• Transformers: Age of Extinction

    July 14, 2014 - By 

    That the Transformers films, brought to us jointly by Hasbro’s accountancy department and the jock-bro personality of Michael Bay, are bad is nearly common knowledge. But few Hollywood franchises have so aggressively courted the kind of sublime awfulness to which audiences have been subjected every second summer or so in recent memory. At the beginning of Age of Extinction, the fourth in the franchise and scripted by series regular Ehren Kruger, Optimus Prime is introduced hiding out in an abandoned movie theatre, where the old-timer owner bemoans the state of modern cinema. “It’s all sequels and reboots!” he complains, a…

  • OOIOO – Gamel

    July 14, 2014 - By 

    Today’s word of the day is metallophones. This group of musical instruments is the key to the Gamelan musical traditions of Indonesia that provide the bedrock for Gamel. Basically, any tuned metal you can hit with a mallet is covered by the term, and since most Westerners are only likely to have come across a glockenspiel and maybe a vibraphone it becomes a useful umbrella term covering an embarrassment of ignorance. It is within Gamelan that OOIOO have perhaps discovered their musical home. Six albums and nearly twenty years of experimental improvisation by Yoshimi and her cohorts have led them…

  • Manic Street Preachers – Futurology

    July 16, 2014 - By 

    Twenty-five years is a long time to be doing anything, especially making music. One of the biggest problems facing a group lasting this long is that of progression. Where do you go? It comes down to a simple choice: keep pushing forward or stagnate and reiterate. There are pros and cons for both. If you keep advancing you could discover new styles and sounds and be a modern 1970s Bowie but you could also look ridiculous and fail spectacularly like 1990s Bowie. With repetition you end up tying your hands behind your back and locking yourself into a single inescapable…

  • The Sisters of Mercy @ Mandela Hall, Belfast

    July 10, 2014 - By 

    Legendary gothic rockers The Sisters of Mercy descended upon Belfast on Tuesday, July 8, bringing their impressively large collection of hits with them.The band, who haven’t released any new music since 1992, are perennial live favourites, and their Belfast date didn’t disappoint, drawing a large crowd of the children of the night to shake their slightly unfunky stuff.Our resident goths Peter McCaughan and Steven Rainey were there, and in a change from usual programming, they bring us this bite-sized audio review, capturing the sights, sounds, and occasionally smells, of what went down. Photos by Dee McAvoy Audio Review: Sisters of Mercy…

  • Taylor McFerrin – Early Riser

    July 9, 2014 - By 

    As the oldest son of legendary vocalist and composer Bobby ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ McFerrin, Taylor McFerrin has presumably had ample time to soak up as much of the unorthodox, richly diverse musicianship that the family crest must surely represent. Taylor, following in the footsteps of his father, puts on the captain’s hat for Early Riser, his debut LP courtesy of Flying Lotus’s and Ninjatune’s off-shoot label, Brainfeeder, and as a consequence, helms the production, instrumental and compositional responsibilities. Considering also that the album has been around five years in the making, it suggests that the multi-talented McFerrin – in…

  • Mrs Brown’s Boys D’Movie: A Dissection

    July 3, 2014 - By 

    It is hard to imagine a less fashionable sitcom than Mrs. Brown’s Boys, Brendan O’Carroll’s cash-spewing granny-drag comedy in which he plays the foul-mouthed matriarch at its centre. Based on the act O’Carroll and various family members developed on stage over years of touring, and co-developed by RTE and BBC Scotland, the show is powered by the comic appeal of a stocky man in a dinner lady’s vest pottering about sets, mugging for the audience, laughing at his own jokes and spitting out ‘fecks’ like punctuation. Trading on shoe-worn sitcom set-ups, Mammy-knows-best nostalgia and gags so broad a rookie stormtrooper…

  • Anthrax @ Limelight 1, Belfast

    July 2, 2014 - By 

    It’s been a good week for speed metal fans in Belfast with not one but two Slayer gigs, followed by tonight’s long awaited show from Noo Yoik’s nonpareils of noise, Anthrax. That’s 50% of the ‘Big Four’ of thrash on the same modestly sized Limelight stage, while Metallica are headlining Glastonbury and Megadeth are off, I don’t know, probably offending a minority group. Yea, verily, it is the season of metal. If the audience are beginning to feel a little spoilt they certainly don’t show it, piling into the venue as soon as doors open and readily assuming the position…

  • Arcade Fire, Pixies @ Marlay Park

    July 1, 2014 - By 

    The first of the Marlay Park summer shows kick off with the rather unusual pairing of Arcade Fire and Pixies. The chamber-pop grandness of Arcade Fire is a world away from the alt-rock rawness of Pixies, and so there seems to be two divisions of fans among the crowd; those for Pixies and those for Arcade Fire. Not that this led to any trouble or violence of course; it merely creates an atmosphere where some fans appear somewhat uninterested in half the show. Pixies bring  their manic alt-rock to the stage with plenty of gusto and hit home from the off…

  • Cold In July

    June 30, 2014 - By 

    Michael C. Hall has established himself as a talented, highly watchable actor with considerable range through his successful roles on television in Dexter and Six Feet Under. But can he make the breakthrough onto the big screen? With roles in Gamer and Kill Your Darlings, among others, it’s been a fairly mixed bag so far and in his latest film Cold in July the greater mystery is Hall’s future career path, rather than the film’s narrative. Based on the novel of the same name by Joe R. Lansdale, writer of Bubba-Ho-Tep, Cold In July finds Michael C. Hall in everyman territory as…

  • Ultramantis Black – S/T

    June 24, 2014 - By 

    Pro wrestling isn’t necessarily the first port of call in terms of informed and conscientious political and social commentary, with non-jingoistic fans for years putting up with dated “evil foreigner” gimmicks, gang-like groups repping colours and flipping hand signs, and myriad other misrepresentations of a reality from which the artform was originally supposed to provide escape. Call it a fucking huge surprise then, when UltraMantis Black, masked wrestler and staple of leading American independent company CHIKARA, broke his silence to yowl in a political straight-edge hardcore band, out of character, yet within mask, in a surreal clash of the king…