• An Aural Aurora: Northern Lights on Tour

    May 11, 2016 - By 

    With words from Aaron Drain and photos by Colm Laverty and Mickey Rooney in Belfast and Limavady, we go on tour with Northern Irish folk collaboration tour Northern Nights AKA Matt McGinn, Ben Glover and Stevie Scullion. Black Box, Belfast The hottest, sunniest, most welcome day of the year so far and it’s an afternoon of thoroughbred local music that’ll prove the final piece in this most glorious of puzzles. The turnout is overwhelming – a sold-out show for the boys making up ‘Northern Lights’ is a particularly poignant factor given that this afternoon will not only be the penultimate CQAF show, but the…

  • Aidan Moffat: ‘Where You’re Meant To Be’ screening & performance @ Black Box, Belfast

    May 5, 2016 - By 

    Aidan Moffat has been a busy man over the last few years but that hasn’t stopped him from quietly taking the Scottish folk songs of the countryside and transplanting them to the city. Working alongside documentary filmmaker Paul Fegan, Where You’re Meant To Be is part Road movie and part music documentary. Where You’re Meant To Be is Fegan’s first feature-length but the director is a former music promoter in Glasgow and has previously made a short film Pouters (streaming for free online) alongside a number of music videos for Aidan Moffat & Bill Wells and Belle & Sebastian. As…

  • Irish Tour: Jeffrey Lewis & Los Bolts

    May 4, 2016 - By 

    With his most excellent band Los Bolts in tow, New York cult anti-folk singer-songwriter and (amazing) comic book artist Jeffrey Lewis zipped across the country last week for a string of dates with support from the likes of Shrug Life and Junk Drawer. Our photographers Sara Marsden and Aidan Kelly Murphy weren’t far away. McHugh’s, Belfast by Sara Marsden Whelans, Dublin by Aidan Kelly Murphy

  • Ciúnas: An Evening Of Quiet Songs @ Connolly’s of Leap, Cork

    May 4, 2016 - By 

    We arrived in early to Ambiguous Fiddle’s curated Ciúnas: An Evening of Quiet Songs’ at Connolly’s of Leap, catching a spin over with the night’s opener Chris McDonald. There’s a saying: the easy ease. Where everything comes together, eased into place. It’s when you nod and smile because you feel the vibe you’re after is right there, coming together, heading for the sweet spot. We arrived in and there it, the sweet spot, was: the artists – McDonald, Pine The Pilcrow, I Have A Tribe and Sam Clague – soundchecked, the Connolly’s crew set up; the candle-lit seating, the meet and greet and the room temperature.…