitar and vocals) years ago. We eventually got married but I had been a massive fan of his music (Jetplane Landing and Fighting With Wire). He knew that I had written or had always dabbled in music but I went…

  • For The Love of Music: An Interview with Andrew Weatherall

    February 17, 2020 - By 

    There simply was no one quite like Andrew Weatherall. One of the most respected selectors, prolific producers and legendary gentlemen in the game, the announcement of his death at the age of 56 has ruptured the music world. Capturing the very essence of the man – his abundant charm and unending devotion for music – we’re pleased (and yet, of course, sad) to share this previously unpublished interview with the man himself from 2015. In it, you can trace the makings of someone who, more than most, could always effortlessly transform a potentially great night into something positively unforgettable. Words by Chris Jones How…

  • Delicate fury: An interview with Maija Sofia

    November 25, 2019 - By 

    The simple, private act of bathing links generations of women, from pre-Raphaelite models of the 1850s to Chelsea Hotel socialites in the 1960s. A solitary, domestic act – baths are a safe refuge from the other side of the door. It is a strange thing – to lock ourselves inside a room in our own homes.  Part inspiration from a daily bathing ritual, part reflection on a Tori Amos lyric – your apocalypse was fab for a girl who couldn’t choose between the shower or the bath – Maija Sofia’s debut LP Bath Time is a nuanced and vital exploration…

  • Sampling Dog Howls: An interview with ELLLL

    October 8, 2019 - By 

    Cork-born producer and DJ ELLLL creates gravitating music without the gravitas. Armed with samples of Youtube videos and voice recordings from nights out, she weaves music ranging from tactile soundscapes, to airy breaks and propagating percussion. Now based in Berlin, we caught up with ELLLL ahead of her set at Dublin’s Wigwam on Thursday to talk production and the current state of the club scene in Ireland. ELLLL plays Notions at Wigwam, Dublin on October 10th We saw three new EPs from you earlier this year. Febreeze on First Second Label, Confectionary on Glacial Industries, and Glisten on Paralaxe Editions,…

  • A Sense of Wonder in the Particular: An Interview with Perlee

    October 4, 2019 - By 

    Perlee are an Irish-bred dream-pop duo based in Berlin. Made up of Saramai Leech and Cormac O’Keefe, their first release ‘Chains of Coral/Feelings of Plenty’ is out today. Saramai sits down with Maija Sofia to discuss her creative process, her inspirations and Perlee’s plans for the future. Catch them tonight in The Grand Social Ballroom as part of Ireland Music Week. So having lived in both rural Ireland and Berlin, do you think both of these geographical locations have influenced your music? Listening to the songs it feels like there’s a sense of rural wilderness but also a kind of…