• The Levelling

    May 22, 2017 - By 

    Hope Dickson Leach keeps her aim steady and hits her targets in The Levelling, her first feature and a sturdy, professional piece of grim English countryside realism. Trainee veterinarian Clover (Game of Thrones’ Elle Kendrick) is called back to the family farm when she receives word that her brother Harry, who was just given stewardship over the land, has shot himself with a hunting shotgun. The police have filed it as suicide, but her father Aubrey (Joe Blakemore), insists that it was just a “bloody stupid” accident, a descriptor he seems to apply to almost everything, his manner one of…

  • Watch: Final Boss of My Twenties – Let Go

    April 7, 2017 - By 

    As Irish music-making monikers go, Final Boss of My Twenties is right up there with the most inspired. The sonic sobriquet (yes, we went there) of twenty-eight year old Dubliner Simon Maguire, the turn of phrase has very recently come to our attention off the back of Murphy latest single, ‘Let Go’. Featuring a rather impressive, Lego-based video – the product of “weeks of moving these little guys millimetres at a time”) – the single is a pretty contemplative affair, and what Maguire calls the “culmination of an ounce of action and a ton of theory; now the seed’s finally in the soil, I’d…

  • BFF17: Catfight

    April 11, 2017 - By 

    Rage, maternal loss and the sting of humiliation are accelerants in the bloodstream in Catfight, Onur Tukel’s face-thumping black comedy and satire on the unreality of violence. The match is lit when estranged college chums Veronica (Grey’s Anatomy‘s Sandra Oh) and Ashley (Anne Heche) bump into eachother at a fancy Manhattan party for the first time in years. In this alternate America (very near future?), the country is eyeing up another war in the Middle East, and Veronica and her husband, who runs a debris clean-up company, are in for a big payday if they land a juicy Pentagon contact.…

  • Stream: New Jackson – Anya’s Piano

    April 4, 2017 - By 

    In the lead up to the release of his debut LP under the New Jackson monicker, David Kitt has released a 12″ led by album track ‘Anya’s Piano’. From Night To Night is set for release on May 19th through the terrific All City label. ‘Anya’s Piano’ is an expansive and atmospheric cut, chock with groove, hypnotic double bass and a lavish saxophone part from Terry Edwards [PJ Harvey/Gallon Drunk]. The other two tracks on the 12″, which will not appear on From Night To Night, are equally rich. ‘In My Room’ boasts a deep, basement energy and mechanism while ‘Leave Me Making’ incites a swaying, breezy feeling amid its…

  • Watch: Neil Flynn – J.E.N (feat. Katie Kim)

    April 4, 2017 - By 

    Kilkenny native, Berlin based producer Neil Flynn, has released a visual accompaniment for ‘J.E.N.’ The track, which appeared on his EP for Berlin based label Lossless last October, is a driving, club ready cut from an artist whose penchant for deep, melodic house music has seen his releases getting played out by the likes of Dixon and Âme. The track also features a typically haunting guest vocal from Katie Kim.  The video, a stark black and white accompaniment was shot in various forests from Berlin to Norway, Sweden and Iceland. Flynn, who we interviewed back in 2015, has also just released a remix of VIMES’ ‘Rudal’ which can be heard here.

  • Stream: Ryan Vail – We Drift We Wake/East Berlin

    March 29, 2017 - By 

    To mark this year’s World Piano Day – an annual celebration of the ivory keys, spearheaded by Nils Frahm – Derry producer and musician Ryan Vail has released two new tracks. As well as a sublime rework of his own ‘East Berlin’ (which was selected for Nils Frahm’s playlist for World Piano Day back in 2015), ‘We Drift We Wake’ makes for a wonderfully meditative, delicately sprawling piece that doubles up as an audio visual collaboration. with artist Hohxx_. Better still, both efforts reveal the sheer tonal and emotional range of Vail’s ever-growing musical palette. Featuring everyone from Martyn Heyne and Olafur Arnalds to…

  • 21 (Pretty Much Random) Picks For The Belfast Film Festival

    March 29, 2017 - By 

    Time to hunt out your best pair of sitting-down trousers. The 17th Belfast Film Festival kicks off his week, running from Thursday 30th March to Sunday 9th April, boasting a packed programme of new cinema, both local and international, as well as special guests, live events, short films and classic screenings. There’s a lot going on, and any preview is going to be piece-meal. Ultimately, most of the fun will be encountering something totally unexpected once the lights go down. We’ve picked out a handful of screenings and events but encourage you to browse the full programme on their website. Here at The Thin Air we…

  • #SaveCQ Campaign Launched to Protect Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter Area

    March 28, 2017 - By 

    Over the last decade and a bit, Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter has flourished to become the city’s cultural and creative hub, as well as the home of countless independent businesses and organisations. At the core of its rapid and vital growth – from the Black Box, Oh Yeah Centre and Established to The MAC, The Sunflower and the National – has been a mindset that encourages the entrepreneurial, rewards the independent and supports the artistically-inclined. But today, new campaign group – #SaveCQ – has been officially launched in Cathedral Quarter to galvanise public awareness of the current proposal for the new Royal…

  • Picture This: The Night @ The Model

    March 29, 2017 - By 

    Alexandra Hopf – The Night Image courtesy of Heike Thiele What: The Night Where: The Model, Sligo When: 24th February – 16th April Words: Rebecca Kennedy It would be unwise to assume that the physical size of an exhibition space would act as a limitation to the quality of work it beholds. Seen as the majority of assumptions spring forth from our subconscious, it is oddly fitting to hold such presumptions when visiting Alexandra Hopf’s exhibition, The Night in The Model, Sligo. With motifs ranging from psychoanalysis, surrealism, modernism and the construction of art history & mythology, this capsule exhibition escapes it confines and embodies…