• November Reign: An Interview with Nealo

    November 3, 2023 - By 

    Community, culture and collaboration are the three words that stand proudly at the centre of Nealo’s sophomore album November Medicine. Launching to the world on November 17th 2023, November Medicine features artists ranging from Morgana and Jehnova to Rebel Phoenix and Shiv and touches on themes close to the heart, embracing vulnerability without a hint of discomfort. Following on from his debut album All The Leaves Are Falling, November Medicine delves into the depths of the human experience. The album directly involves the listener with Nealo’s inner world, with carefully chosen voice notes punctuating the album in interludes and emotion…

  • 18 for ’18: JYellowL

    January 4, 2018 - By 

    JyellowL, aka Jean-Luc Uddoh, has his foundations in old-school hip-hop but his head firmly in the now. His 2016 single ‘Life Right Now’ turned heads by taking on the Syrian refugee crisis whilst simultaneously dressing down the financial crash of 2008. This may be surprising coming from a 19-year-old, but for Uddoh, this is all he’s known. The Dublin rapper represents a generation of artists who’ve grown up in recession and seen only stagnation and roadblocks ahead. The idea of opportunity is alien to them. JyellowL’s music feels like a reaction to this. His stylings are very much in the…

  • The Thin Air’s Top 15 Irish EPs of 2017

    December 22, 2017 - By 

    Looking back at the sheer breath and wealth of EPs that were released from artists across the country this year made us giddy with joy and excitement. The boundless evolution of style, diversity, experimentation and confidence on display in 2017 was as momentous as we had ever seen or heard and, as such, narrowing this list down to 15 was no easy task. The following is a list of artists who we felt pushed themselves to new, ambitious heights and creative territories this year, who delivered both on record and in live settings and who proudly represented the fecund growth…

  • Makers in the Making: An Interview with Liam Geraghty

    August 26, 2017 - By 

    Almost unheard of as a medium five years ago, podcasting was once relegated to being one of those pesky default iPhone apps that you couldn’t get rid of. However, thanks in part to massively popular shows like NPR’s This American Life, whose podcast Serial in 2014 introduced a whole range of people to the audio form, the podcasting world has gone from a slightly unpopular alternative to listening to music on a morning commute, to shows like Welcome To Night Vale, or My Dad Wrote A Porno selling out multiple nights in Dublin. This September, Irish podcasting network HeadStuff host…

  • Galaxy’s Greatest Comic: The Story of 2000AD

    October 4, 2016 - By 

    The story goes that the editors of 2000AD – British sci-fi institution and self-styled ‘The Galaxy’s Greatest Comic’ – chose its title thinking it would never see the millennia. Nigh on 40 years later it’s still in print, with this week seeing the release of its landmark 2000th issue, giving a perfect chance to reflect on its almost incalculable influence on the comics world and pop culture as a whole. When editor/writer Pat Mills was commissioned with creating a Star Wars cash-in in 1977, he saw it as a vehicle for his own brand of anti-authoritarian anarchy, enlisting fellow scribe John…

  • Remake/Remodel – When Cover Versions Go Weird

    October 28, 2014 - By 

    Doing a cover version is a tricky job, with the amount of creative effort required to make it work frequently outstripping the potential rewards. But sometimes, just sometimes, the elements lock into place, and the planets align, and we’re taken to a higher level of consciousness. The BBC have been running a campaign to find the best cover versions of all time, and the Flaming Lips have just unleashed their song by song reworking of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but what about the ones that slipped through the cracks? This list might not be the best covers in the…

  • Classic Album: The Sisters of Mercy – Some Girls Wander By Mistake

    July 2, 2014 - By 

    Incredibly, the Sisters of Mercy have not released any new music for twenty-one years. Their last release was a compilation entitled A Slight Case of Overbombing back in 1993, which featured one new song, and since then they’ve been silent. However, unlike My Bloody Valentine or Guns ‘N’ Roses, who also left epic gaps between records, creating a mystique that sustained them, The Sisters of Mercy have disappeared into the realm of myth or legend, forgotten by all but the most devoted few. But a cursory look at the period they were active shows that they were a Big Deal,…

  • Classic Album: The Divine Comedy – Promenade

    June 25, 2014 - By 

    I’m none too smart, a sumo-intellectual at best, but people often assume I am clever because of my large forehead, glasses and the fact that I talk far too much. My learning is skin-deep and a mile wide but I have a felicitous ability to put random things together in a manner that would answer Lautremont’s dictum: I can’t get any of my dissecting done as the whole place is lousy with sewing machines and umbrellas. But mostly what I like doing is showing off. And this is a record that really shows off. It is, if you like, a…

  • The First Time: Johno Leader (The Radioactive Grandma)

    April 30, 2014 - By 

    Not for the last time, it’s the The First Time time. Belfast-based photographer Joe Laverty delivers yet another wonderful portrait shot, this time of Johno Leader from Co. Cavan acoustic indie-rock band The Radioactive Grandma, and gets the musician’s music-buying, making and loving firsts, traversing everyone from Moby, Val Normal, R Kelly and the Prodigy. First album you bought? The very first album I ever bought was purchased with vouchers that I got for my birthday. I was about 15 or 16 years old and that album was 1977 by Ash. It got played about five times before I was introduced to…

  • Inbound/exclusive stream: Nyt Bloomer

    May 1, 2014 - By 

    Hailing from Donegal, Conor McNamee AKA Nyt Bloomer is one of the more interesting voices in Ireland’s thriving electronic music scene. I met with him at his April 24 show at the Menagerie with Shammen Delly and Colpey to speak about the inception of Nyt Bloomer, his record label You Can’t Break It Records, and his infatuation with sampling. Ahead of the vinyl release, Old Toys is available for streaming exclusively on The Thin Air, and the cassette can be bought in Belfast’s Sick Records. Hi Conor. Lets start with a little background – where did Nyt Bloomer come from? I…