• Hanni El Khatib – Savage Times

    February 17, 2017 - By 

    Having released five EPs last year, Hanni El Khatib has returned with a newer, fuller collection Savage Times. A colourful, 19-track release that mixes everything from garage rock to punk and disco the LP embraces diversity and celebrates taking pride in who you are. The record seems a little messy and disjointed upon the first listen, hopping from grungy garage-rock stylings to funky, disco-infused melodies and on to bluesy crooner tracks. It doesn’t immediately betray a typical album smoothness. . .  but that’s kind of the point. The San Francisco native was born to parents from Palestine and The Philippines,…

  • Looking Svelte – Gelatine

    February 17, 2017 - By 

    It’s not always wise to read too much into a record’s title, but in this case, it feels spot on. Gelatine, the debut EP from Looking Svelte, is a hot mess: thick and viscous, gluey and amorphous. It recalls at times the dense sounds of celebrated avant-gardists Gang Gang Dance and Purity Ring, along with the DIY aesthetic of WIFE (aka James Kelly of Altar of Plagues). But like the best of those projects, when you peel away the layers of reverb and distortion, there’s a pop song at the core. Looking Svelte is the stubbornly lo-fi, decidedly high-tech solo…

  • Cloud Nothings – Life Without Sound

    February 15, 2017 - By 

    Cloud Nothings make their return this year with their fifth album, Life Without Sound. Dylan Baldi’s bedroom recording project has evolved over the years, from the lo-fi stylings of the self- titled debut, to the classic indie rock of Attack On Memory and then into the throat-shredding intensity of 2014’s Here And Nowhere Else. The latter was undoubtedly the highlight of their career so far, mixing great songwriting with forceful production and furious performances from Baldi and his band. So, to 2017 and Life Without Sound. On first listen the album is underwhelming when compared to previous efforts. Baldi has…

  • Fifty Shades Darker

    February 14, 2017 - By 

    More meta-event than movie, Fifty Shades Darker arrives with the forced fanfare of a willy cake from your Aunt Sheila. On page and screen, the series has struggled to provide material to match its breathless cultural ubiquity and this deficit continues with film number two. Is anyone actually enjoying this anymore? Local saucepot Jamie Dornan does the interview rounds like a good boy, but his screaming eyes betray the pain of bondage. Pipe up Jamie, what’s the safe word? Picking up a little time after Christian Grey (Dornan) and Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson, still the best thing here) severed their…

  • William Basinksi – A Shadow In Time

    February 14, 2017 - By 

    It is with great trepidation that I approach A Shadow In Time, the new album from William Basinski, that titan of ambient music. An artist with a staggering work rate and whose most well-known work, 2002’s Disintegration Loops, is one of the most important pieces of sound art created in the 21st century given its context in proximity to the attacks on New York City on September 11th 2001. A Shadow In Time is his twentieth album under his own name, along with many collaborative works in various other mediums. It is yet another daunting work, comprised of two tracks…

  • Moon Duo – Occult Architecture, Vol. 1

    February 14, 2017 - By 

    Sometimes a side project starts to outgrow its parent band. Such appears to have happened recently with Portland’s Moon Duo, formed by Wooden Shjips’ vocalist/guitarist Ripley Johnson with his partner Sanea Yamada, with the latter band’s lack of activity since 2013’s Back to Land allowing Moon Duo’s more recent releases to fill the gap. Despite plenty of similarities in sound, swapping the Shjips’ looser psych for an increasingly mechanical krautrock sound has seen them gradually become the more essential of the two, and fourth album Occult Architecture, Vol. 1 has done nothing but cement that. Part one of a “two…

  • Prevenge

    February 13, 2017 - By 

    You have to admire Alice Lowe’s (Sightseers) directorial debut for the logistical nightmare of filming it alone. As writer, director and star of Prevenge, she had the insane idea to make a low budget, satirical slasher while 8 months pregnant, making it a labour of love of the most darkly comic and macabre kind. As a pregnant woman named Ruth (Lowe) ruthlessly slices the throat of the obnoxious man who owns a reptile shop, the viewer is left wondering what her motives are – besides him being a complete sleaze. As the story moves along and the deaths pile up,…

  • Irish Tour: Frightened Rabbit

    February 15, 2017 - By 

    Frightened Rabbit live at Belfast’s Limelight 1, Kilkenny’s Set Theatre and Galway’s Roisin Dubh. Photos by Colm Laverty, Ian McDonnell and Sean McCormark. Limelight 1, Belfast As strange as it may sound, Frightened Rabbit are at their best when they are on the verge of falling apart. Watching the band rip through selections from their back catalogue this evening, it is striking just how often they are precariously balanced on the edge of chaos. It is this very quality that makes their music so beguiling. The remarkable tension in any given Frightened Rabbit song stems from a finely wrought balance…

  • The Lego Batman Movie

    February 10, 2017 - By 

    Like a naughty teenager banished to his room, Master Bruce has been sulking in his man cave for some time now. A scowling cowling in SEAL Team 6 body armour, wrapped up in martyrdom angst, terrorising Gotham’s criminal class with the try-hard rasp of man who had too many whiskeys the night before, modern cinema’s vision of The World’s Greatest Detective seems a long distance from that introduced by Bob Kane and Bill Finger nearly 80 years ago. Still, the caped crusader’s infinite wardrobe is nothing if not versatile: Bruce Wayne is tailor-made for transformation. And boy is he due…

  • Hacksaw Ridge

    February 10, 2017 - By 

    Hollywood loves a comeback. It’s a narrative that always seems to come into play around awards season and it’s been a longer road back for Mel Gibson than most. Incredibly, it’s been ten years since the Oscar-winning director of Braveheart (1995) last stepped behind the camera on 2006’s Apocalypto; also, not coincidentally, the year of Gibson’s anti-Semitic tirade that came after an arrest for drink-driving. Finally, with his new film Hacksaw Ridge, a story steeped in redemption and tolerance, Gibson is ready to stand triumphantly atop the mountain again. Hacksaw Ridge is the tale of real-life World War II veteran…