• Happy Days Festival: Catastrophe

    August 12, 2014 - By 

    It seemed certain that somebody would let the cat out of the bag. A tongue would slip and the secret would surely be out. The mystery surrounding the location of the Ceithleann Island Theatre Company’s performances of Samuel Beckett’s Catastrophe was an imaginative programming touch of the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival and a great publicity generator. Despite two performances every day bar one throughout the marathon eleven-day festival, nobody spilled the beans. On this day, the bus routinely picks up about fifty people from Enniskillen Castle and heads out into the wilds of the Fermanagh countryside – destination…

  • Parquet Courts – Sunbathing Animal

    August 12, 2014 - By 

    There must be a sense of relative trepidation whenever an underground band are thrown into the media spotlight from the depths of relative obscurity, and viewed by many a rock critic as the latest bearers of the indie rock torch. That sort of instant exposure was something that befell Brooklyn via Texas natives Parquet Courts, in the early part of last year, following the release of their second record Light Up Gold, especially after the success of the utterly infectious ‘Stoned and Starving’. Light Up Gold was considered a little rough around the edges, which resulted in the group being…

  • Jungle – Jungle

    August 11, 2014 - By 

    If the early years of the second decade of the 21st Century are looked back on by culture historians and future mars-dwelling anthropologists, then the most striking thing that hopefully hits them isn’t just our society’s over-reliance on dance bangers and international rappers but also the grey period that alternative music went through. Alt-J, Metronomy and to a lesser extent Future Islands are helping build up a series of strong copyright cases by releasing each other’s songs; weak bladdered knock-offs of LCD Soundsystem which although not terrible, aren’t anything special. Into the fray step Jungle. Jungle starts off promisingly enough.…

  • Stendhal Festival of Art 2014

    August 10, 2014 - By 

    Make no bones about it: the Glasgowbury-shaped hole in the Northern Irish summer festival calendar is indeed a sizable one. But as is equally apparent to those of us in eager search of its successor, it’s all very much a case of one door closes, another door opens. Teetering right on the precipice of ascending to the enviable rank of Northern Ireland’s singular unmissable two-day music and arts festival, Stendhal Festival of Art, with its glorious rural expanse and wonderfully kaleidoscopic eclecticism, is set to do just that this weekend. Here’s how things went down. Held on the barley-bordered fields of Ballymully Farm…

  • Steve Earle @ Open House Festival

    August 6, 2014 - By 

    With an image of the ascending Christ as a backdrop, the sanctuary of Bangor Abbey would be an imposing stage for many lesser artists than Steve Earle, who, from the opening unnamed new song to the closing favourite ‘Copperhead Road’, ensures the sold-out Bangor crowd’s attention remains on the music rather than on the discomfort of the church pews. The absence of a merchandise stall, café and bar facilities, or a support act does not detract from an intense yet entertaining set from the Texan, who admits between songs, “It’s not the first time that I’ve played in a church,…

  • King Creosote – From Scotland With Love

    August 7, 2014 - By 

    From Scotland With Love is the first long player of previously unreleased material from King Creosote since the stunning 2011 Jon Hopkins collaboration Diamond Mine and picks up the baton after two decades and over forty records of almost ceaseless prolific productivity. As the Commonwealth Games come to Glasgow, is Kenny ‘King Creosote’ Anderson a contender or has his race been run? This is more than just a record. Specifically written to accompany a silent movie production of the same name, the film is a gritty black and white look through archive footage from Scotland’s past showing the love, the…

  • Oh Volcano @ Voodoo, Belfast

    August 5, 2014 - By 

    When a band with a firmly established sound and style decide to go on hiatus only to re-emerge under a different name and with a new creative direction, it’s not just surprising – it is brave. There’s not just the danger of potentially alienating their existing fan-base but the risk of their flirtations with experimentation failing miserably, leading to retreats with tails between legs. It is with this thought in the back of our in mind that we approach the debut headline show of Oh Volcano, the highly anticipated new guise of ex-General Fiasco band members, Owen and Enda Strathern,…

  • Guardians of the Galaxy

    August 4, 2014 - By 

    Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel’s big summer movie, is a hot-blooded, swaggering space-opera blockbuster and a finely-judged exercise in controlled chaos. On the one hand, it’s another big-budget, aggressively promoted film from the production factory of Marvel Studios, which has achieved unprecedented box-office success through shrewd creative decisions and a tight-fisted promotion of a ‘house style’ across their properties. On the other hand, they chose as writer-director (with co-writer Nicole Perlman) James Gunn, whose CV includes Super, in which a psychotic Rainn Wilson dresses as a superhero and runs around smashing people’s faces in with a wrench, and Tromeo and…

  • Happy Days Festival: Donal O’Kelly reads Samuel Beckett’s Sedendo et Quiescendo

    August 4, 2014 - By 

    For some, purgatory might well be a dawn rise to catch a 7am boat on Lough Erne, one that ferries you to an uninhabited island for a reading of Samuel Beckett’s lesser known work. Lough Erne was an ancient pathway for pilgrims from the Shannon heading to the monastery of Devonish and other church sites. But purgatory this is not, for the pilgrims this fresh, sunny Fermanagh morning are all Beckettphiles. The Purgatorio Island Readings have been a constant feature of the first three editions of the Happy Days Eniskillen International Beckett Festival, and hugely popular with attendees as well…

  • Adebisi Shank – The Third Album of a Band Called Adebisi Shank

    August 6, 2014 - By 

    Let’s cut to a very important chase, straight away. This Is The Third Album of a Band Called Adebisi Shank Is Not This Is The Second Album of a Band Called Adebisi Shank. The Second Album... was an event in Irish music. Not just a major release, or critically acclaimed, but a happening, a seismic shift in expectations for others to follow, and a step up for Irish independent music, so much so it attracted the attention of Sargent House and the world. It was important, a concentrated blast of everything that was right with the world. Opinion on teaser…