• Ibibio Sound Machine – Uyai

    March 3, 2017 - By 

    Ibibio Sound Machine are back with their second album, Uyai. The scintillating record which lands today via Merge shows the group on top form with a sound that is bigger, bolder and funkier than ever. The London-based collective, led by front woman Eno Williams, have returned with an assured mastery of their sound. Inspired by the golden era of ‘70s and ‘80s disco and funk, the overall tone is a colourful fusion of West-African grooves, brassy electronics, modern pop tempos and powerful synths. There’s an air of fearlessness about this release. Focusing on themes of empowerment, freedom, courage and the…

  • Fist Fight

    March 2, 2017 - By 

    In the new comedy Fist Fight, a just-okay sketch idea that somehow bumbled its way into feature production, Ice Cube plays Mr. Strickland, a history teacher at a high school that’s going down the tubes. On the last day of the year the annual senior pranks are in full flow, the administration is going through payroll with butcher knives and he’s stuck trying to teach kids about the Civil War with a crappy VHS player. Finally pushed over the edge, Strickland goes for a student’s desk with a fireaxe and lands himself in front of the harried, impatient principal (Breaking…

  • Stormzy – Gang Signs & Prayer

    February 27, 2017 - By 

    Almost fifteen years after bursting out of East London, grime has officially taken over the mainstream. The genre, originally popularised by the likes of Dizzee Rascal, Wiley and Kano, has had a sudden second wave and has been creeping up AOTY lists and making loud impressions at the Brit Awards. Out of this second wave has emerged Michael Omari AKA Stormzy. The Thornton Heath based 23 year old racked up a ‘One To Watch’ nod at BBC’s Sound of 2015, has won Best Grime Act twice at the MOBO Awards and has scored a summer of appearances at some of the UK’s…

  • Sun Kil Moon – Common As Light And Love Are Red Valleys Of Blood

    February 24, 2017 - By 

    In his fifty years on this earth Mark Kozelek has, as he informs us on this new record, lived many lifetimes. His listeners have lived a large part of them too – from his Red House Painters days in the ‘90s, through his solo work and with Sun Kil Moon, Kozelek has never shied away from baring the hard truths and hurts as well as indulging in the simple joys. Album number eight, despite being a double, is a more condensed temporal experience, recounting the same number of months in the singer’s life from January to August in 2016 while…

  • The Last Guardian (Sony, PS4)

    February 24, 2017 - By 

    For many years, the latest release from Team Ico was an industry legend, a Keyser Soze spook story that was told and retold at conventions, games expos and in occasional “Where Are They Now?” articles. Yes, there was the occasional screenshot and the whispering of a plot synopsis but aside from those scant details, no physical product appeared and no firm release date was forthcoming. This, of course, is not unusual. Famously, Resident Evil 2 went through multiple iterations and false starts before its final, universally lauded form. Platformer Fez, as documented in Indie Game: The Movie, endured a protracted…

  • Los Campesinos! – Sick Scenes

    February 22, 2017 - By 

    Remember when we thought George W. Bush was as bad as it could get? What idiots we were. That’s the thing about getting older; hindsight will always make even your deepest insights ridiculous and your perception of what’s truly bad a constantly rising gradient on a graph that ends in a point with a flaming eye at the top. Or something. The point is that looking backwards has a way of creating context but also highlighting some of the folly of our endeavours. So it’s best to take it with a pinch of salt. Case in point is Los Campesinos!…

  • Molly Burch – Please Be Mine

    February 22, 2017 - By 

    Love hurts and yet all you need is love. The myriad of feelings that love rouses – infatuation, euphoria, inner-peace, anguish, despair, heartache – is steady inspiration for songwriters. Beautiful songs have been written about the splendour of being in love but even better songs are been born from a lovelorn place. Patsy Cline enjoyed incredible success singing about feeling lonesome and driven to despair by love. Commercially, if you were a female vocalist (solo or in a group) to sing about an unrequited or prematurely ended romance meant that you were relatable and accessible. It’s an ageless and universal…

  • Dublin Review: The Rehearsal

    February 20, 2017 - By 

    What if Miles Teller in Whiplash wasn’t a dick, and chose the girl over the art? Then you’d get something like Kiwi drama The Rehearsal, which doesn’t have the intense tempo of Damien Chazelle’s jazzy endorsement of creativity-as-cruelty, but is interested in similar questions of how a young artist finds themselves and what they are willing to sacrifice in the process. Alison Maclean’s first feature since 1999’s Jesus’ Son adapts Eleanor Catton’s debut novel of the same name, with Emily Perkins as co-screenwriter, for a down to earth spin on the Fame mythos with a strong eye for drama school’s…

  • Hidden Figures

    February 17, 2017 - By 

    How the stories of Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson managed to not become common lore in NASA’s history until now could only be put down to racial and gender prejudice. And while writer/director Ted Melfi (St Vincent) has told this inspiringly important and fascinating story to a decent degree, Hidden Figures is let down by a hokey script that is laced with safe racism, giving the film a conventional Hollywood feel, one that takes away from the remarkable story. During the space race between the USA and the USSR in the 1960s, three African-American women broke huge…

  • The Redneck Manifesto @ Whelans, Dublin

    February 17, 2017 - By 

    It says a lot about a band who having not released any new music in over six years and who play live so intermittently, that they still manage to more or less sell out two nights in one of Dublin’s best-loved venues. Ever since their formative years, there has always been a strong bond between The Redneck Manifesto and their fans and tonight proves to be no different with bassist Richie Egan commenting after just the second track; “Wednesday was cool but already Thursday feels a lot better”. All six members – Niall Byrne (guitar), Mervyn Craig (drums), Glenn Keating…