• Preview: Robocobra Quartet & Meltybrains? @ Black Box, Belfast

    May 6, 2019 - By 

    Two of the island’s most unclassifiable and artistically uncompromising – not to mention finest live acts – are set to play a double-headliner at Belfast’s Black Box on Friday, May 17 in what looks to be a contender for Irish Gig Of The Year. Proudly co-presented by Moving On Music and yours truly, it’s the first hometown headline show of the year for Robocobra Quartet, and the first Northern show in years for experimental  Meltybrains?. Perpetually a band of contradictions, we’ve long been one of Robocobra Quartet’s most ardent voices of praise. Their string of EPs and NI Music Prize-nominated pair of LPs – 2016 debut Music For All Occasions and Plays…

  • 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…

  • Preview: Izumi Kimura @ The Black Box Green Room, Sunday March 3

    March 1, 2019 - By 

    Brilliant Corners, as we’ve said before, is “the finest patchwork of jazz & sonic digression that Belfast has to offer”, and, in its seventh year, has pulled out all the stops to make this another memorable piece of scheduling. It officially kicks off tomorrow with Ulster Youth Jazz Orchestra & The Comet Is Coming – the latter of which is sold out – and we’ll be highlighting some of the events on offer throughout its run from March 2-9. Firstly, we have contemporary pianist Izumi Kimura, who plays an afternoon show this Sunday in the intimate Black Box Green Room. Her liminal craft is one of nuance, subtlety and precipitous…

  • Brilliant Corners Announce 2019 Programme

    January 30, 2019 - By 

    Now in its seventh year, the tastemakers at Moving On Music have announced the programme for their annual highlight – and the country’s finest jazz festival – Brilliant Corners. The festival will take over various venues in Belfast across March 2-9, with a kickoff solo piano concert from Craig Taborn at SARC’s Sonic Lab on Saturday, February 16. As expected, it’s a wonderfully diverse patchwork of jazz and first-rate sonic digression in the spirit of MOM’s booking the year round. It’s appropriate then, that the two first-night offerings on March 2 are the Ulster Youth Jazz Orchestra Shabaka Hutchings’ unmissable apocalyptic synth-jazz project The Comet Is Coming, supported by…

  • Preview: Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids

    November 22, 2018 - By 

    For some people, genius is a bottomless well that flows from within and permeates everything it touches. Like our first co-presented show with Moving On Music back in October – Peter Brotzmann’s Full Blast – we’re delighted to bring an artist to the Belfast, who, despite decades between his inaugural cultural moment and now, continues to create music of astonishing relevance. Idris Ackamoor is a saxophonist, sometime keytarist & artistic director of afro-jazz ensemble The Pyramids. An Angel Fell by Idris Ackamoor and the Pyramids The Pyramids were founded in the early 70s through Antioch College as part of Cecil Taylor’s Black Music Ensemble. Embarking on the kind of pilgrimage that’s the stuff of musical…

  • Preview: Manchester Collective – Pierrot Lunaire

    November 13, 2018 - By 

    And now for something completely different. On Tuesday, November 20, we’re once again teaming up with Belfast’s premiere promoters of forward-thinking sonic events, Moving On Music, for a very special performance. Doubling up as the latest event in the consistently rewarding Tempered contemporary music series, Manchester Collective will present a brand new English interpretation of Arnold Schoenberg’s free atonal melodrama, Pierrot Lunaire, at the Sonic Arts Research Centre. Having formed in 2016 order to, in their words, “create radical human experience through live music for everyone”, this is an unmissable opportunity to experience Manchester Collective’s vision and thrilling approach first-hand. Featuring a…

  • Preview: Stick in The Wheel

    October 23, 2018 - By 

    On Thursday, October 25th, we team up once again with the North’s finest promoters of forward-moving sounds, Moving on Music. And it’s all for good reason: the Belfast debut of East London four-piece Stick in The Wheel at the Duncairn. Led by vocalist Nicola Kearey and guitarist Ian Carter, the quartet are widely regarded by everyone from MOJO,  UNCUT and the BBC Folk Awards, to our very own Lankum, as one of the most compelling – and not to mention most culturally and politically switched – folk acts around. Combined, the band’s two full-length albums to date – From Here and Follow Me True –…

  • Preview: WorldService Project

    October 2, 2018 - By 

    This Friday, the second of our run of shows co-presented by esteemed Belfast tastemakers Moving on Music takes place at the Black Box, when British punk-jazz quintet WorldService Project make their first Belfast performance. Blending the third-eye-opening freneticism of Return To Forever or late 60s Zappa with an acerbic surrealist Britishness that’s one of few ties to any place of origin – look for a cameo from nightmare fuel himself, Mr Giggles. A fine example of nominal determinism, their rootlessness & contempt for genre classification has led to a confluence of math-rock, prog, punk, and the kind of contemporary, groove-laden fusion carried out by the likes of Snarky Puppy, rooted in the playfulness of Mingus & Coltrane to counteract their clearly schooled…

  • Preview: Peter Brötzmann’s Full Blast

    September 27, 2018 - By 

    For over fifty years, German saxophonist & clarinettist Peter Brötzmann has exemplified European improvised music. His excoriating, volatile style soundtracked a continent ravaged by division & civil unrest, tearing up convention and laying the groundwork for the defiant late 60s European avant-garde. Pitchfork describes him as “one of the most devastating forces to ever touch a saxophone”. In the first of what’s planned to be an ongoing collaboration, we’re delighted to co-present his Full Blast project, in partnership with esteemed Belfast-based tastemakers Moving On Music. Self-taught on saxophone, Brötzmann was originally a painter, schooled in the Cage-influenced Fluxus movement in before moving through Dixieland, ultimately turning his hand to…

  • Blue Whale – Process

    September 21, 2018 - By 

    At long last, one of our favourite bands in Ireland are set to release their debut album. Alluding to their deconstructivist tendencies, Belfast-based experimental rock band Blue Whale release Process on November 9. Recorded with Ben McCauley at Start Together Studios, lead single ‘Shortbread Fingers’ has recently premiered over at The Quietus, and ‘Coitus‘ featured on Irish independent compilation A Litany of Failures: Volume II. Their carefully-constructed chaos has led to a considerable live portfolio, where their potency is as undiminished on the dancefloor as it is with Can’s Damo Suzuki as improvised sound carriers. Oft-compared to Swans, Captain Beefheart, King Crimson and Slint, we’ve described them as “one of the country’s most thoroughly…