• San Andreas

    June 2, 2015 - By 

    California is shaking and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is the only man who can save his wife and hot daughter from those antsy tectonic plates. Boys and girls, let’s play the disaster movie drinking game. Take a shot every time someone asks ‘are you okay?’ to someone who really should not be okay; every time the super dad tells the camera he’s gonna ‘get his daughter’; every time someone says ‘little [X] is all grown up’; every close-up of a scary red graph; every time someone busts into an office and says ‘you have to see this’; every time someone…

  • AVA Festival 2015

    June 1, 2015 - By 

    Well, here we are.  After months of anticipation and the mandatory, giddy daily countdown, the moment has arrived for Belfast’s inaugural AVA (Audio Visual Arts) Festival.  We’ve entered the Titanic Qtr and are making our way to the goliath T13 warehouse and playing spot the raver as we increase our pace, beyond excited for what we’ll see when we get there.  When we do, a multitude of coaches indicates that although it won’t kick off for some time yet, there’ll be a sizeable crowd inside.  There is, to our relief, a mass of music fans buzzing around the gargantuan space.…

  • Mr Scruff @ Black Box, Belfast

    June 1, 2015 - By 

    You might already be aware of this but Mr. Scruff AKA Andy Carthy is a bonafide hero.  Why shouldn’t he be?  The man has one of the most eclectic musical palettes around and the production/DJing skills to back it up – and then some.  That’s the reason (and always has been) why Carthy is such a huge draw for music lovers of all styles.  His last appearance in Belfast back in January was immense, and this time around, our expectations were obviously high.  It’s a treat, too, that he’s come back to play The Black Box for this visit.  Not…

  • Forbidden Fruit 2015

    June 1, 2015 - By 

    Saturday Photos by Derek Kennedy Sunday Photos by Tara Thomas The pristine fields are suddenly swamps, the sauntering revellers now screeching for shelter; those carefully picked outfits exposed for the vanity items they are, makeup streaked, perfectly quaffed bed-head hair plastered to their owners faces. Yet an Irish festival goer not ready for a little rain is a fool indeed and though the crowds entering may seem a little put out, once in the party proper the atmosphere visibly lifts. In the Undergrowth Stage 4ward Grad is laying down some beats for the early peakers. The atmosphere is positively Hacienda…

  • Slane 2015

    June 1, 2015 - By 

    County Meath holds one of the most beautiful areas of land in all of Ireland, and the worldwide famous landmark of Slane Castle hosts one of the biggest rock bands in the world today. There seems to be no better fit. The Irish music fans seem to be some of the best, recognised worldwide, and the statement made by the overwhelming crowd, surpassing the 70,000 mark, who came to see the Foo Fighters despite a number of other events on the same day, including Forbidden Fruit Festival not too far down the road, was an incredible sight to see. And…

  • Boiler Room Dublin @ Hangar

    May 29, 2015 - By 

    Boiler Room is an institution, no doubt. From its weekly Tuesday night gigs in London four years ago to a near constant international revolution of live-streamed music, its rise has been exponential. What’s been surprising then, has been its absence in Ireland. That changed, finally, last night, when Glacial Sound launched the first Dublin event of its kind. Eyebrows were raised upon its announcement, with techno fans wondering “why grime?” The simple answer is that these are the people that made it happen. The drive and passion of Glacial’s Paul Purcell is unmatched in these parts, which is why with…

  • Swans w/ Okkyung Lee @ Button Factory, Dublin

    May 27, 2015 - By 

    Despite being a Monday after the weekend before there’s a sense of excitement for those milling around waiting for the show to start. They’re all ages, a physical embodiment of the decades long span of Swans career and the age defying loyalty they inspire. But before that there’s something of a gatekeeper in the image of Okkyung Lee (below). Her face spookily serene, she weighs taste on her rapidly moving bow as she makes her cello gurgle, spit, shout and scream. In fact everything except sing. So is this deranged arthouse fun? There is something of the performance about it,…

  • A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

    May 27, 2015 - By 

    Taking just as many cues from US and European independent cinema as the classic horror canon, first-time feature writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour meticulously crafts a striking new-wave romance, in, what could very well be, the finest vampire flick of the decade. “Vampire romance? Ugh!”, I hear you groan. Rest assured, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is more than the sum of its parts, worlds away from those much-loathed teen melodramas of recent years. Instead, Amirpour presents a dark, postmodern tale of loneliness and desire, set amongst the industrial ghost town of Bad City, Iran. A desolate town sucked…

  • The Cribs w/ September Girls @ Limelight 2, Belfast

    May 26, 2015 - By 

    With their reverb-soaked garage-rock sound, September Girls (below) take to the stage at Belfast’s Limelight 2 tonight an hour after the doors open. The long wait for the opening act doesn’t make much difference as the capacity in dark room is barely touched, and with a mere thirty-odd people watching them on, the band start their set. With The Cribs gear arranged behind them, the Dublin band seem to make the stage appear even smaller than what it usually is. Swaying about for most of the set, they focus on a clean and crisp live sound, translating almost identically from their recorded material. As…

  • Joanna Gruesome – Peanut Butter

    May 26, 2015 - By 

    As a band alleged to have formed at anger management classes, Joanna Gruesome are a surprisingly jovial, albeit dark-humoured group when interviewed.  The band’s guitarist/singer Owen Williams summed this up describing the album when, he said: “This is our second record.  It is about 20 minutes long and aims to expose the radical possibilities of peanut butter.”  This tongue-in-cheek adolescence also runs through the core of the music, which displays glimpses of emotional depth but quickly resorts to bursts of noise, redolent of a teenage temper tantrum. Debut album Weird Sister was a mixed bag that threw up the occasional odd-ball…