• The Thin Air’s Essential 25 Films of 2017

    December 22, 2017 - By 

    End of year rankings obscure as much as they reveal, so we’re keeping it loose for the film countdown. Each of our regular film writers submitted picks for the year’s best in cinema, as well as a ‘wildcard’ pick that deserved more attention. The resulting list of 25 films embraces the art-house and the blockbuster, showcasing stunning work from Ireland, the UK, America and elsewhere, across a healthy range of genres and styles. The films are unnumbered and presented in random order. This rundown only begins to capture the breadth of cinematic experiences offered by the year; please take it as an…

  • The Thin Air’s Top 30 Irish Albums of 2017

    December 21, 2017 - By 

    Ahead of revealing our top twenty EPs of the year, we’re pleased to present the big one: our Top 30 Irish Albums of the Year. Was it a tricky to compile? Very. It’s never easy but it’s always a pleasure. We say it every year but it’s undeniable: the last twelve months have been nothing short of revelatory, and we fully believe the following list of LPs shine a beaming floodlight on what the island of Ireland has to offer, from transcendent traditional revivalism and world-beating hip-hop to obliterating noise and Motorik-driven kosmische worship. 30. Eoin Dolan – UBIQUE UBIQUE…

  • Lists For Life (Not Just For Christmas)

    December 8, 2017 - By 

    Christmas has finally come! Streaming sites are starting to publish playlists showing which songs we’ve all listened to this year, and while I, like many of you, have enjoyed seeing how that particular contest panned out for me (Not at all what I expected, but the order is entirely believable) it also indicates the beginning of another and much more important recent yearly tradition, saving/stealing all my friends procedurally generated top songs of the year playlists. After last year’s surprising elections and much talk of how we all live in news bubbles it stirred the idea that a similar bias…

  • The Thin Air’s Top 100 Irish Tracks of 2017 (50-1)

    December 8, 2017 - By 

    Boy, was this hard. To say this top 100 countdown could’ve very easily been a top 250 wouldn’t be anything resembling an overstatement. From start to finish, 2017 will go down as one of the most compelling years in Irish music in recent memory. Your move, 2018. Go here for 100-51. 50. Wood Burning Savages – Living Hell 49. Maija Sofia – Persephone 48. Group Zero – Pyramid of Light/Love And The Present 47. Ryan Vail & Jealous of the Birds – Love is a Crow 46. Floor Staff – A Love Sublime 45. Super Silly – Not Ready to…

  • Sea Pinks’ Neil Brogan on Minimum Wage – BBC Sessions (& Others)

    December 7, 2017 - By 

    Sea Pinks frontman Neil Brogan reflects on the pleasures and slight pitfalls of compiling and releasing new compilation Minimum Wage – BBC Sessions (& Others). See below for video premiere for lead single ‘Minimum Wage’. A few months ago we went into a studio in Amsterdam and recorded three songs. We were on tour at the time and it seemed like a good thing to do on our day off. When I came to think about what to do with these tracks I remembered we had recorded some other songs for the BBC. After being broadcast just once years ago most…

  • The Thin Air’s Top 100 Irish Tracks of 2017 (100-51)

    December 7, 2017 - By 

    Ah, End of Year lists. Where would we be without you? Although the whole process can often skim close to the torturous, few things in this life rival the sheer satisfaction of sifting through a full year of music in order to attempt to carve out some semblance of quality. And whilst descending, close-ended lists such as these are almost exclusively arbitrary exercises nullified by good ol’ subjectivity, there’s something intrinsically important about trying to take a broad snapshot of music released in the twelve months just gone. And make no mistake, it’s been a pretty remarkable year for Irish…

  • Outburst Queer Arts Festival 2017 Film Review

    November 17, 2017 - By 

    With the screening of Sebastián Lelio’s Chilean trans thriller A Fantastic Women cancelled due to a logistical hiccup, it was down to Signature Move to open the film programme for the 2017 Outburst Festival, an annual showcase of international queer arts and cinema, and the film wasn’t really up to the inaugural task. Soap operas feature heavily in Jennifer Reeder’s film as a way for expatriates to connect with their homeland. Thirty-something lesbian attorney Zaynab (Fawzia Mirza, who wrote the script with Lisa Donato), lives in Chicago with her mother, a Muslim conservative who spends her days in an armchair…

  • Interview: The Sunshine Factory

    November 13, 2017 - By 

    Ahead of the launch of their stellar new EP, Cruelest Animal, at Crane Lane on November 30, we talk to Jack Horgan and Mark Waldron-Hyden from Cork neo-psych five-piece The Sunshine Factory about influence, releasing via their own DIY label, Cork’s thriving scene at the minute, their plans for 2018 and more. Your forthcoming EP, Cruelest Animal collects some of your earlier recordings. A lot of bands would never dream to reveal their earlier trial-and-error. How did you come to the decision to compile and release the EP? Mark Waldron-Hyden (drums): Basically, since then and now we have recorded and…

  • Interview: Pat Metheny

    November 9, 2017 - By 

    It’s taken a while, but the wait for the many Irish fans of twenty-time Grammy-winning guitarist and composer Pat Metheny will finally be over when he plays his first ever gigs in Ireland, in Dublin on 13 November and in Belfast on 14 November. Given Metheny’s extensive, globe-trotting tours since the mid-1970s it seems odd that the Missouri guitar legend has never previously made it to Ireland, a curious fact that’s not lost on him. “I have been wanting to play here for forty plus years now,” says Metheny, “and for one reason or another, it has never happened. I…

  • Interview: Tandem Felix

    November 6, 2017 - By 

    Ahead of their first Dublin headline show in over two years tomorrow night Hugh O’Dwyer talks to Tandem Felix frontman David Tapley about their new music and returning to the stage. Tickets for their November 7th show upstairs in Whelans can be purchased here. A little bit country, a little bit rock and roll, the sound of Tandem Felix has changed quite a bit since some of the band’s earlier work such as Ryan Hoguet and the Popcorn EP. What would you attribute this change in style to? A few things really; I’ve loved country and country-related music for so long. I…