• Damien Jurado – What’s New, Tomboy?

    May 18, 2020 - By 

    Damien Jurado describes his songs as being like cats. That is, when he wants one to come to him, they ignore him but if he goes about his day not paying attention, they come in swarms. So, making an album for Jurado is a bit like herding cats. On his 15th record, the Seattle songwriter has managed to stay out of his own way long enough in order to allow 10 sweet, well-crafted songs into his orbit, reminding us once again of his status as one of the most vital musicians to have come out of the Pacific Northwest’s folk…

  • Sun Araw – Rock Sutra

    May 14, 2020 - By 

    Some music can act as a time capsule. Just think back to the last time you listened to a song you hadn’t heard in a while, and the forgotten associations that hang faintly by the periphery lit up. Other music, however, seems to come pre-loaded with such memories, evoking a feeling so strongly you could almost forget that you had never actually experienced it. The work of Cameron Stallone, a.k.a. Sun Araw, often explores such ideas: what Burial is to a 5am walk through south London boroughs, Sun Araw is to the last July sunset while spaced out on a…

  • Arvo Party – Devotions

    May 12, 2020 - By 

    Space truly is at a premium right now. Overnight it became a commodity almost more valuable than gold; a resource which should never be a resource. Yet here we are. From the air bubbles in our sourdough starter kits to distancing ourselves from the bountiful overnight epidemiologists on social media, obsessively we are seeking the sweet release it brings . Mercifully, Belfast-based musician and producer Arvo Party – real name Herb Magee – has delivered true audio escapism in this surprise ambient album, Devotions. Preceding a full length set to land in June, Devotions is Magee’s deepest exploration into the…

  • Angular Hank – Brand New Angle

    May 6, 2020 - By 

    Angular Hank have no shortage of weapons in their arsenal.  Three songwriters, four lead vocalists and a stack of talent. Formed in the summer of 2018, the Dublin based quartet comprise of Diarmuid O’Connor, Samuel Doogan, Mathieu Doogan and Ronan Boland: four guys who represent the indie rock equivalent of Total Football, swapping duties from song to song with ease and equal ability.   Recorded over a seven-month period in Crumlin while living together, Brand New Angle lays out ten breezy accessible tunes infused with self-effacing humour and wit. Making their bones by gigging around the Dublin scene for a year…

  • Queef – Presence

    April 18, 2020 - By 

    There’s a curious video of a live performance from Queef (the collaborative project of Laney Mannion and Claire Guerin) performing at the Monk and the Nun festival in 2016. In a forest clearing, Mannion and Guerin hang chimes and bells from the branches, balance kalimbas on tree stumps, and feedback sounds of the natural world through portable amplifiers. It gives the impression of some middle ground between a biological field study and a meditative retreat: an exploration into the minutiae of the smallest, most familiar sounds that surround us. And through their album Presence, they attempt to bring this soft-eared…

  • Shabaka and the Ancestors – We Are Sent Here By History

    March 30, 2020 - By 

    In a recent article for The Outline, “Don’t leave jazz to the jazz guys”, writer Shuja Haider laments on the fact that jazz has, in the eyes of many music lovers, been co-opted by a certain superficial and off-putting fan – the “jazz guy”. Given that the depth of jazz history makes exploration an intimidating prospect, it’s perhaps not all too surprising  that many of its most noticeable modern listeners have hesitated to dip beyond shallow, well-trodden edges. For those looking for a shot of adrenaline before diving fully into its vast, exhilarating waters, however, one could do much worse…

  • David Keenan – The Beginner’s Guide To Bravery

    March 9, 2020 - By 

    In the past few years, every town and every genre in Ireland has seen great new talent rising, each pushing the boundaries of what’s to be expected from its scene. While this means the bar is continuously being raised,  and no matter what your tastes might be, there’s an Irish act for it, ready to prove their mettle. But while a rock n’ roll renaissance occurs in the kitchen, and the techno and hip-hop scenes flourish in the basement, in the attic David Keenan quietly tunes his strings, ready to raise the aforementioned bar.  After a string of noted singles…

  • Color Out of Space

    February 28, 2020 - By 

    After his quarter-century exile from feature filmmaking, writer-director Richard Stanley returns with Lovecraftian passion project Color Out Of Space. It adapts H. P. Lovecraft’s short story of the same name, where an asteroid strikes a remote New England farm, unleashing an incomprehensible alien entity which begins to infect the bodies and minds of the family it finds there.  The combination of the excellent source material and Stanley—who even when his films were run ragged by studio interference remained a strikingly distinct visual stylist—should have made for an abundantly weird film, and yet the results are disappointingly orthodox. There is potential,…

  • Gil Scott-Heron & Makaya McCraven – We’re New Again

    February 26, 2020 - By 

    It says a lot about the enduring quality of both Gil Scott Heron and his final album, I’m New Here, that in the ten years since he passed, we’re still talking and analysing that final broadcast, trying to find even more depth hidden between the silences. When that album was first pitched in 2006, Heron had recently been released from Rikers Prison with no real prospects on the horizon. When he died six years later, he was back on a career-high with his legacy firmly galvanised and a final transmission that stands a towering monument to his lyrical dexterity, genius,…

  • Richard Dawson @ Empire Music Hall, Belfast

    February 26, 2020 - By 

    After recuperating from crossing freezing Scandinavia and France, Richard Dawson ended his rest period by performing in Belfast for the first time since his appearance at the Black Box in 2017. This time the setting was the Empire, a venue with music hall origins befitting Dawson, a performer who folds together the antique and the modern. His ability to draw such a sizeable crowd is an encouraging sign for any lovers of folk music, particularly because his style is at the less accessible end of the spectrum. Along with Dublin’s Lankum, another abrasive, brilliant group, Dawson’s recent work has done…