• All Tvvins @ Olympia Theatre, Dublin

    November 1, 2016 - By 

    “It’s good to be home” says Conor Adams, frontman of All Tvvins after playing their first song in The Olympia Theatre tonight, Book. And it seems that the feeling is mutual, the crowd could not be happier to have the band back on home turf after they have been away touring across Europe in support of their debut album ‘IIVV’ for the last while. In tonight’s show All Tvvins show just why there has been so much talk about them, and this definitely feels like the beginning of something huge. From the moment they take to the stage they have…

  • Bantum – Move

    October 31, 2016 - By 

    With a three year gap since Legion, his debut full-length album, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Bantum (aka Ruairi Lynch) would want to execute a fairly insular, idiosyncratic affair with his latest effort. Instead, it’s the relationships that Lynch has formed in the interim that sees Move thrive as an essential addition to the 2016 Irish release calendar. Having enlisted the likes of CC Brez, Loah, Rusangano Family, and a few more familiar names to inject proceedings with a veritable feast of homegrown talent, Lynch’s vision becomes one of celebration and appreciation. Move feels like one of those records…

  • Battlefield 1 (EA, Multi-Platform)

    October 26, 2016 - By 

    In a congested and hotly contended arena like the First Person Shooter (FPS) market, being original is difficult. Nowhere better is this epitomised than in the yearly battle that takes place between Activision, with their hugely successful Call of Duty series; and Electronic Arts (EA) with the Battlefield franchise. Recently the answer from both companies has been to push their imaginations to the limit in publishing games that present a more ‘futuristic’ form of warfare. Perhaps this is because anti-gravity rocket boots are more easily marketed than a quaint and simple handgun, particularly to a younger and more impressionable generation…

  • Leonard Cohen – You Want It Darker

    October 26, 2016 - By 

    After 82 years of experience, a hundred thousand cigarettes later, and more than a few near-perfect words of love, life, death, and every notable human occurrence between, Leonard Cohen has returned with You Want it Darker – the 14th studio album from the “Godfather of Gloom”. Regardless of the album’s suggestively bleak title and the monicker the poet and author established for himself back in ‘71 with his controversially downbeat yet critically acclaimed album Songs of Love and Hate, this record as a whole is actually more sombre and settled. It sounds entirely certain of itself. The songs are notably sparse in their…

  • John Carpenter @ Vicar Street, Dublin

    October 25, 2016 - By 

    Not entirely unlike that scene in Wayne’s World where Wayne and Garth declare themselves all but contemptible in the presence of Alice Cooper, the sense of collective unworthiness when John Carpenter quite literally struts out on stage with his band in Vicar Street tonight is tangible. Hands down one of cinema’s greatest auteurs – a fiercely single-minded master of both sound and vision – the 68-year-old has accumulated very few naysayers over his genre-spanning, critic-slaying, five-decade career to date, a fact that is comfortably underlined by the idolatrous energy in the much-loved Dublin venue tonight. But from those first ominous ripples of the main title to his 1981 dystopian classic Escape…

  • Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World

    October 25, 2016 - By 

    The great Werner Herzog (Fitzcarraldo) is back doing what he does best – documentary filmmaking. With Lo and Behold, his inquisitive eye is cast over the world of the internet; its past, present and future, with highly informative and entertaining results. The opening shot is met by the unmistakable voice of the man himself, as he introduces one of the original pioneers of the internet, Leonard Kleinrock. He guides us into a perfectly recreated and preserved room, from which the first internet message was sent in 1969, and informs the viewer, with much gusto, as to what this message was.…

  • Irish Tour: Sleaford Mods

    October 24, 2016 - By 

    In the latest installment of Irish Tour, Jonny Currie and photographers Dee McEvoy and Aidan Kelly Murphy capture the return of Sleaford Mods to Dublin and Belfast. Mandela Hall, Belfast Photos by Dee McEvoy Behold, hear the voice of one calling: prepare ye the way of the Mods. The prophecy of Divide and Brexit has been fulfilled. The importance of securing entry to key markets clogs up our newsfeeds. Meanwhile two blokes called Jason and Andrew have signed a record deal with Rough Trade this year that should project their hard-worn, under-heard music to the wider audience it deserves, without compromise. Sleaford…

  • American Football – American Football (LP2)

    October 24, 2016 - By 

    There was a lot going on back in 1999. Will Smith was declaring the next thousand years for himself, everyone was waiting for that big party Prince had promised and there was far, far too much clip art around. So it’s no wonder that some people missed a very quiet yet incredibly important moment in music history. Like the proverbial ripple in the pond (or butterfly hadouken) the release of American Football’s debut started as a small, localised wonder but since has proved to be a landmark and touchstone, for many reasons, but most notably for its influence on nascent genres like emo and post-rock. The…

  • Ilenkus – Hunger

    October 24, 2016 - By 

    Galway’s Ilenkus returned this month with their first release since 2014’s EP The Crossing. Hunger sees the quintet moving from the sludgy Neurosis-leaning sound of their previous work into a considerably more frenetic, uninhibited direction. This has done them plenty of favours, the tracks on this 15 minute offering being a step up both in terms of technicality but also in its immediate appeal. While it is by no means a re-invention of the wheel, it is a triumphant chunk of energy that deserves to stand front-and-centre within its realm. Written as a single piece, Hunger‘s four sections flow into one another with hurricane ferocity. From…

  • Cate Le Bon @ Black Box, Belfast

    October 21, 2016 - By 

    Four albums in, Cate Le Bon is making her long overdue Belfast headlining debut with the rest of her band, having previously only been here for a solo set supporting Manic Street Preachers a few years ago. Her guest appearances on the works of fellow Welsh artists the Manics and Neon Neon have brought extra attention her way, but her solo career has been on a gradual rise on its own terms, and with this year’s impressive Crab Day making waves, it’s as good a time as any to make up for that absence. Le Bon’s music has undergone something…