• Throwing It Out There: An Interview With Kristin Hersh

    April 8, 2019 - By 

    U.S. singer-songwriter, musician and author Kristin Hersh talks to James Cox about pride, process, PTSD, guitar-playing and forthcoming new Throwing Muses material. Your latest release Possible Dust Clouds is certainly one of the more muscular and unapologetically rocking entries to your solo catalogue. Can you talk us through some of the influences behind the album? Where was your mind at when writing and recording this latest batch of songs? I wanted to hear how it feels to be at a show rather than how it feels to listen to a live recording (which is usually just a lousy recording!). The songs themselves…

  • This Month In Irish Music: March

    April 1, 2019 - By 

    In the latest of a new regular series, Colin Gannon rounds up the very best Irish tracks released of the month just gone, featuring The Claque, Uwmammi, Invader Slim, James Joys, Cassavetes, Jafaris and more. The Claque — Hush Hush, the transfixing single from The Claque — the newly reinvented trio comprising of Alan Duggan (Girl Band), Kate Brady and Paddy Ormond — was this month’s most wiry, propulsing listen. Miasmic textures, beautiful, veiled melodies and bristling, febrile noise collide, ensuring the group avoid immediate categorisation. The eardrum-splitting tautness of Girl Band does come to mind, but the group are…

  • Festival Mixtape: Vantastival 2019

    March 29, 2019 - By 

    In an age when we’re lucky to have new-fangled festivals are springing up left, right and centre, Drogheda’s Vantastival holds steady as one of the country’s most consistently impressive – and downright eclectic – Irish summer festials. Set to return to Beaulieu House and Gardens for its 10th anniversary across May 31-June 2, this year’s outing will play host to everyone from King Kong Company, Lisa O’Neill and Just Mustard, to Wallis Bird, Afro Celt Sound System and Pillow Queens. The Co. Louth festival has always boasted much more than a carefully-curated bill of music and this year is no…

  • 19 for ’19: Elikya

    March 28, 2019 - By 

    More than any other group in Ireland, Elikya bleed history. Founded in Limerick in 2001 as a community choir of sorts, Elikya’s primary objective was to promote “multicultural diversity and integration through the sharing and promotion of Congolese music and culture”. Over the years, the group became a home for a coterie of legends in Congolese music. Drummer Trocadero — a child prodigy who started his career with the famous Congolese singer and bandleader Johnny Bokelo Isenge — joined them early on but it was 2017 when the group’s profile rose significantly. The iconoclastic Pepe Felly Manuaku, founder of the…

  • Remembering Scott Walker: Neil Brogan on Nite Flights by The Walker Brothers

    March 27, 2019 - By 

    The first song I reached for when I read Scott had passed was ‘Nite Flights’. Something about the strange, languid defiance of this song has always lifted me. The four tracks Scott contributed to the Walker Brothers final album represent the pivotal moment in his discography, the hinge that connects Scott Walker the faded 60’s pop star to latter-day avant Scott. The album itself was a contract filler, recorded in 1978 when the Walker Brother’s reunion had worn out a brief mid-decade welcome. They could have hashed out a few covers and called it quits, instead they each decided to…

  • Belfast Film Festival Preview: The Kiosk – A Q+A With Director Neal Hughes

    March 27, 2019 - By 

    A must-see at this year’s Belfast Film Festival is the debut screening of The Kiosk by director Neal Hughes. Capturing the singular spirit and humanity of the city and its citizens, it’s a look through the eyes of a barista serving coffee from a small coffee kiosk in the heart of Belfast City Centre. We catch up with Hughes to discuss the impetus behind the project, the future of the Kiosk following the major fire at the nearby Primark in August and how his film reveals the poetry of everyday Belfast. Catch The Kiosk at Movie House on Dublin Road on Saturday, April…

  • Royal Yellow’s Mark O’Brien talks sound, streaming and life after Enemies: Interview

    March 13, 2019 - By 

    Royal Yellow is the pseudonym for Mark O’Brien, the multi-talented former frontman of post-rock darlings Enemies. After a ten year career culminating in a global tour and the release of their third album, Valuables, Enemies called it a day. This is when O’Brien went solo, charting out a course of his own drawing influence from every direction and creating something truly unique. Royal Yellow takes cues from the likes of The Avalanches and DJ Shadow, somewhere where hip-hop, jazz, rock and pop collide. After the viral release of his debut single ‘Hazeldene’ and the follow up ‘Aruba’, Royal Yellow will…

  • 19 for ’19: Nealo

    March 8, 2019 - By 

    We continue 19 for ’19, our feature looking at Irish acts we’re convinced are going places in 2019, with Dublin MC Nealo. Photo by Zoe Holman If the name Nealo is unfamiliar to you I have two very simple instructions: firstly, get your head out of the sand, and secondly, lend your ears to one of this country’s finest MCs. Nealo, real name Neal Keating, is a rapper from North Dublin that has exploded onto the Irish music scene over the last few months. Having first found international recognition as the vocalist of hardcore punk band Frustration, he has since…

  • Preview: Brian Irvine Ensemble @ Brilliant Corners Jazz Festival

    March 5, 2019 - By 

    It was at last year’s Brilliant Corners when the Brian Irvine Ensemble ended their 6-year hiatus, and for good reason. Irvine cuts a singular figure not just in Northern Irish music, but worldwide, as one who embodies the spirit of the perpetually open-minded Brilliant Corners and all that jazz music encompasses, by pushing ever forward, with only a slight glance at anything that preceded.  The ensemble comprises around a dozen in number, drawn from varying backgrounds of contemporary classical, jazz & improvised music in Europe & Russia. As with many of artists comprising the Brilliant Corners 2019 lineup, their performances give themselves entirely over to neither formless improvisation…

  • 19 for ’19: TAU

    March 6, 2019 - By 

    We continue 19 for ’19, our feature looking at Irish acts we’re convinced are going places in 2019, with Berlin-based Irish artist Shaun Mulrooney aka TAU. Photo by Brian Mulligan Though it’s early days, come December, you’ll almost certainly find the second album from Berlin-based Irish musician Shaun Mulrooney aka TAU featuring high in myriad end-of-year lists. The follow-up to 2016’s TAU TAU TAU – a release whose recording started on the day Bowie died – TAU & The Drones Of Praise sprung forth last month as a sorcerous statement of intent. The genre-mangling psych experimentalism of TAU (who, with Mulrooney at…