Raekwon couldn’t have picked a better time to bring the Wu-Tang Ruckus. It’s the night before Paddy’s Day, everyone’s on a booze blitz and scowly empty-handed touts are outside the Button Factory trying to score […]
Category: Live reviews
Release the Pressure: Leftfield live in Dublin
The sweat’s dripping off the Tripod walls but MC Djum Djum is bringing Big Freeze chic indoors – bouncing around the stage in a puffy parka jacket. It’s a half an hour in and his […]
Key figure: Chilly Gonzales live in Dublin
Shuffling on stage in a manky checked dressing gown, fluffy slippers, straggly hair and three-day stubble, Chilly Gonzales has that spaced-out aura of a man who’s just rolled out of bed to watch Jeremy Kyle […]
Trouble brewing: Therapy? live in Dublin
Back in 2000, Therapy? Released So Much For the Ten Year Plan – a retrospective that tried to make sense of their contrary career path up until then. Blasting the door off its hinges in […]
Night of the Headhunter: Herbie Hancock live in Dublin
It’s fair to say no one’s really here for the new stuff. Herbie’s just back from headlining the Cork Jazz Festival where he picked up the Guinness Jazz Legend award, and that’s what the people […]
Heavy metal: DOOM live in Dublin
Doom’s doing an Axl – he’s pushing two hours late, there’s a whiff of mutiny in the air and that metal mask might have to save him from flying bottles. The Supervillain has previous in […]
Glass animal: Crystal Castles live in Dublin
Alice Glass is some force of nature. She’s writhing around the stage, Exorcist-style, strangling herself with leads as first song Fainting Spells’ gabba beats and waspy synths slice through the strobe-lit Academy. She’ll spend most […]
Set lasers to stun: Jean Michel Jarre live in Dublin
Seriously, how does Jean Michel Jarre stay looking so young? He must be zapping his wrinkles with those lasers. Or maybe it’s the exercise – he’s bounding around the O2 stage like a pixie after […]
Shaolin smoke & mirrors: Wu-Tang Clan live in London
Wu-Tang Clan are an hour late and DJ Mathematics is playing the fucking Fugees. This is some shameless shit right here, to quote Method Man’s Cheese character in the Wire. Maybe the boos are too harsh, […]
Superbia! Exit Festival in Novi Sad
It’s 7am in a 17th century Serbian fortress and Darth Vader’s behind the decks, flanked by a couple of Stormtroopers punching the air to banging techno. It’s not your average Saturday morning, but Exit’s not […]
Typical girls: The Slits live in Dublin
“The Slits are getting poorer,” Ari Up declares to a two-thirds-full Crawdaddy. “It’s time for us to get paid, if we were rich, we could do shit!” It’s true, the original riot grrrls may have […]
Pieces of a man: Gil Scott-Heron live in Dublin
Yes, it really is him on that stage at his beat-up Rhodes piano, telling us we “need to fly to better days ahead”. Some 40 years after A New Black Poet kicked the doors in […]
Dark arts: Autechre live in Dublin
Autechre‘s no-frills live performance works on the thesis that stage shows and visuals are mere pollution, a distraction from their singular musical vision. Sean Booth and Rob Brown famously even play with the house lights turned […]
More Fire: Antipop Consortium live in Dublin
You get plenty of ‘holy shit’ moments at an Anti-Pop Consortium gig: M. Sayyid and High Priest trading verbal punches; beatmaster Earl Blaize’s Morse code racket as the three MCs take the stage; Beans’ breakneck freestyling […]
Krautrocksampler: Cluster live in Dublin
On The Village balcony, a girl is asking her mate: “So is this krautrock?” She may as well be asking: ‘Er, is this it?’ And fair enough, it’s hard to imagine the refined and reserved Cluster […]
Moo Kid 