• It’s Not Always About Your Fanny – Aoife Dooley on Gender in Comedy

    March 7, 2018 - By 

    People always say to me ‘it must be very difficult being a woman in comedy in this day and age’ why? because I have a fanny? The short answer is, for me, it doesn’t make a difference. Growing up in Coolock I used to hang out with a group of lads. We played football, kick the can, manhunt, the lot. I was always involved in sport and other activities with both sexes and if anyone told me otherwise, i’d stick it to them. I’ve always had this outlook throughout my life and never let someone tell me I couldn’t do…

  • Oh and by the way, I am a woman too – Aoife McCann of Æ MAK

    March 6, 2018 - By 

    Overall my experience so far in the Irish Music Industry has been a positive and supported one. Unfortunately the music business is most definitely a business. Like any business it boils down to who you know and what connections and contacts you make along the way to enable a further reach for your music. Ireland’s music scene is very small in comparison to London’s or L.A’s but being small it also has its advantages as once you’ve been working in it for a few years you just end up meeting and getting to know almost everyone else moving in it;…

  • Bare Bones: A Conversation with Landless

    March 6, 2018 - By 

    One of our 18 for ’18 Irish artists, Landless are a rarity in today’s traditional music landscape. Their unaccompanied vocal folk has been described by ourselves – and doubtless many others – as ‘evocative, celestial, ethereal and, above all, extremely resonant’. Having formed in 2013, their debut album, Bleaching Bones – recorded in a variety of sonically rich, luxurious spaces – finally gets its release tomorrow through recently-formed Irish independent imprint, Humble Serpent. Alongside acts like Lankum and Brigid Mae Power, they’re responsible for the establishment of folk music that’s as appropriate today as it was in its stages of infancy; a conduit for the human spirit, and a platform from which greater ideas…

  • Jess Kav – You Sound Like a Black Person

    March 6, 2018 - By 

    I have, over the years had a fair amount of punters look at me suspiciously when I discuss my racial background. There has been numerous occasions that enquiries on my ethnicity arises when someone hears me sing for the first time. It has gone something like this; Punter: (Eyes look around around to deter eavesdroppers) “Has anyone ever told you that *whispers* you sound like a black person when you sing?” Me: Yes! My mother is black. Punter: *Laughs uncomfortably* Me: … Punter: “Oh…really? You’re serious?” Many have looked curiously at me, eyes darting to the sploof of curly hair…

  • Iwona Blasi – The Art of Life

    March 7, 2018 - By 

    When I lived in Poland, I never thought I could paint and I never thought I was an artist. I studied Social Science at Warsaw University, I was always doodling but never had the courage to do anything more than draw for myself. I have a big sister who thought me how to do art. She was my main inspiration in my early years as she was always painting, sketching, drawing, preparing her portfolio for art college… but she stopped painting after she wasn’t offered a place. It was a true heartbreak. My parents are very pragmatic, I don’t remember…

  • Paddy Hanna – Frankly, I Mutate

    February 14, 2018 - By 

    It’s been a long time coming, but singer-songwriter Paddy Hanna‘s new album Frankly, I Mutate, is upon us through Strange Brew on March 2. This follows his 2014 debut album, Leafy Stiletto, and the string of strong singles he’s since released – the likes of ‘Unprotected’ and ‘Bad Boys‘. Also the frontman of supergroup Autre Monde, it’s a long-held view of ours that Hanna is one of Ireland’s most accomplished true songwriters; elusive, nuanced, capable of broad truths, while invoking the kind of Elvis Costello, Jarvis Cocker or Scott Walker-esque dark humour & vulnerability that catches one offguard in an otherwise ’70s pop tune. Frankly, I Mutate is filled with rich, retro-current…

  • MGMT – Little Dark Age

    February 10, 2018 - By 

    MGMT are back, a decade after their acclaimed debut Oracular Spectacular was released, and five years after their convoluted self-titled made its way onto the airwaves. After their initial success, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser barrel rolled into a neo-psychedelic space that alienated the majority of their followers. This, of course, would have been a respectable, admirable decision from the duo had they produced something half-decent in that case. No one expected 2010’s Congratulations, an album that left the fans who revelled in the hooks and fist-pumps of ‘Kids’ and ‘Time To Pretend’ abandoned in a pit of half-baked, self-indulgence that aspired…

  • Katie Kim & Radie Peat set to collaborate for A Night of Musical Stories

    February 7, 2018 - By 

    In association with MusicTown, two of Ireland’s finest contemporary artistic voices bring a one-off, collaborative show at Dublin’s Pepper Canister Church on April 14. Amongst a handful of folk-rooted artists in recent years to demarcate themselves from the rest of the pack, drone-folk songwriter Katie Kim – listen to her fourth album Salt – and multi-instrumentalist vocalist Radie Peat – also known for her groundbreaking approach to folk with Lankum & Rue – are right at the top. This all-ages concert encompasses murder ballads, folklore, traditional and contemporary musical arrangements, performing music both self-penned, and from past traditions to bing together themes of the human condition. “Darkness through light, misadventure and…

  • 18 for ’18: Any Joy

    January 30, 2018 - By 

    We continue 18 for ’18, our feature showcasing eighteen Irish acts we’re convinced are going places in 2018. Throughout January we’re going to be previewing each of those acts, accompanied by words from our writers and an original photograph from one of our photographers. Next up, Any Joy. Photo by Silvio Severino We’ve written platitudes on Cork’s tendency to function as Ireland’s bastion of cosmically-inclined guitar music, and its latest export is Any Joy, who, while tinted with the hue of its primary contemporary export, simultaneously demarcate themselves from the trappings of being a genre band, forever doomed to lay in…

  • Shopping – The Official Body

    January 24, 2018 - By 

    Rachel Agg must be one of the UK’s busiest musicians today. Not content with fronting Trash Kit and last year’s Scottish Album of the Year winners Sacred Paws, she also heads up London trio Shopping, who have somehow managed to find the time to record a third album in amidst it all. While those first two bands possess similar melodic indie-pop leanings, Shopping are leaner, tauter and more heavily indebted to their post-punk forebears. Their first two albums, 2013’s Consumer Complaints and 2015’s Why Choose, sound so much like products of the late 70s/early 80s that it would be tempting…