KnockanStockan returns to the shores of Blessington Lake in Co. Wicklow across July 27-29 and brings with it the finest homegrown summer festival bill of the year. With exactly four weeks to go (nab your tickets stat) here’s some of our must-see acts at this year’s outing. Go here for the full line-up, info and to buy tickets
Nas prefers a raucous homecoming to the sanctum of a rustic ski-resort in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, it appears. Beneath a constellation of NYC lights, in the imperialistic surrounds of Queensboro Bridge — a staple of hip-hop iconography made famous by MC Shan in 1987 — lay double-decker speakers blasting amid a sense of godly reincarnation. It’s the first-listen party for Nas’s latest full-length record, Nasir. One time wunderkid, Nasir Jones, chose his city, his borough, to celebrate this album’s release; where he spoke, for the first time, his tightly-wound, unadulterated, street-scholarly truth. Where he first etched his name into hip-hop…
Lykke Li knows how to write a pop song. We all know this – every nightclub still religiously plays the Magician remix of ‘I Follow Rivers’. What the Swedish songwriter really knows though, is a sad pop song. Her latest release, so sad so sexy is no different. This follow-up to 2014’s I Never Learn, which saw her swing more toward the acoustic side of things, dips instead into R&B and hip hop spheres and feels like a matured throwback to her debut album, Youth Novels, released a decade ago now. However, while it’s an evolved departure musically, lyrically, it’s…
With his tenth dense and knotty release, Oneohtrix Point Never (AKA Daniel Lopatin) has constructed a lysergic, glitched out rebuke of internet culture, mapping out the deepest recesses of our often cracked and wildly over stimulated minds. Tackling themes of knowledge and truth in the Internet age, Lopatin takes his lofty queue from ’70s Prog to create a dystopian concept album wherein a singularity of artificially intelligent entities have become all knowing, absorbing the entirety of the world’s information from the internet. Of course, the Internet being the Internet, the information they have absorbed is riddled with inconsistencies, contradictions and…
On the last day of the June bank holiday, also one of the hottest days of the year, a modest gathering assembled at Forbidden Fruit. The line-up for day three differed greatly from Saturday and Sunday’s bill, as it catered devotees of guitar-led indie-rock with Philadelphia based The War on Drugs headlining and veteran (and nostalgia inducing) acts like Spoon, Warpaint and Grizzly Bear performing, also. David Kitt, whose set predominantly drew from his most recent record, Yous, eased the early attendees into the day’s marathon of live music. His set-up was minimal; comprised of Kitt switching between acoustic and…
Nine years ago, Nardwuar The Human Serviette interviewed Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes and then drummer, Josh Tillman. The exuberant Canadian musician-turned-journalist acknowledged Pecknold’s penchant for performing in a seated position and commented that he had revived this style. Tillman, dissatisfied with the lack of attention, interjected, “I kind of resent being overlooked in this category because I also [perform] on a chair.” This casual exchange, small though it may seem, provided us with an early indication of someone unwilling to relinquish the spotlight. Nine years later, Josh Tillman’s ego abides. He’s transformed from the fabled “horny, man-child, Mamma’s boy”…
The sun is out and the mighty Dott are back with another summery tune. ‘Bleached Blonde’ is lifted directly from their new album Heart Swell, set for release on Graveface Records next week. The song is a slice of fuzzy-pop written about Anna McCarthy’s love of surfing and her self confessed lack of real talent for it. It’s a treat. Play loud. Pre-order Heart Well here.
In this special installment of Track Record all five members of Just Mustard select two records each to discuss, from Sufjan Stevens to Aphex Twin. Mags Godflesh – Post Self Inspired by the dreary urban landscapes of Birmingham, Godflesh are the band who pioneered the fusion of industrial and heavy metal together into a dsytopian whole. It was upon hearing their 1989 seminal classic masterpiece ‘Streetcleaner’ that enamoured me with their music and though I do not yet own it on record, their 2017 album ‘Post Self’ is arguably just as powerful. Post Self is an outstanding achievement in that…
Ham Sandwich live at the Olmypia Theatre in Dublin with support from True Tides and Eve Belle. Photos by Kristina Hajdu
‘I’m an outlaw’, declares Alden Ehrenreich’s young Han in Solo: A Star Wars Story, the latest in Lucasfilm’s line of standalone spin-offs. Emilia Clarke, playing Qi’ra, the One Who Got Away, laughs. She doesn’t believe him. And neither will anyone watching. Kylo Ren’s call to ‘let the past die; kill it if you have to’ is great storytelling advice masked as Oedipal anxiety, and it’s advice that post-prequels Lucasfilm, addicted to the past, is unable to grasp. Lucasfilm can’t kill the past because the past is the golden goose. Solo, written by father-son Kasdans Lawrence and Jonathan, and directed, in…