• Top Ten Alternative Summer Songs

    July 11, 2013 - By 

    The world is melting! The seas will boil, and the sky will become as one great fireball! We’re doomed! Well, that’s what they tell us anyway, but we know better. So allow us to take you by the hand, offer you a delicious ice cold lolly, and give you ten incredible summer songs that are never, ever going to trouble the likes of NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL SUMMER, VOL 2,856. And are all the better for it. 10. The Cure – ‘If Only Tonight We Could Sleep’   Hazy, sweaty, uncomfortable … but enough about Robert Smith’s underpants, this…

  • Inbound: Bellos

    July 11, 2013 - By 

    In the third installment of the Inbound, we chat to Luke Bowen, frontman with Belfast-based alternative three-piece Bellos to discuss the band’s early beginnings, influences and the band’s plans for the next few months. ___ You formed last year. How did the band come about? Where you all friends beforehand and what motivated you to get the band together? “Aidan and I had just moved into our first house together. There was a deal in the off license for a bottle of Buckfast and six cans of beer for a tenner, so we obliged, got messed up and started listening to…

  • The Record #002: Bouts

    July 10, 2013 - By 

    Dublin pop-grunge noiseniks (sorry) Bouts are currently recording and putting the finishing touches to their highly anticipated debut album.We for one cannot wait to hear it. In the second installment of The Record, Aideen McFadden captures the band in their element.

  • Classic Album: The Band – Music From Big Pink

    July 9, 2013 - By 

    You go outside. The sun is warm on your face, and you smile at the sounds of nature that surround you – the singing of the birds, the wind through the trees, the rushing of the river. You sit down upon the warm grass, and you consider that God is good. You chop some firewood. You do some whittling. Then you go and plug in your electric guitar, turn to Bob Dylan and say, “Let’s cut it.” Without a doubt, there was something very strange going on in the rustic backwater of Woodstock in upstate New York. To this day,…

  • Festival Mixtape: Glasgowbury 2013

    July 8, 2013 - By 

    An annual celebration of local musical talent like no other, Glasgowbury Festival returns to the Sperrin mountains this year with arguably its finest line-up to date. Headlined by the globetrotting, genre-defining The Answer, And So I Watch You From Afar and The Japanese Popstars, there is an absolute wealth of homegrown talent littered throughout this year’s line-up – a two-day event for the first time in its thirteen year history. Excited as we are about this year’s showcase, we’ve put together a fifteen-song Spotify playlist featuring songs from some of the finest acts playing this year’s festival – everyone from cello-wielding songstress…

  • Post-Glastonbury Blues: A Diary

    July 8, 2013 - By 

    I’m writing this from my bitter pit of despair. Post-Glastonbury Blues will one day be a recognised as a legitimate illness and I know that there are 180,000 people feeling as horrific as I am today. Our beautiful festival has ended and the reality of the 9-5 has sunk in. Strangers don’t high five you on the way to the loo, there’s no warm cider on the canteen menu and I’m pretty sure my boss will frown upon me standing on my desk and screaming “I LOVE YOU GLASTONBURY” every so often. 2013 was to be different from other years…

  • Instatour: Girls Names

    July 6, 2013 - By 

    In this, the sixth installment of Instatour, Belfast four-piece Girls Names give us an insight into their travels across the States and Europe over the last few months by sharing some of their favourite photos taken on the road. Seriously, at least just check out the shot of them standing in front of Mont Blanc. Toweringly awesome.

  • Interview: The Melvins

    July 2, 2013 - By 

    Having spent the last three decades consistently reaffirming and reinventing themselves as one of the boldest and most thoroughly influential bands of all time, the Melvins have recently released the excellently-titled – genuinely impressive – Everybody Loves Sausage, a covers album featuring renditions of songs by acts as tastefully disparate as Throbbing Gristle and David Bowie. With their 30th Anniversary Tour just around the corner, we speak to the band’s legendary drummer Dale Crover about the release, the band’s quarter of century reigning as the unequivocal Godfathers of Grunge and much more besides. Eighteen genre-spanning full-length albums and several bassists into their…

  • Classic Album: Metallica – Kill ‘Em All

    June 28, 2013 - By 

    You feel it building in your muscles, a tension crying for release.  Your fists clench, and your feet move. The strain spreads into your back, snaking up your spine. Before you know it, you’re thrusting your head forwards, pulling sharply back, your hair flailing. “BANG YOUR HEAD AGAINST THE STAGE, LIKE YOU NEVER DID BEFORE, MAKE IT RING, MAKE IT BLEED, MAKE IT REALLY SORE!” And you’re gone, lost in wild abandon, part of something primal and bigger than yourself. This is 1983, and you are a fan of the greatest thrash metal band the world has ever seen: Metallica. From…

  • Malibu Shark Attack

    June 27, 2013 - By 

    Tucked into a corner of Weaver’s Court Business Park are Studios 2 and 3 of Start Together. Control room, recording booths, a treasure trove of sound equipment – this is Rocky O’Reilly’s manor, the place where the one-time Oppenheimer man, and production maestro, has helped deliver a dizzying array of music. Sitting in his favourite seat, the one beside the mixing console, Rocky has invited me here to tell me about his latest endeavour, Malibu Shark Attack. There is reason to be intrigued. First off, it’s the first band he’s been a part of since Oppenheimer called it quits in…