• Album Stream: Trick Mist – Both Ends

    November 30, 2018 - By 

    We’ve been big fans of Trick Mist here at TTA for quite some time. We first became aware of him back when he lived in Manchester, after he released the lush, dark single ‘Crumbs Abound’. Since, he has travelled across India and South-East Asia, before ending up back to Ireland and relocating to Cork to write his debut LP Both Ends.  Released today (30th November) via Dundalk’s Pizza Pizza Records, this LP serves as the culmination of two years’ work, incorporating his trademark violin manipulations with electronic and organic soundscapes. In October, he released the video for album track ‘Abroad In The…

  • Listen Back To This Week’s Death Culture Blues on Dublin Digital Radio

    November 23, 2018 - By 

    We returned to Dublin Digital Radio last night for our weekly two-hour show, Death Culture Blues. As ever, it was 120 minutes of cosmic and cosy sounds, this week featuring the likes of Yo La Tengo, Spark Sparkle, Wire, The Monochrome Set, Spacemen 3, Liars, Stereolab, BEAK> Faust and more. Miss it? Never fear. Stream below now and tune in this coming Thursday (November 30th), where our reviews editor Eoin Murray will be serving up only the very best experimental, ambient, electronic and cosmic sounds from 8-10pm.

  • Outburst Queer Arts Festival 2018 Film Review

    November 21, 2018 - By 

    Christopher Honoré’s Sorry Angel is an AIDS film where the presence of the virus comes through in tone and colour rather than political sentiment. The writer and director bathes the interiors and costuming of his cross-generational French romance in hues of blue. It is the colour of melancholy, of the autumn sky just before the light gives out — and, crucially, of hospital wards. Jacques (Pierre Deladonchamps) is a mildly successful but emotionally withdrawn Parisian novelist (imagine!) who is HIV positive but still in reasonably good health. But it’s the 1990s, and so his condition is more or less fatal. He has…

  • Preview: Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids

    November 22, 2018 - By 

    For some people, genius is a bottomless well that flows from within and permeates everything it touches. Like our first co-presented show with Moving On Music back in October – Peter Brotzmann’s Full Blast – we’re delighted to bring an artist to the Belfast, who, despite decades between his inaugural cultural moment and now, continues to create music of astonishing relevance. Idris Ackamoor is a saxophonist, sometime keytarist & artistic director of afro-jazz ensemble The Pyramids. An Angel Fell by Idris Ackamoor and the Pyramids The Pyramids were founded in the early 70s through Antioch College as part of Cecil Taylor’s Black Music Ensemble. Embarking on the kind of pilgrimage that’s the stuff of musical…

  • Inbound: James Joys

    November 20, 2018 - By 

    Not merely one-half of Belfast duo Ex Isles, James Joys is the music-making moniker of Belfast experimental composer James Thompson. Influenced by the likes of Ben Frost, Holly Herndon and Tim Hecker and more, his recently-released debut EP, Super_Tidal, melds electronic, ambient, noise, electoacoustic and rave across five tracks. Ahead of a busy 2019, Joys talks to us about conceptual distinction, confidence, collaboration, and crafting a release that translates the feeling of “being in a massive club with lots of different rooms, with all sorts of music blasting away”. Your recently-released EP, Super_Tidal, is a work of “electroacoustic rave entropy”. Very intriguing.…

  • Life Trainee: An Interview With SOAK

    November 19, 2018 - By 

    It’s been three years since Derry born singer-songwriter SOAK broke into public consciousness with her emotionally raw and beautifully-crafted debut album Before We Forget How To Dream. After heaps of critical praise, a Mercury prize nomination, an Irish Choice Music Prize Album of The Year victory and a little time away from the limelight, the 22 year old is back with a new song ‘Everybody Loves You’, the promise of a second album coming soon and a tour at the end of November. Ahead of her show at Belfast’s Oh Yeah Centre on November 26 (tickets here), Kelly Doherty spoke…

  • A million vivid details: Max Cooper interviewed

    November 15, 2018 - By 

    Merging ambient textures and modern classical elements with the banging clamour of accessible dance beats, Belfast born Electronic composer Max Cooper has been studiously perfecting his brand of music for over 10 years now. Drawing on his deep rooted interests in science and technology, the artist has created a uniquely cerebral body of work, built upon cavernous soundscapes that alternatively surge and flutter with elemental energy. Conceived in relative isolation and primarily concerned with the infinitesimal intricacies of the unknowable human mind, Max Cooper’s latest offering, One Hundred Billion Sparks is, suitably, both epic in scale and minutely detailed;  a tour…

  • Preview: Manchester Collective – Pierrot Lunaire

    November 13, 2018 - By 

    And now for something completely different. On Tuesday, November 20, we’re once again teaming up with Belfast’s premiere promoters of forward-thinking sonic events, Moving On Music, for a very special performance. Doubling up as the latest event in the consistently rewarding Tempered contemporary music series, Manchester Collective will present a brand new English interpretation of Arnold Schoenberg’s free atonal melodrama, Pierrot Lunaire, at the Sonic Arts Research Centre. Having formed in 2016 order to, in their words, “create radical human experience through live music for everyone”, this is an unmissable opportunity to experience Manchester Collective’s vision and thrilling approach first-hand. Featuring a…

  • “Like a funeral.” – Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York Turns 25

    November 12, 2018 - By 

    On November 18th 1993, the three members of Nirvana sat down on the stage of the Sony Music Studios in New York, and recorded their own epitaph. Of course, they couldn’t have known that at the time, nor could the TV show producers, the gathered audience, or the guest musicians accompanying the band for this stripped back performance. But through the murky fog of hindsight, the resulting performance and live album seem infused with death, a haunted, haggard journey through one man’s misery, a journey that would end with his own death a few months later. As the world struggled…

  • If I Couldn’t Define it, I Thought I Was Doing Something Good: Introducing Son Zept

    November 7, 2018 - By 

    A couple of weeks ago, we premiered Son Zept‘s 40-minute debut EP, released through Belfast experimental electronic imprint Resist. Ahead of it, we met with Liam McCartan to discuss his involvement in Belfast’s Sonic Arts Research Centre – where he’s currently composing for a PhD – and Resist, where he’s been instrumental in its growth from club night to label, alongside founders Koichi Samuels & Helena Hamilton – where in terms of enabling his prolificity, “it’s a constant dialogue – we already have a 2 or 3 EPs idea”. Being staunchly individual, but instrinsically linked to both institutions, the Q2B EP strikes a midpoint between the bodies he’s most involved with and McCartan…