• Birth of a Label: Broken Melody Records

    September 12, 2013 - By 

    Having recently released their first ever compilation – featuring tracks from seven of the country’s best unsigned band including Seven Summits and Hurdles – Broken Melody Records is a brand new record label based in Belfast City Centre that has got off to an extremely promising start. We chat to the guys about the first few months of the imprint, what lies in store over and their passion for showcasing the very best in homegrown untapped talent. Hi guys. First off, could you tell us how Broken Melody Records come about and what is the “mission statement” so to speak? Broken Melody…

  • Live and Let Live: The Bonnevilles

    September 3, 2013 - By 

    From the timeless (Thin Lizzy’s Alive and Dangerous) to the downright ill-advised (Lou Reed’s Take No Prisoners), live albums can be tricky territory for even the most self-assured and adept performers. Throwing caution to the wind with the aim to capture their electrifying live show, garages-blues duo Andy McGibbon Jr and Chris McMullan AKA The Bonnevilles enter that territory at Belfast’s Limelight 2 tomorrow night. We talk to frontman Andy ahead of the big night about what’s in store. Hi Andy. Firstly: why a live album and why now? “We’ve wanted to do a live album for a while now,…

  • REM: Maps and Legends – A Simple Case of Geography

    August 26, 2013 - By 

    The story is a sad one, told many times, the story of their life and trying times. As much as the musical climate of the times, REM are a product of geography, rooted in the landscape and traditions of the American South. In the same way that The Clash will always be intrinsically linked to London, The Doors to Los Angeles, or Joy Division to Manchester, REM could only have crawled from the South. Athens, Georgia is a college town. People come and go, some stay, some don’t. So it was back in 1980 when the four men that made…

  • Recap: Holy Ghost, Julia Holter, Cloud etc.

    August 25, 2013 - By 

    In the first installment of our weekly feature looking back at the best tracks that emerged the week previous, this week’s Recap features a lovely slew of swooning electronica, shady lo-fi pop and the latest, rather interesting metamorphosis of a noise-rock demigoddess (go on, take a guess). As always, we’re interested in what’s been catching your ear from the world of new music full-stop: inform us of your favourite things new-fangled and magnificent via newmusic@thethinair.net. In the meantime, there’s these… RY X – ‘Vampires’ The wonderfully spectral new single by Australian songsmith RY X, ‘Vampires’ is taken from his forthcoming Berlin…

  • Classic album: REM – Murmur

    August 21, 2013 - By 

    Before major label deals and stadium-conquering, mandolin-led ballads were a mere glint in the eyes of Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry, there were four men in the college town of Athens. Four men playing music destined to repeat in the Walkman headphones of alienated teens before ‘alienated teens’ became a marketing tool. Case in point: this very writer discovered Murmur at the age of 16 amongst a select few picks from R.E.M. enthusiastically presented before my eyes by a great friend and diehard aficionado. While Automatic For The People impressed my mother, Monster riffed well enough…

  • REM: The First Cut is The Deepest – True Love Never Dies

    August 20, 2013 - By 

    I have always had the theory that one doesn’t always just ‘discover’ bands. Often it can be a two-way street, that a band can come along and ‘get’ you at the right time and place and it is such a seismic event, that one will never recover or forget about it. The Smiths came to me shortly after my father died. A family friend took me to see them in concert and that was ‘IT’. I dedicated my teen years to them and in return, their musical output was, in a weird way, a comfort. Some of the subtleties of…

  • Gateways To Paradise – How REM Gave Me A Music Collection

    August 19, 2013 - By 

    I was 13, living in Antrim, and it felt like the entire world was very, very far away. But then I would pick up my Walkman, slot in a copy of Fables of the Reconstruction or Out of Time, and find myself in an exotic world, a place of mystery and magic, a place where the kudzu vine spread over everything, and nights were spent by the railway line, watching the trains. To that 13 year old boy, REM were more than a lifeline; they were a life. As the years went by, my love of REM would fluctuate, their 21st century missteps leading…

  • David Bowie: The Night Before

    August 15, 2013 - By 

    So, David Bowie came back this year with his finest album in about two decades. There is a pretty solid consensus as to when Bowie went awful, but the jury is still out on exactly when he recovered. Some would say it was the overbearing misery and darkness that rekindled Bowie’s fire on Heathen, others think it was Outside and Earthling‘s manic dance energy that threw Bowie back into shape and a lot of people believe that it wasn’t until The Next Day that he managed to overcome the slump. Your writer fall into the Heathen camp but, looking at his…

  • Getting Re-acquainted: The Cult – Electric

    August 13, 2013 - By 

    With the release of Electric Peace, we take a look at one of British rock’s true underdogs – The Cult. Unfairly maligned in the 21st century, but still possessing a devoted hardcore following, they blazed a trail through the 80s, winning back the soul of rock from the ashes of punk. With the re-release of Electric, the group’s 1987 masterpiece, now is the perfect time to look at the making of this incredible album, and the long lost unreleased album that should have preceded it, Peace. 1985 had been a very good year for The Cult. Having originally evolved out of the London based ‘positive punk’ band, Southern Death Cult, they then became Death Cult, before dropping the ‘Death’, and adopting the definitive article. 1984’s Dreamtime had been a promising debut, a…

  • The First Time: Rachel Austin

    July 30, 2013 - By 

    In the third installment of The First Time, we catch up with Belfast-based experimental folk singer-songwriter Rachel Austin, delving into a whole range of musical “firsts” in her life both as a performer and lover of music. Traversing her experiences with everyone from the Appleseed Cast and the Smashing Pumpkins to UB40 and Django Reinhardt, the Virginia-born artist has come quite the way… Portrait photo by the ever-excellent Joe Laverty. ___ First album you bought? I begged my parents to take me to the music shop to buy Louis Armstrong’s What A Wonderful World when I was 8 or 9.…