• May Kay: Rip It Off and Start Again

    July 9, 2016 - By 

    Fight Like Apes‘ frontwoman May Kay tackles the age-old thin line separating homage and unwitting imitation. It’s an extremely distressing situation. You’ve spent weeks, maybe months on a song. You started off with a devilishly catchy riff (if you don’t say so yourself). You built everything around that, you scrapped some things and started again, still with the same riff, determined to make it work. You put some lyrics on there. Scrap some. Add some new ones. Eventually you finish it. It is the most exciting thing. It really is like all your Christmas’ have come at once. That is,…

  • Rave New World (08/07)

    July 8, 2016 - By 

    Lucky Antoin Lindsay is off to Freerotation, so Aidan Hanratty is here to bring you the week’s best gigs, tracks and mixes. Gigs Stone Roses Afterparty – A Guy Called Gerald & Graeme Park at Opium Rooms, Dublin Saturday 9 July Crazy as it might seem, this will probably be a super night. Acid house legends A Guy Called Gerald and Graeme Park are sure to bring things back to 88, and I’m not sure anything could ever be more fun. Out To Lunch with Jayda G and Dip at Tengu Bar – Yamamori Sushi, Dublin Saturday 9 July Dip had Jayda G (pictured)…

  • Rave New World (01/07)

    July 1, 2016 - By 

    Aidan Hanratty and Antoin Lindsay return with the best electronic gigs, tracks and mixes and releases of the week. Gigs Celtronic 2016, Derry Wednesday 29 June – Sunday 3 July We’re already two days into this year’s Celtronic, but you’ve still got a full weekend to get yourself to Derry for what is routinely Ireland’s best electronic music festival. They’ve already had the likes of The Black Madonna and Rødhåd over the last few nights but you’ve still got the likes of Barnt and Âme tonight and KiNK, Gerd Janson and Move D still to come alongside a raft of…

  • Festival Mixtape: Castlepalooza 2016

    June 28, 2016 - By 

    Set to return to Charleville Castle in Tullamore in Co. Offaly this weekend, the line-up for this year’s Castlepalooza is a perfectly balanced affair boasting everyone from Caribou, Villagers and Jurassic 5 to Cat Power, Field Music and Cian Nugent. Easily their strongest bill to date, this year’s genre-spanning schedule also features the some of the country’s very best homegrown acts including The Altered Hours, I Am The Cosmos and New Jackson. Got your ticket? Stream our twenty-five track Festival Mixtape below.

  • Picture This: Your National Visual Arts Guide – Boundaries

    June 27, 2016 - By 

    Boundaries as a theme is present in the four shows in this week’s Picture This – don’t worry we here at The Thin Air are not talking about Brexit. We mean boundaries in the sense of where something can be pushed to and expanded beyond, rather than the traditional sense of landmass and exclusion. Boundaries come with preconceptions, limitations and a sense of where something should stop or where you should stop exploring. The shows this week in Dublin, Belfast, Sligo and Cork alter, expand and shatter these while housing engaging and thought provoking exhibitions. We see a reexamination of…

  • Monday Mixtape: Alison Spittle

    June 27, 2016 - By 

    In this edition of Monday Mixtape comedian Alison Spittle selects some of her favourite songs, including Morrissey, No Monster Club and Everything Everything. Here’s a mixtape of important bits of my life. Some are from my college days, being a child and some that have lifted my mood and comforted me. I fell in and out of love with music as a teen. I was dangerously obsessed with looking for meaning in every lyric but now I’m in my twenties so I’ve calmed down! I look to music now to give me a pick me up and to have the craic.…

  • Rave New World (24/06)

    June 24, 2016 - By 

    There’s a strange mood in the air. All we can do is give you some music to help you get through it, as Aidan Hanratty delivers a look at the best electronic gigs, tracks and mixes of the week. Gigs Inside Moves 1st Birthday with Maurice Fulton at The Belfast Empire Music Hall Friday 24 June The legendary Maurice Fulton is playing this island twice this weekend (he’s in Dublin for Discotekken’s Pride event tomorrow), bringing a wealth of experience to the dance. I only learned this week that he was behind ‘Gypsy Woman’, a veritable classic. That’s on top of his…

  • Watch: Confess The Night, a new short by Dublin director and writer Dave Tynan

    June 23, 2016 - By 

    Featuring music by Dublin duo Simon Cullen & Sorca McGrath AKA Ships, Confess The Night is a brief yet perfectly engrossing two-minute short by Dublin director and writer Dave Tynan. A piece that is, according to its creator, “not exactly a short film but not exactly a music video either”, it is imbued with a curious somnambulist subtlety that has proven a lure in his previous efforts. Watch the film and see our brief Q+A with Tynan – in which he discusses his latest work, his early beginnings and career to date – below. Hi Dave. Can you give us some background…

  • Festival Mixtape: Interlude

    June 23, 2016 - By 

    Following their debut in October last year, Dublin city festival Interlude returns to the RHA Gallery this weekend for three days and nights of first-rate, decidedly eclectic global and homegrown sounds. With art and film also more than accounted for, Grandmaster Flash, Lisa Hannigan, Ships, Exmagician and Booka Brass Band are just some of the names that make up this year’s bill. Ahead of what’s set to be a memorable second outing, stream our twenty-track Interlude Festival Mixtape via Spotify right below.

  • Should We Stay Or Should We Go: An EU Referendum Playlist

    June 22, 2016 - By 

    With the all-important EU Referendum vote taking place tomorrow, we’ve sidestepped the unyielding electioneering to compile a genre-spanning Spotify playlist featuring fifty tracks – from The Fall, Amon Düül II and Galaxie 500 to Neutral Milk Hotel, Minutemen and The Velvet Underground – that we reckon some up the great continent in song.