• Deep Down South: Affirmations and a Few More Gigs, There, Lads

    March 8, 2015 - By 

    To be quite frank, your writer is still recovering from an excellent few bouts of sleep deprivation on the trot, so a short one it is this week, before another gig-news binge next week. Deal? Okay. Saturday night saw about five or six majorly important shows happening in town at once. That hasn’t happened in a really long time. To be quite frank, the gig-going public was a little small until recently to be pulling in multiple directions, and if you’d told your writer this time last year that five shows in one night would do well, he’d have told…

  • Rave New World (6/3)

    March 6, 2015 - By 

    Rave New World: Antoin Lindsay and Aidan Hanratty return with this week’s unarguably indispensable guide to the very best electronic/dance tracks, mixes, releases and gigs taking across the country this weekend. GIGS Gary’s Gang presents: DJ Fett Burger at The Sweeney Mongrel, Dublin Friday, March 6 Tonight sees the arrival of DJ Fett Burger in Dublin. Fett Burger’s the owner of the constantly fantastic Sex Tags Mania label from Norway alongside his brother DJ Sotofett (who I covered on here last week). It’d be foolish to tell you what to expect but it’ll probably have some balearic and disco in there with…

  • The Hefty Fog: Sludge in 2015 – The Early Pickings

    March 9, 2015 - By 

    There’s a very noxious chemical present in sludge metal that separates it from all other forms of transgressive music. Even when placed side by side with contemporaries from every god-forsaken, drop-tuned fashion known to the underground, the crooked spoon fury of bands declaring themselves to be sludge stand out like a sore thumb. If punk rock is rebellion and heavy metal is hedonism, for instance, then sludge is a terrible nothingness that is all too human to recognize yet exemplified by sounds which are inhuman. That may sound like a bit of mental gymnastics, but no other subgenre of music has resonated with the…

  • Track Record: Brian Kelly (So Cow)

    March 10, 2015 - By 

    In this installment of Track Record we head to the little blue house in Galway to hang out with Brian Kelly  from So Cow to chat about the records that influence his daily life. Photos by Sean McCormack Disclaimer: These are not my ten favourite albums of all time, though I’d say four of them would be on that list. These are the ten records I play most when cooking, sweeping or pottering about. They are the go-tos. I have about 180 LPs on my shelves, or Two Ikeas worth, as is the official measurement. About 100 or these are honest-to-goodness purchases made…

  • Army of We: International Women’s Day 2015

    March 6, 2015 - By 

    In March 2010 Oh Yeah put out a call for women in music to come together for a photo that would be included in the NI Music Exhibition. The photo (above) was launched on International Women’s Day (IWD) and was inspired by an earlier more spontaneous image (below), which captured a group of promising young acts that were around at the time. For some reason there were no women in that earlier picture, it wasn’t intentional, but it did get us thinking about the gender gap in music. Since then we have marked IWD annually by showcasing or celebrating great…

  • Front of House: Chloé Nagle

    March 9, 2015 - By 

    In this installment of Front of House we chat to Chloé Nagle, a freelance sound engineer and part-time teacher based in Cork. Photos by Brid O’Donovan. Hi Chloé! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure! My name is Chloé Nagle and I’m a Front of House Sound Engineer. I’m based in Cork and work on a freelance basis for various bands, venues, production and PA companies. I also teach sound part-time on the Music, Management and Sound course in Coláiste Stiofáin Naofa in Cork. How did you become a sound engineer and how long have you been involved…

  • From Book to Band: A World Book Day Playlist

    March 5, 2015 - By 

    “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” The astute words of Ernest Hemingway – and there’s a fair chance he wasn’t wrong. To coincide with this year’s World Book Day, we’ve set aside our latest read – Murakami’s South of the Border, West of the Sun, if you must know – to compile a ten-track playlist featured artists named after novels, including The Fall, Pylon, Soft Machine, The Blue Nile and The Art of Noise. Delve in to the literarily-leaning sonic wielders so.

  • Screen/Play #2: Record Shop Retail in Empire Records and High Fidelity

    March 5, 2015 - By 

    For someone like me who has only ever had a passing interest in music-buying and hit puberty around Napster’s ascendance, the record shop as a location resided almost exclusively in the general cultural imagination as opposed to my regular routine. Inevitably my idea of what record shops and the people who work there were like came to align with the enthusiastic but elitist list-making devotion immortalised by Stephen Fears’ High Fidelity (2000), based on Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel, and brought to life by John Cusack’s world-weary shop owner Rob Gordon and his pair of ‘musical idiots’, played perfectly by Jack…

  • Front of House: PSI

    March 5, 2015 - By 

    In the latest installment of Front of House, our photographer Sara Marsden popped along to Belfast’s Ulster Hall to capture Sean Pagel, Joe Byrne and Davy McCready from Ireland’s premier lighting company, PSI. Offering a wonderful insight into the industry, Pagel touches on the technical and creative sides of lighting, providing the lighting for the likes of Riverdance, Philip Glass and Live at the Marquee, as well as some personal insight into the peaks and (seemingly very rare) low points of the job. Hi Sean. First off, can you tell us how you first got into the lighting business? When I left school…

  • Roving Eye: The Minutes in Brussels

    March 4, 2015 - By 

    In the first of a new regular feature called Roving Eye, our photographer Tara Thomas sets off around Europe with some of the best and brightest bands our fair Isle has to offer. Documenting the trials and tribulations of touring life, Tara heads to Brussels with The Minutes. In her own words, she breaks down the entire proceedings from load-in to bed-down. ___ Brussels is a surprising city. My expectations of a drab grey place were unfounded, for it’s emblem is the Manneken Pis, a urinating little boy. He symbolises the rebellious nature of the city and its capacity for…