• the arts column: October 16th

    October 16, 2019 - By 

    This week we’ve details on a pair of a number of employment opportunites, an artist talks, a series of family friendly workshops, and an opening night performance. As always, if you have an event, talk, exhibition, or would like to recommend one please get in touch via aidan[at]thethinair.ne Opportunity | The Model, Sligo The Model in Sligo have recently announced that they are seeking applications for a new director. The role is on a five-year fixed term contract ,with the gallery advising that the below experience is required: “The successful candidate will have the necessary expertise and experience to lead and manage…

  • Video Premiere: Jake Regan – Unfair

    September 25, 2019 - By 

    When Jake Regan‘s debut single ‘Over It’ came out, we said he’d “instantly staked his claim as one of the country’s most promising and distinctive songwriting voices”, and new double A-side ‘Unfair / Stay’ compounds that fact – with the former’s video out today. It’s a perfect 3 minute, scuzzed-out power-pop song about the would-be artist’s reality crash-landing that deftly navigates the tightrope between sincere & pointedly self-aware. Based on the oh-so-relatable D.I.Y. artist’s perspective, Regan tells us more: “The song came from frustration at the stratospheric recent success of the Fontaines, and the weird flurry of identical bands that followed them. There are so many angry young men…

  • Video Premiere: Percolator – Freshin

    August 28, 2019 - By 

    Since the release of their debut LP and our runaway album of 2017, we’ve been sitting on our hands waiting on fresh cosmische mastery from Percolator for what fees like eons. At long last, we can breathe, as the Dublin-based trio have just followed Sestra with a video for their next single, ‘Freshin’. More than delivering on expectation, the new single leans further into the slaloming, hypnosis-inducing rhythmic interplay that made their debut album such an exciting proposition. The track was written and recorded for An Taobh Tuathail‘s twentieth anniversary back in May, but the band liked it enough to release it as a digital download single with…

  • Here’s Your Chance to be Mark E Smith for a Night

    August 20, 2019 - By 

    Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a member of The Fall? Well, wonder no more. This Saturday, August 24 at Dublin’s Sound House – thanks to one of our favourite promoters in the land, Enthusiastic Eunuch – the opportunity to channel your inner Mark E Smith has arisen, with backing music provided by The Fallen Women, an all-female Fall karaoke band working in association with The Quietus magazine. They’ll play the songs and members of the audience will be invited to sing them. Formed in order to celebrate Mark E Smith’s 60th birthday, they’ve played sold-out shows across the…

  • UK Post-Punk Duo JOHN Set For Irish Tour

    August 15, 2019 - By 

    Raw UK garage-punk duo JOHN are set to make their first appearance in Ireland later this year, accompanying the release of their second album, Out Here On The Fringes, set for release on October 4. This run of shows comes at the end of a lengthy spell in France & the UK, following an eleven-country spell in 2018 with Idles. Taking place in conjunction with some of our favourite venues, artists & promoters (Why. Gigs & Drone Mansions) – their three-date run is as follows: Friday, November 29 // Bennigans Bar, Derry w/His Father’s Voice & SHŌTO Saturday, November 30 // The 343, Belfast w/Problem Patterns and Wake House Sunday, December 1 // The Sound…

  • Video Premiere: Not I – Please, No Kindness, Please

    August 15, 2019 - By 

    Being a consistently arresting two-piece is no easy task – not least when the majority mines along the garage-blues-punk spectrum with little deviation. Dublin duo Not I – formerly Nervvs – take a hard left into something far more sophisticated by virtue of their grasp of minimalism, and seemingly telepathic interplay between vocalist/guitarist Thomas O’Reilly & drummer Ian Meagher. The title track of their debut album is an immediate primer for the band, O’Reilly’s sardonic, kitchen sink worldview screams for meaning in the mundane; “It’s a song about the struggle to make art and not get lost in the swamp of the day-to-day, resolving with an…

  • the arts column: August 8th

    August 8, 2019 - By 

    This week we’ve details on a pair of exhibitions that are opening this weekend in Kilkenny as part of the Kilkenny Arts Festival, a live performance in Derry, a new show opening in Dublin and details of a studio residency. As always, if you have an event, talk, exhibition, or would like to recommend one please get in touch via aidan[at]thethinair.net Exhibition Opening | Butler Gallery, Kilkenny This Saturday, August 10th, sees the opening of a new exhibition in Kilkenny’s Butler Gallery featuring the work of New York based artist Amy Cutler. Titled Colloquies, the show is Cutler’s first in Ireland and…

  • Watch: Tandem Felix – Nightclub (I Sold My Soul To The Devil)

    July 25, 2019 - By 

    Perennial TTA faves and Americana songwriting masters Tandem Felix are back with their first single in two years, ‘Nightclub (I Sold My Soul To The Devil)’. Pristine slide parts and curveballing synth moments accompany the “tale of a boy who makes a Faustian pact; exchanging his soul for the means to spend every remaining night inside a grotty club”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the band have one-upped themselves once more – ‘Nightclub’ offers a clarity of vision and progression of their country-informed storytelling, exciting us for what’s to come on their long-awaited debut album, Rom-Com. Songwriter David Tapley had this to say of the song: “Over three nights, over three…

  • the arts column: July 24th

    July 24, 2019 - By 

    This week we’ve details on a serious of events taking place across Dublin with pop-up shops, exhibitions, yoga, gigs and cycling; and while this is a diverse and broad set of events there all art related or themed. As always, if you have an event, talk, exhibition, or would like to recommend one please get in touch via aidan[at]thethinair.net Topical Popical @ National Gallery, Dublin As part of their summer long collaboration with the National Gallery of Ireland Dublin nail aficionados Tropical Popical have a pop-up shop in the gallery this coming Friday. Open from 10am until 5pm, the shop is part of their R…

  • Watch: Yankari – Change Your Ways (Mago Mago)

    June 25, 2019 - By 

    Far be it from us to make a sweeping statement, but no one – and we repeat: no one – in Ireland can hold a live audience captive to rhythm quite like Afrobeat collective Yankari. We played their 2017 single ‘Enyimba‘ to death, and at last they’re back with ‘Change Your Ways (Mago Mago)’, the first single taken from their debut album, set for release through Hipdrop Records later this year. Masterful in their updating and expanding of Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat, the band offset its infectious groove with loaded cultural symbolism; the band sought out kids from Dublin’s inner city to sing Mago Mago’s…