• Inbound: Elephant

    June 16, 2016 - By 

    With a busy few months ahead of him, including the release of new single ‘Stay With Me’ and a slot at Body & Soul at the weekend, Dundalk-based multi-instrumentalist Shane Clarke AKA Elephant is an artist carving out his own wonderfully inimitable path. Eoin Murray chats to him about his debut LP, Hypergiant, new stirrings and what it means to be a musician beyond the city. Since Hypergiant came out last October what have you been up to? Well I spent the end of last year gigging the album around. I decided at the beginning of this year to take a wee break…

  • Picture This: Your National Visual Arts Guide – Education

    June 13, 2016 - By 

    The three shows that make up this week’s edition of Picture This are as diverse and seemingly contrasting as the come. One features the retrospective of an Irish painter born a hundred years ago (Ulster Museum in Belfast), another is a graduation show of 16 photographers (Gallery of Photography in Dublin), while the third (Highlanes Gallery in Drogheda) takes a look at an altogether more national subject – The 1916 Rising. While the dates of 1916 and 2016, as both departure and reflection points, feature in each exhibition it’s the themes of education and understanding the ring out loudest from these four…

  • Monday Mixtape: Anton Newcombe (The Brian Jonestown Massacre)

    June 13, 2016 - By 

    Ahead of The Brian Jonestown Massacre dates at Belfast’s Limelight on Wednesday, June 15 and Dublin’s Academy on Thursday, June 16, Anton Newcombe selects and talks about not five, not ten but twenty-three of his all-time favourite songs, featuring 13th Floor Elevators, Joni Mitchell, Dungen, Marvin Gaye, Nina Simone and more. The Doors – The Crystal Ship There’s something about this beautiful love song that touched me when I was very young. Still love it. Dungen – Panda God, when this came out I was taken back – so powerful in any language. Love these guys, love Sweden. John’s Children –…

  • It Hasn’t Got Better: The Pulse Nightclub Shootings

    June 13, 2016 - By 

    I’ll never forget my first time in a gay club. I was eighteen years old and in my first year of college. I’d been clubbing before but had never felt comfortable. The hyper-heteronormativity made me nervous – I could never picture myself dancing as carelessly as the other college kids, all flirting and grinding and at ease with themselves. I could never identify with the people around me and most nights consisted of me standing in a corner, feeling intimidated, looking out of place and humouring the drunken flirting of men who could barely even see me rather than actively…

  • Classic Album: The Smiths – The Queen Is Dead (1986)

    June 13, 2016 - By 

    The Smiths recorded their 3rd album ill at ease with their position in the music world. They were unsure of their record label, frustrated at how the media represented them, and perplexed with the public’s perception of the band. Nevertheless, when The Queen Is Dead was released, it presented The Smiths at their zenith, aware of their astonishing abilities and revelling in utilising them to full effect. The confidence bursts forth from the get-go with a 6 minute plus, unbridled thrash of a title track and is sustained throughout the 9 diverse songs that follow it. The musical landscape displays a knowing maturity;…

  • Classic Album: Van Halen – 1984 (1984)

    June 6, 2016 - By 

    Two immense planets having been moving in synchronous orbit around a dazzling sun for a few years now, their every movement in synch with each other. But on one of the planets, a new technological overlord has begun conducting experiments, playing with dangerous new discoveries that will threaten to transform the harmonious nature of these two planets forever. Eddie Van Halen has mastered the synthesizer, and is about to smash headlong into the party-loving world of David Lee Roth, with devastating consequences. The year is 1983, and things are about to get rough. Van Halen’s self-titled 1978 album is one…

  • Big Beats and Broad Strokes: An Interview with The Chemical Brothers’ Ed Simons

    May 31, 2016 - By 

    Whether you’re into dance, rock, indie or have miraculously found yourself sequestered in a brit-pop niche over the past twenty five years, you’ll know that The Chemical Brothers have spent much of that time making some of the most recognisable and respected music ever committed to stereo. A duo of immense creative breadth, their early work frenetically soundtracked a new wave of genre-crossover experimentation that would quickly become a go-to production style for their contemporaries. Fusing hip hop, techno, house and whatever remnants of UK hardcore that were still holding on for dear life, the influence of Ed Simons and…

  • Inbound: Feather

    May 31, 2016 - By 

    Emma Garnett AKA Feather has morphed again. While many may know her from the punchy, artistic collaborations with Ben Bix this itineration is something of a departure. Now fully backed by an eight-piece band, she and the group are emerging as a blooded, blended new horizon in Irish music so it’s no surprise that they’re signed up with emerging world conscious independent label Hipdrop Records whose slant towards global sounds, funk, soul and jazz distinguish them from the pack. Take their new single ‘Like No Other’ which works its way through three distinct movements without sounding piecemeal. The comparisons to…

  • Inbound: Bad Bones

    May 30, 2016 - By 

    Paul O’Connor excavates the impetus and art of Dublin producer and visual artist Sal Stapleton AKA BAD BONES. Photos by Joe Laverty. Under the moniker of BAD BONES, Dublin based producer and visual artist Sal Stapelton, has spent 2016 eking out a series of stunning singles and videos on a monthly basis. With dark but infectious beats that combine rich textural layers of synths and choral vocals with her own heavily processed vocal melodies each single has taken themes of sexuality and power exploring them in different ways. Next month sees the release of the fifth of these video singles,…

  • Track Record: Cian Ó Cíobháin (An Taobh Tuathail)

    May 30, 2016 - By 

    Presenter of Ireland’s best radio show, An Taobh Tuathail on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta, Cian Ó Cíobháin reveals some of his all-time favourite records. Photos by Sean McCormack. Sonic Youth – EVOL Looking back, it now seems to me that this was the album that ‘trained’ my ears to appreciate more experimental sounds.  Picture it.  Prior to discovering this, one of Sonic Youth’s strangest records, originally released in 1986, I had been mostly listening to what was on the radio and perhaps just been eased into ‘indie’ music by The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays.  I can’t recall how or…