• Classic album: REM – Murmur

    August 21, 2013 - By 

    Before major label deals and stadium-conquering, mandolin-led ballads were a mere glint in the eyes of Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry, there were four men in the college town of Athens. Four men playing music destined to repeat in the Walkman headphones of alienated teens before ‘alienated teens’ became a marketing tool. Case in point: this very writer discovered Murmur at the age of 16 amongst a select few picks from R.E.M. enthusiastically presented before my eyes by a great friend and diehard aficionado. While Automatic For The People impressed my mother, Monster riffed well enough…

  • REM: The First Cut is The Deepest – True Love Never Dies

    August 20, 2013 - By 

    I have always had the theory that one doesn’t always just ‘discover’ bands. Often it can be a two-way street, that a band can come along and ‘get’ you at the right time and place and it is such a seismic event, that one will never recover or forget about it. The Smiths came to me shortly after my father died. A family friend took me to see them in concert and that was ‘IT’. I dedicated my teen years to them and in return, their musical output was, in a weird way, a comfort. Some of the subtleties of…

  • Gateways To Paradise – How REM Gave Me A Music Collection

    August 19, 2013 - By 

    I was 13, living in Antrim, and it felt like the entire world was very, very far away. But then I would pick up my Walkman, slot in a copy of Fables of the Reconstruction or Out of Time, and find myself in an exotic world, a place of mystery and magic, a place where the kudzu vine spread over everything, and nights were spent by the railway line, watching the trains. To that 13 year old boy, REM were more than a lifeline; they were a life. As the years went by, my love of REM would fluctuate, their 21st century missteps leading…

  • Dan Hegarty: Obsessive Compulsions

    August 19, 2013 - By 

    He sports one of the most splendid moustaches that you’re likely to see, and he’s proven that he can pen a tune or two over the years. Jerry Fish has brought us one of the catchiest tunes of 2013 in ‘Barefoot & Free’. He’s enlisted the services of R.S.A.G on drums, and put together a pretty funky video to go with it! If you’re going to the Electric Picnic, make sure to pay a visit to his ‘The Jerry Fish Electric Sideshow’ stage at Electric Picnic’s Trailer Park.   We all have the potential to become slightly obsessive about things;…

  • David Bowie: The Night Before

    August 15, 2013 - By 

    So, David Bowie came back this year with his finest album in about two decades. There is a pretty solid consensus as to when Bowie went awful, but the jury is still out on exactly when he recovered. Some would say it was the overbearing misery and darkness that rekindled Bowie’s fire on Heathen, others think it was Outside and Earthling‘s manic dance energy that threw Bowie back into shape and a lot of people believe that it wasn’t until The Next Day that he managed to overcome the slump. Your writer fall into the Heathen camp but, looking at his…

  • Way Out West Festival 2013

    August 15, 2013 - By 

    Our Malmö, Sweden-based photographer Ian Pearce (above) hit up this year’s Way Out West Festival, undoubtedly the Scandanavian country’s best annual showcase of musical and culture. Having took place in Göteborg from 8-10 August, this year’s line-up was something else altogether. Headlined by Neil Young and Crazy Horse, the bill featured everyone from The Knife and Godspeed You! Black Emperor to Haim and Public Enemy. Take time to sift through Mr Pearce’s extraordinary trove of visual awesome below!

  • The Chancer’s Guide To… Sebadoh

    August 14, 2013 - By 

    Are you constantly in need all powerful knowledge yet can’t be arsed with the little detail of actually putting in any effort? Do you always have to have an opinion during the latest online/pub/party based music debate but don’t have the time to do the homework? Maybe, you’re the bass player with a third division landfill indie band who, following an old school, major label hype, managed to get a poxy novelty cover version to number 37 in the real charts then, with your renowned comic manner and hilarious monkey face, you’ve found yourself invited on Never Mind the Buzzcocks…

  • Festival Mixtape: Stendhal Festival

    August 14, 2013 - By 

    Taking in place in Limavady’s Ballymully Cottage Farm this summer, Stendhal Festival of Art celebrates its third birthday on the weekend of Friday 16th and Saturday 17th of August. Headlined by Duke Special and Neil Hannon of Divine Comedy, the incomparably scenic showcase is all but set up to succeed the departing Glasgowbury as the go-to Northern Irish festival of the summer. With the tagline “experience the syndrome” Stendhal is much more than a festival of homegrown musical talent. Comedy, theatre, visual art and poetry also play a huge role in ensuring a comprehensively enjoyable experience for people of all ages. Speaking of…

  • Interview: Swans

    August 14, 2013 - By 

    “I used to hate people, generally,” says Michael Gira, fifty-nine year old commander-in-chief of seminal New York post-punk band Swans. In the final stages of touring their critically-acclaimed, monumentally accomplished twelfth studio album The Seer, the outfit are currently undergoing perhaps their best period in thirty years both as a creative unit and in achieving widespread acclaim for their stunningly severe craft. Not altogether unexpected, something evidently running parallel with this is Gira’s own disposition nowadays: a thoroughly agreeable and self-effacing personality that unravels in conversation with Brian Coney ahead of the band’s hugely-anticipated Belfast show. Having just concluded a…

  • Getting Re-acquainted: The Cult – Electric

    August 13, 2013 - By 

    With the release of Electric Peace, we take a look at one of British rock’s true underdogs – The Cult. Unfairly maligned in the 21st century, but still possessing a devoted hardcore following, they blazed a trail through the 80s, winning back the soul of rock from the ashes of punk. With the re-release of Electric, the group’s 1987 masterpiece, now is the perfect time to look at the making of this incredible album, and the long lost unreleased album that should have preceded it, Peace. 1985 had been a very good year for The Cult. Having originally evolved out of the London based ‘positive punk’ band, Southern Death Cult, they then became Death Cult, before dropping the ‘Death’, and adopting the definitive article. 1984’s Dreamtime had been a promising debut, a…