• Other Voices at ANAM @ The Helix, Dublin

    April 13, 2018 - By 

    North Dublin gets a lot of bad press. We hear so many tales of ludicrous individuals and gangs that it’s easy to make the assumption that the North of the city is a place lacking in substance. Presented by DCU and Other Voices, ANAM is the start of an annual showcase of what culture lies bubbling beneath the surface of the city, but its importance is felt most by the local residents of the North side. Starting off the night are Discovery Gospel Choir (below), a harmonically powerful, multi-cultural group that shake off the traditional Irish awkwardness by asking everyone…

  • Daniel Avery – Song For Alpha

    April 13, 2018 - By 

    Daniel Avery has been DJing for 14 years. In such a relatively short space of time, few others have managed to traverse the techno spectrum quite in the same was he has. While his 2013 debut LP Drone Logic was widely regarded as one of Britain’s greatest ever techno offerings, his studious back catalogue has seen him expertly morph the genre with flashes of acid house, psychedelia and trance to name but a few stylistic ventures. Whether Avery’s trademark energy and intensity has been splashed across his original productions, or cast over in remixes Factory Floor’s, Django Django’s or Munk’s material, the recurring theme…

  • Rampage

    April 13, 2018 - By 

    Even in stupidity there can be poetry. In the Midway Games’ Rampage series, released across arcades and consoles since 1986, the player controls a giant rat, ape or alligator whose sole objective is to destroy as much urban landscape as possible. Smash, smash, smash. Totally, blissfully uncomplicated. Things like ‘plot’ and personable characterisation weren’t pressing priorities. But a writer room abhors a vacuum, and the big-screen Rampage, the latest vehicle for one-man industry Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, expands the building-bashing conceit into a messy, tonally wild and strangely restrained man versus monster blockbuster. The focus of Rampage is a hulking…

  • Michael Inside

    April 12, 2018 - By 

    There can be a certain suspicion about films that generate a lot of positive advance word. Can any film really be that good? Is it all hype? Thankfully, the fuss about Michael Inside is justified. This is a terrific piece of film-making about the consequences of one moment in a young man’s life. Michael McCrea (Dafhyd Flynn) is 18 years old and lives with his grandfather Francis (Lalor Roddy) in a housing estate in a disadvantaged area of Dublin. His father is in prison and his mother died from a drugs overdose when he was younger. Michael has plans to…

  • Goat Girl – Goat Girl

    April 12, 2018 - By 

    Named in reference to Goat Boy, Bill Hicks’ salacious stage persona, London four-piece Goat Girl give some clue to the contents of their debut album through their own half-abandoned alter egos. Vocalist Clottie Cream (Lottie), drummer Rosy Bones, guitarist L.E.D. (Ellie) and bassist Naima Jelly seem to both crave and dismiss the kind of anonymity that will allow the music to stand entirely on its own merits. Alongside this is a darkly humoured veneer that hangs over the songs, which often masks an incisive sting. Much has been made of the band’s South London origins, and their sonic and geographic…

  • A Quiet Place

    April 10, 2018 - By 

    For anyone forced to do the Sunday visit rounds, the concept of family life as an exercise in barely tolerable, near-silent tension is a familiar one. The pause between programme and adverts. The clacking clock hand on an ugly mantelpiece. The latest in John Krasinski’s canny pivot from straight-to-camera GIF-ery to leading man robustness, A Quiet Place brings high-concept genre logic to family quiet time, positing a near-future in which humanity has been devastated by insectoid alien invaders, so-called ‘dark angels’, with no sight organs but a highly tuned sense of hearing, perking up at minor wallops and bangs a mile away. Krasinki…

  • Eels – The Deconstruction

    April 10, 2018 - By 

    Describing the thesis of The Deconstruction, Eels’ twelfth record and first in four years, Mark Oliver Everett retains a phrase commonplace in conversations happening globally: “The world is going nuts.” That is not to say, however, that his outlook for the future is bleak. If anything, he is hopeful: “If you look for it, there is still great beauty to be found. Sometimes you don’t even have to look for it. Other times you have to try to make it yourself. And then there are times you have to tear something apart to find something beautiful inside.” There are plenty of…

  • Arcade Fire @ 3Arena, Dublin

    April 10, 2018 - By 

    Having played a massive show at Malahide castle last year, Arcade Fire return with the Infinite Content tour, sardonically named to jibe at the social media age, just one of the many tactics deployed throughout the promotion around their current album, Everything Now. Tonight, in keeping with that off kilter theme they’ve created a show ‘in the round’ – complete with a boxing ring and Michael Buffer style announcements of their accolades as they appear from the far corner of the 3Arena, air-punching alongside flashing ironic graphics of infomercials and ‘tale of the tape’ biographies appear on the 360 degree…

  • The Altered Hours w/ Documenta @ Menagerie, Belfast

    April 6, 2018 - By 

    The Menagerie has really gone from strength to strength since reopening late last year. The galaxy print exterior may have been replaced by a more austere matt black emulsion and the management may even have decided to indulge patrons with something as frivolously bourgeois as a mirror in the gents but the soul of the bar and its reputation as Belfast’s consummate coven of alternative spirit remain wholly intact. Tonight’s appearance by Belfast’s sprawling drone pop ensemble Documenta and Cork based rockers Altered Hours gives the thunderous new PA system ample opportunity to shine, proving once again that the Menagerie…

  • John Cooper Clarke w/ Mike Garry @ Whelan’s, Dublin

    April 6, 2018 - By 

    There’s a fairly wide range of punters in Whelans tonight. Some of them are aged punks who are still rocking questionable facial hair and fashion choices after so many years. Some are young hipsters rocking questionable facial hair and fashion choices after far fewer years. Many are just average folk, coming from work ready to experience the sermon. Regardless of who they are and where they come from, they’re all here to hear the message delivered from on a slightly higher stage by the legendary punk poet John Cooper Clarke. Whelans is decked out with chairs, but it’s clear that…