• Ash @ Limelight 1, Belfast

    June 10, 2015 - By 

    “How many of you have never seen us play before?” Very few hands are raised. It’s probably fair to assume that the majority of this Belfast crowd have, in some shape or form, grown up with Ash. Having been upgraded, due to demand, to the larger room in The Limelight complex, it speaks for the enduring appeal of the home grown band who are currently touring to mark the release of Kablammo!; their seventh album. For a band sporting a back catalogue as well regarded as Ash, you would forgive the temptation to forge a set list of favourites. It…

  • SOAK – Before We Forgot How To Dream

    June 10, 2015 - By 

    Youth is a wonderful and bliss experience, and it passes us by too quickly. Bridie Monds-Watson, still in her teenage years, has been able to pen the most relatable experiences and over the past few years, her progression into an artist has unfolded before our eyes. Having written single ‘Sea Creatures’ years before it made it to the Radio 1 A List, SOAK has been gaining traction across the UK ever since. With notable fans across the Beeb and even further afield, along with appearing at numerous festivals across the UK, it wasn’t long before Rough Trade took notice and…

  • Hudson Mohawke – Lantern

    June 9, 2015 - By 

    To put it colloquially, Warp Records have been absolutely killing it over the last two years. Given their legacy within the electronic music world, the Sheffield label has always guaranteed a certain level of quality, but in recent years their output has begun to become so much more fascinating. Any label that can release the like of Boards of Canada’s Tomorrow’s Harvest, Aphex Twin’s Syro, Flying Lotus’s You’re Dead! and Clark’s Feast/Beast within two years is doing something terribly interesting. The most recent release in their agenda is Hudson Mohawke’s latest LP, Lantern, his first major release since his barnstorming ‘Chimes’…

  • Sun Kil Moon – Universal Themes

    June 8, 2015 - By 

    It’s fair to say Sun Kil Moon guitarist and vocalist Mark Kozelek is a multi-faceted and somewhat temperamental individual: he wears his heart on his sleeve and bears his soul through song. He had a well documented spat with The War on Drugs last year after their sound bled on to his stage at a festival, and has even criticised his own fans for being a bunch of hipster “guys in tennis shoes” [ed: see Laura Snape’s recent piece on his on-stage response to her attempts to interview and profile the artist]. Last year’s release Benji was an emotionally wrought…

  • Timbuktu

    June 7, 2015 - By 

    In the world right now, there is a cultural war unfolding. It’s a conflict of moderation against militancy as ordinary Muslims try to sustain their way of life in the face of violence and campaign of fear in the form of ISIS, whose commitment to brutality may well be one of the most legitimately terrifying elements of contemporary society. The group hold a unique position; by flooding the news with hyper-flashy, well edited YouTube videos of their barbarity, they’ve ensured their constant presence on television screens and on and offline publications globally. This monstrous self-promotion has put any kind of…

  • Muse – Drones

    June 5, 2015 - By 

    Let’s keep this short and sour: not only the most aptly-titled album of a generation but easily one of the most soul-crushingly tedious, cack-handed things you’ll ever have the utter displeasure of sitting through. Origin of Symmetry is now such an inconceivably long distance away it verges on the positively mirage-like. Zero stars. Brian Coney

  • Heaven Adores You

    June 5, 2015 - By 

    I was slumping about in my mid-teenage years, feeling a bit lost and misunderstood, when I first was introduced to Elliott Smith. One listen of XO and I fell in love hard. Elliott Smith’s magic lies in creating the delicately beautiful and achingly bittersweet. He is, at once, the perfect and worst thing to listen to if you’re heartbroken, melancholy or just feeling a bit overcast. And, let’s be honest, any fan worth their salt has knowingly (almost masochistically) reached for one of his albums when at a low, in the full comprehension of what will follow. He is the…

  • Listen Up Philip

    June 5, 2015 - By 

    The saying goes that if you think everyone you meet is an asshole, then the real asshole is probably you. Alex Ross Perry’s brilliant, caustic Listen Up Philip serves up two of recent cinema’s finest assholes, a men of letters two-hander of Jason Schwartzman’s young novelist and Jonathan Pryce as the past-it literary icon he so admires. Schwartzman has a habit of playing characters on the fringes of sufferability, from Funny People‘s sell-out comic to the word-smart P.I in Bored to Death, and here he pushes through to the other side, into a glorious, all-out prickishess. Philip (Schwartzman) is preparing for the launch of his second…

  • Holly Herndon – Platform

    June 5, 2015 - By 

    Holly Herndon makes avant-garde electronic music veering between ambient techno and musique concrète. Her sound incorporates sampled and processed vocals as well as acoustic and found sounds. Individual tracks tend to adopt little structure and offer even less in the way of hook or identifiable tune to grab the listener’s attention. That said, absolute attention is demanded by Platform. This is a busy record, an uneasy listen, but an undeniably accomplished experiment, with much reward for those up to the challenge. Like new label-mate Grimes (this is Herndon’s 1st LP for 4AD) the experience is presented in cascades of sonic…

  • Patti Smith, Spiritualized & Ariel Pink @ Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin

    June 3, 2015 - By 

    The last remnants of the Forbidden Fruit stages are being taken down. A few straggling food tents and vans are dotted around the edges of the field beside the obligatory Bulmers festival stands. And the rain is pouring down. It’s only through an organisational miracle that this gig is going ahead at all, really. What was originally meant to be an outdoors affair has instead been forced into two big tops, meaning that those who were lucky enough to secure tickets are tightly squeezed in. However, the lack of space in no way impacts on the energy at tonight’s triumvirate…