• Gig of the week: Tweed Fest 2013

    September 3, 2013 - By 

    Our gig of the week this week was a bit of a no-brainer. Headlined by North Coast three-piece Axis Of (above) Ballymoney riff shingdig par excellence Tweed Fest returns for its fourth outing this weekend. Set to feature twelve performances from the likes of fast-rising hardcore band Lantern For A Gale, Belfast-based three-piece PigsAsPeople and sludge/doom five-piece 7.5 Tonnes Of Beard, co-organiser and freelance photographer Ciara McMullan said of the event: “It’s basically just a party. Back in 2010, Matthew Tweed and all his mates in one week managed to organise a gig in his barn while his folks where on holidays. His parents weren’t angry. In fact, his dad…

  • Live and Let Live: The Bonnevilles

    September 3, 2013 - By 

    From the timeless (Thin Lizzy’s Alive and Dangerous) to the downright ill-advised (Lou Reed’s Take No Prisoners), live albums can be tricky territory for even the most self-assured and adept performers. Throwing caution to the wind with the aim to capture their electrifying live show, garages-blues duo Andy McGibbon Jr and Chris McMullan AKA The Bonnevilles enter that territory at Belfast’s Limelight 2 tomorrow night. We talk to frontman Andy ahead of the big night about what’s in store. Hi Andy. Firstly: why a live album and why now? “We’ve wanted to do a live album for a while now,…

  • Recap: Tim Hecker, Frankie Rose, September Girls, etc.

    September 2, 2013 - By 

    In the latest installment of our weekly recap of the best in brand new music just released right across the world, we eagerly traverse and contrast urgent Northern Irish punk rock, Canadian drone, kaleidoscopic English lo-fi, American garage rock, delirious Swedish synth-pop and all kinds of everything in between. As ever, if you want to get in touch about great new music – either yours or someone else’s – hit us up at newmusic@thethinair.net and we will get listening, stat. In the meantime, sit back and enjoy our top ten tracks of the week. ___ Mons Montis – Swept Swedish trio Herman Båverud Olsson,…

  • Obituary: Seamus Heaney

    September 2, 2013 - By 

    ‘Earth receive an honoured guest..’ The opening of Auden’s famous tribute to Yeats, with its distinctive rhythm which Heaney dubbed ‘Wystan Auden’s metric feet’ seems appropriate as the poet makes his final journey back into the landscape that inspired so much of his best work. For Heaney was a poet formed out of the claggy clay of his home, not just an Irish poet, or a Belfast poet, but a mid-Ulster poet. In his work I recognise the expressions and above all the accent that I grew up with, its mix of the clumsy and the lyrical, ‘demesnes stalked out in consonants’, flooded by…

  • LAD.I.Y: Investigating gender imbalance in Northern Irish rock music

    September 2, 2013 - By 

    “Recently I had a sound engineer explain to me how to use a microphone. He told me he didn’t know how the girls on TV did it, but it wasn’t ‘the way they do it in the real world.’” Katie Richardson, Katie and the Carnival. I’ve been aware of a quiet phenomenon in the Belfast music scene for years, but it wasn’t until recently that the full picture was revealed to me. In my day job, I do PR and artist development for several local musicians. We were building a band around one of the artists and required a new…

  • Interview: Astralnaut

    September 2, 2013 - By 

    Laying claim to being one the downright heaviest bands in the country right now, Keady sludge-doom band Astralnaut breed groove, weight and haze to produce a sound that that is ever-increasingly all their own. Masterfully veering between pummeling downtuned riffs to stoner-rock mini-odysseys, we cannot recommend catching the Thomas Mallon-fronted act highly enough. We talk to Thomas and Pearse from the band about the past, present and future of Astralnaut,”an unspoken bond of sheer riffage and groove”. ___ Early stirrings: Stoned Messiah, Third Harvest and onwards: Pearse (Donnelly, rhythm guitar): Astralnaut formed as many bands do, from the ashes of previously formed groupings. Thomas…

  • Electric Picnic 2013: 10 must-see acts

    August 30, 2013 - By 

    Celebrating its tenth anniversary this very weekend, the organisers of Electric Picnic have, once again, pulled out all the stops to come up with a colourful line-up worth every penny (or indeed cent) of a weekend ticket. Despite Giorgio Moroder pulling out at the last minute, there is still a boundlessly diverse three-day showcase in store, headlining by Björk, Fatboy Slim and Arctic Monkeys. Running a fine comb through this year’s line-up, we have compiled a ten-track Spotify playlist featuring our must-see acts. If you’re bound for Stradbally Estate this weekend, do take note. See below for the acts (in no particular…

  • Everything Sucks #005.5: Local Music Rant

    August 30, 2013 - By 

    If you’ve read the original column that was here and were offended in any way by my statements, I apologise. Opinion has been pretty much down split evenly from what little I’ve seen of it, some in agreement, some not so much. I hope to address this now. To those who have differed with it, I say this. To patronise or look down on anyone was not the intention. Far from it, in fact. The tone of the rant was fairly crass, but that was the point. My regular column here is an angry rant. As such, a certain humour…

  • Death Of The Naturalist: Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)

    August 30, 2013 - By 

    How do you write words for the master? Is it possible to pay tribute in language to a man whose legacy is to have captured the very essence of our soul in words? Perhaps not, but for all the words that Seamus Heaney put to paper, it’s a safe bet that over ten times that will be written about him in the years to come. The Castledawson born poet has been hailed as the greatest Irish poet since William Butler Yeats, an iconic figure, sitting comfortably in a pantheon of great Irish voices alongside Beckett, Joyce, Behan, Shaw, Wilde, and…

  • REM: Maps and Legends – A Simple Case of Geography

    August 26, 2013 - By 

    The story is a sad one, told many times, the story of their life and trying times. As much as the musical climate of the times, REM are a product of geography, rooted in the landscape and traditions of the American South. In the same way that The Clash will always be intrinsically linked to London, The Doors to Los Angeles, or Joy Division to Manchester, REM could only have crawled from the South. Athens, Georgia is a college town. People come and go, some stay, some don’t. So it was back in 1980 when the four men that made…