• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds w/ Patti Smith @ Royal Hospital, Kilmainham

    June 8, 2018 - By 

    In this hyperbolic age, the phrase “gig of the year” gets tossed about far too flippantly. Every experience must be the best as anything less than perfection is worthless. The thing is though, most concerts couldn’t lay claim to that title. But very occasionally, there is a lineup that makes your jaw drop and forces you to question whether or not this could be the one. On 6 June 2018, Kilmainham played host to one of those shows: Patti Smith supporting Nick Cave. Either of these artists could have been the headliner and no one would be disappointed. They each…

  • Watch: Bouts – Face Up

    May 16, 2018 - By 

    It’s been five years since debut LP Nothing Good Gets Away, and four since their last release, Unlearn, but back in style are Dublin indie rock Bouts, with ‘Face Up’. Influenced by the kind of breezy, hook-laden indie rock best placed to soundtrack the main stages of the Irish summer, its DIY video fittingly  papers over the malaise with emphatic optimism. Of the song, frontman Barry Bracken says: “Face Up is a no-filter, punch the air plea for staring things down and pushing on through. Some songs you write, others just materialise. This seemed born ready. Its immediacy excites us as much now as those first moments playing it.…

  • PhotoIreland Festival Launch

    May 3, 2018 - By 

     Laia Abril – On Abortion Today sees the launch of this year’s PhotoIreland Festival, with a number of events in and around Dublin to mark the occassion. The month long festival coincides with the Eighth Amendment referendum on May 25th, and this huge societal and political debate is refreshingly not absent from either the content or structure of the festival. For PhotoIreland’s duration the main hub of the foundation, The Library Project, will be taken over by the Together for Yes campaign. With this year’s main exhibitions including Laia Abril’s On Abortion and Sarah Cullen’s You Shall Have Exactly What You…

  • Hilary Woods – Colt

    April 25, 2018 - By 

    Some artists are just destined to wind up on certain rosters. One such act is Dublin’s Hilary Woods, an artist whose solo craft we’ve followed with a certain glee over the last couple of years. On June 8, the musician, ex-JJ72 member and multi-instrumentalist will release her debut full-length album, Colt, via Brooklyn’s Sacred Bones, an indie imprint whose discerning (and, so far, pretty impeccable) penchant for repping acts such as Zola Jesus, Jenny Hval, David Lynch, John Carpenter, Blanck Mass and Marissa Nadler runs directly parallel with Woods’ very own crepuscular craft. Her minimal composition & otherwordly layered atmospherics follow two acclaimed EPs and recent scoring of a horror film for IFI’s Weimar…

  • Room For Rebellion will host parties in three cities this Friday in aid of reproductive rights campaign

    March 20, 2018 - By 

    Irish “Political Party” Room For Rebellion will return this Friday 23rd March for three parties spread across three cities, all in aid of the Irish reproductive rights campaign. The parties will be held in The Black Box in Belfast, Jigwaw in Dublin and The Yard, Hackney Wick in London respectively, with each event featuring a superb line-up of female DJs. In Belfast, local DJ Venus Dupree will join Lisbon’s Violet in providing music all night long while at Dublin’s BYOB party in Jigsaw proceedings will be in the hands of Endrift, Eliza and NTS resident Moxie. For London’s party in Hackney…

  • Album Stream: David Kitt – Yous

    March 8, 2018 - By 

    Back with his first solo full length in almost a decade, one of modern Ireland’s most enduring, chameleonic songwriters, David Kitt, has just released Yous through All City Records after its preceding Still Don’t Know EP. It’s a soothing, typically stellar effort from Kitt, who, since breaking through with 2001’s bedroom indie mini-masterpiece The Big Romance, consistently remains one step ahead at every point of his musical path, with him in the running for this year’s Choice Music Prize for his electronic New Jackson project. Entirely written and produced by Kitt, aside from a cover of Fever Ray’s ‘Keep The Streets Empty For Me’, it’s a wistful, intimate release, with flashes of a JJ Cale’s Troubadour for the 21st century. As…

  • Stream: Orchid Collective – Winter’s Pass

    March 7, 2018 - By 

    Marking the onset of Spring from a long Winter, Dublin-based indie-folk quartet Orchid Collective‘s latest single, ‘Winter’s Pass’ could hardly have come at a better time. While retaining the serene, atmospheric sound they’ve been developing over the past few years through the harmony-led influence of Fleet Foxes, there’s an evolution in its composition that has, in our view, defined it as the outfit’s best work to date. A product of home recording, as opposed to more produced previous releases, ‘Winter’s Pass’ has a substantially more organic quality, without sounding in any way lo-fi. In any case, it’s a sparse and measured arrangement that subtly utilises the kind of electronic manipulation that’s seen folk music’s contemporisation in recent years, in…

  • Exhibition: Gaelic Fields @ The Library Project

    March 6, 2018 - By 

    Opening today in The Library Project is Paul Carroll’s new body of work Gaelic Fields. The project is the culmination of seven years work, that saw Carroll traverse the 32 counties of the island documenting local GAA pitches. These spaces are hubs of the communities and the artist’s capturing of these local landscapes speaks of the both the societal nature of sport and its impact on the land. The work is on show from today (Tuesday 6th) with the official opening this coming Thursday (8th). The exhibition will continue until March 25th, with a book also produced, full details are available online…

  • Bicurious – I’m So Confused

    February 28, 2018 - By 

    Riff-strewn Irish-French instrumental math-rock duo Bicurious release their new EP, I’m So Confused on March 9. Blending looped guitar layers and rhythmic spontaneity & dynamism, they channel the spirit of Sargent House and the sadly-departed Richter Collective. It’s understandable then, that they went over to Cheshire to record the EP with Alpha Male Tea Party‘s Tom Peters – with whom they’re set to tour across Ireland in early May. Their previous release was the ‘T.O.I.‘ single, and as with it, their new material is set to channel the spirit of righteous anger, vocals arriving, as ever, in the form of pointed samples. I’m So Confused holds its launch upstairs at Whelan’s…