• REPLETE – REPLETE EP

    June 5, 2013 - By 

    Picture the scene: it’s 3 am on a Saturday night. You’re in a club. Your friends are long since gone and you’re isolated. It’s hard to focus. Your head isn’t where it should be due to over-the-counter downers and under-the-counter uppers. You’re surrounded by a swirl of sounds and disembodied voices that seem to have no beginning or end. All you can do is just sit back and let it engulf you. In a different light this is a nightmare, but for REPLETE – aka Pete Lawlor – capturing and showcasing the beauty of these dark moments is a mission…

  • Malojian, Robb Murphy, Kat Hepworth – Black Box, Belfast

    June 4, 2013 - By 

    The lights dim and all of a sudden a big, yet soft voice comes from nowhere; so begins a lovely song by tonight’s first support act, Kat Hepworth, called ‘New York’. Each song that follows is just as honest and pure, the guitar finely picked, and all with a modest quirk and charm. In all, a fine start to the night’s proceedings in the Black Box. Next up, Robb Murphy and his band; their steady whimsy doffing a cap to the Lisa Hannigans of this world, they are happy to let their songs build steadily. Damien Rice meets Belle &…

  • Daft Punk – Random Access Memories

    June 4, 2013 - By 

    Unlikely though it sounds, it is actually possible to simultaneously love and loathe something. A catalogue of things that The Thin Air has at once both liked and disliked might include: the effects of alcohol; Wayne Rooney; various members of our social circle; and most of all the taste of olives (delicious, salty, greasy, disgusting olives). To this non-exclusive list we might now add Random Access Memories, which is partly ludicrously enjoyable – and partly just plain ludicrous. Where to begin with this sprawling ginormo-album? Perhaps with joyous single ‘Get Lucky’. It hardly needs saying at this point that it’s…

  • Mount Kimbie – Cold Spring Fault Less Youth

    June 1, 2013 - By 

    It’s a familiar trajectory – new outfit releases a series of head-turning EPs on a niche electronic label, graduates quickly to a full-length album and then gets snapped up by a much larger concern for a full assault on hearts and minds. That path has now more or less been trodden by three leading lights of the dubstep diaspora: James Blake, Darkstar and now Dom Maker and Kai Campos of Mount Kimbie. While Blake has sought to weld his background in dubstep production to a new role as a writer and singer of delicate soul, Darkstar and Mount Kimbie have…

  • Koreless – Yugen EP

    May 31, 2013 - By 

    Welsh producer Lewis Roberts places great emphasis on the synthetic. His debut EP as Koreless is for the most part beatless; whilst the hypnotic  (and at times vaguely unsettling ) sounds which pervade on Yugen are derived from Roberts’ fondness for sci-fi; with the novels of JG Ballard having been a particularly prominent influence during the recording of the EP. Indeed the Welshman was quoted in a recent interview with Pitchfork as having said, “I don’t ever want my music to be real— I don’t want any acoustic or human elements. I want it to be completely artificial and sci-fi”. There is…

  • Nomeansno – Voodoo, Belfast

    May 30, 2013 - By 

    Just under three years since they delivered a whiplash-inducing, criminally under-attended show here back in 2010, Nomeansno return to Belfast still very much assured of their reputation as being one of the mind-bogglingly accomplished triptychs in the entire pantheon of punk rock. Pioneering, virtuoso and notoriously disinterested in playing by the rules, they have paved the way for innumerable acts of their ilk whilst effortlessly defying all kinds of kneejerk classification for almost thirty-five years. The question remains: will fans – and indeed the merely curious – attend in their roves, as they should, this time around? The answer, lest…

  • Transmit: Runaway GO, Amidships, Hologram

    May 31, 2013 - By 

    Transmit really does show the depth of the Northern Irish Music scene right now. The groups that play cover an enormous range of different styles yet compliment each other brilliantly each week, making Wednesday night at Limelight 2 a diverse evening of full-blooded entertainment. Tonight the Limelight 2 fills up pretty early, with the venue bustling. The crowd is restless for the first act, with an expectant atmosphere griping the room. Hologram sate the crowd’s appetite, introducing themselves to the room with an instrumental number laced with slow and resonating melancholia, before roaring into life to become insatiably intense. With…

  • John Grant – Pale Green Ghosts

    May 29, 2013 - By 

    What happens to the elephant in the room when somebody talks about it? Contrary to popular opinion, it does not vanish in a puff of grey smoke. Rather, everyone is abruptly made aware of said elephant as it crushes their toes, pokes them with its tusks and snuffles about in their pockets for polo mints. And nobody appreciates the impact of proverbial elephants more intimately than John Grant, once of The Czars and Midlake, whose penchant for revealing his most secret desires and guiltiest pleasures knows no bounds. Infamously, at last year’s Meltdown Festival he announced onstage that he had…

  • Bibio – Silver Wilkinson

    May 27, 2013 - By 

    Ambient, electronica, folk, Boards of Canada and a couple of kitchen sinks are the constituent elements of  Bibio‘s (aka Steve Wilkinson) seventh album, Silver Wilkinson. The British producer has been toying with his distinct sound for the last ten years; a sort of folktronica. For this album he has attempted to expand on his previous effort’s more funk-driven style, leading to a conflict that divides the album into two distinct halves; the downtempo, Air– like first half and the funkier, more dance -based feel of the second half. Silver Wilkinson is an album to listen to during a late night chill-out session. The first section of the album is draped with shades of Eno‘s Ambient series and Zero 7‘s earlier releases.…

  • Vampire Weekend – Modern Vampires Of The City

    May 27, 2013 - By 

    Ever since Vampire Weekend poked their heads above the sub-Libertines dross of late-noughties indie they have always seemed several steps ahead of their peers. The self-titled debut’s hyperactive afro-pop and the genre-bending follow-up Contra established the New York quartet as the thinking fan’s hipsters of choice; their star continuing to ascend even as, one by one, those contemporaries deservedly crashed and burned. Despite this, it would be fair to say that they weren’t universally admired. What was perhaps missing for some amidst all this clever-clever meta-pop mashing of styles was heart: Vampire Weekend were perfectly capable of connecting with the…