• Electric Picnic 2016

    September 7, 2016 - By 

    The Holy Grail of Irish music and the summer season is back again with the fastest selling ever Electric Picnic gracing Stradbally in its typically flamboyant style. Despite the speed with which tickets sold out, murmurs of disappointment have been rife all summer due to Picnic’s decision to pull the lineup back slightly from the massive names of the last few years in favour of a roll call of bands that would have been standard in the earlier years of the festival. This change is evident immediately due to the slightly older crowd strolling around on Friday afternoon pitching up…

  • Josie Nugent @ The Belfast Barge

    September 7, 2016 - By 

    Now in its eighth year, Feile An Droichead has worked its way quietly, and with little fanfare, to a point where this annual celebration of Irish music and language arguably ranks as one of the signature events in Northern Ireland’s burgeoning cultural calendar. Beyond the confines of its An Droichead home, the 2016 edition has seen the festival extend its reach into the wider community, with performances in the Ulster Museum, Black Box and the Belfast Barge creating, at the very least, the possibility of bringing traditional music to a more general audience. The honour of closing An Droichead 2016,…

  • The Pipes The Pipes @ Black Box, Belfast

    August 31, 2016 - By 

    The title may evoke a line from Frederick Weatherly’s famous ballad ‘Danny Boy’, but this multi-media project, where there are as many audio-visual artists as there are uilleann pipers, is about as far away from Irishry as imagined by sentimentalists the world over, as can be imagined. The music itself is traditional enough, though the printed program outlining the sequence and details of the twelve-piece set is more in tune with a classical music performance. Maitiú Ó Casaide, Leonard Barry and John Tuohy – the latter subbing for Padraig McGovern – deliver a set of jigs, hop jigs, slip jigs,…

  • Sam Beam & Jesca Hoop w/ Erika Wennerstrom @ Marine Court Hotel, Bangor

    August 31, 2016 - By 

    Erika Wennerstrom breaks down in tears several songs into her support slot. Open House Festival Director Kieran Gilmore proclaims that “Bangor is the new Cathedral Quarter.” Jesca Hoop suggests that she and Sam Beam could be married by the end of the evening. Some context: on hiatus from fronting garage-rockers Heartless Bastards, Wennerstrom (below) is road-testing some emotionally direct solo material in Bangor tonight and it shows in her early nervous delivery. This is an intense and at times uncomfortable opening set, but she makes it through thanks to a hugely supportive audience. This is the Open House Festival’s fourth…

  • Camino Na Sáile @ Ulster Museum, Belfast

    August 29, 2016 - By 

    “It’s important to do mad things. I don’t think it’s very wise not to do mad things.” So says Danny Sheehy, sagely. And what could be wiser than for a writer, an artist, a stonemason and two musicians to make a wooden-framed, canvas-covered boat and sail it, from Dublin, across a couple of seas, to join the route of the Camino de Santiago de Compostella? Sheehy is one of five wise men on the stage in the Ulster Museum, along with Glen Hansard, Brenden Begley, Brendan Ó Mhuircheartaigh and Liam Holden. Middle aged, weather beaten, grey haired, and with a…

  • Godspeed You! Black Emperor @ Vicar Street, Dublin

    August 24, 2016 - By 

    It’s about sixteen months since instrumental Montreal collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor last played Ireland, and with the venue, stage backdrop, equipment, lighting, and setlists almost identical to the last, there’s a familiar sense of n different sort of ritual on this particular Sunday at Vicar Street. The ongoing sub-50Hz rumble of the venue gives way to the entry of the seemingly accidental wandering onstage of a percussionist, double bassist and violinist, kept just visible by warm amber light. As they ease into some droning, exploratory notes, more musicians appear onstage, before the mass organically transforms into the band’s now…

  • Toe, TTNG, Steve Strong and Yonen @ Button Factory, Dublin

    August 21, 2016 - By 

    For those who couldn’t make Bristol’s preeminent ArcTanGent festival this weekend Venture Promotions have put together one hell of a consolation prize. Known as the pre-eminent post and math rock extravaganza, it’s also a mecca that not all fans can make. So that’s why tonight, in the Button Factory, is such a boon. Scooping the proverbial cream from the crop, the saliva inducing line-up includes two celebrated acts from the festival, a UK solo virtuoso and one of our very own. Their name is Yonen and it fell to them to play to the first comers. The group sit somewhere…

  • Stendhal Festival of Art 2016 (Day Two)

    August 19, 2016 - By 

    Totally unimaginable up until very recently, this year’s Stendhal Festival of Art was framed by tragedy for so many. A year to the day on from delivering one of the Limavady festival’s truly great performances, news on Saturday night began to circulate that Stevie Martin AKA Rainy Boy Sleep – having been reported missing for three weeks days earlier – had passed. Hovering like an unseen spectre over good friends, fans, festival organisers and fellow musicians on the Friday, confirmation of our collective worst fears on Saturday evening sent a shockwave through Stendhal’s tight-knit, communal fabric. And yet, propelled by Stevie’s spirit, hope sprung up in dedication…

  • White Denim w/ Wyvern Lingo @ Whelan’s, Dublin

    August 18, 2016 - By 

    It’s no surprise that the main band room is beginning to feel rather like a sauna with every passing minute, due to the constant flow of punters that pass through this infamous venue’s doors. Following the release of their latest full length album Stiff, White Denim are returning to the capital, albeit for only the third time, to a near packed out and rather excitable bunch. There is a clear presence of heightened anticipation for the headliners amongst the audience, which has led to a majority of the floor space already taken up by the time support act Wyvern Lingo take…

  • Overhead, The Albatross w/ New Pope @ Roisin Dubh, Galway

    August 15, 2016 - By 

    There’s been plenty said over the past couple of years about the over-reliance on particular tropes and techniques in Post-Rock, Math-Rock and, from other camps, in movie and TV soundtracks. There are always, of course, exceptions to this who manage to keep these realms of music interesting and exciting, from Battles to Adebisi Shank, from This Will Destroy You to Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein (the men behind the marvellous soundtrack for Netflix’s Stranger Things). The ways in which artists or composers avoid the traps and pitfalls of complacency and the rehashing of the same sounds and tricks over and…