EARS OPEN, A4 Sounds, Dublin (Day); Jigsaw, Dublin (Night), tomorrow, (€10 day ticket or €15 for day and night) “Performing, talking, workshopping and dancing, day into night across two venues in Dublin 1” is what it […]
Another fine edition of Bryan Ferry
Depending who you’re talking to, Bryan Ferry is either the avant-garde hero who helped Roxy Music write the art-rock blueprint in the 1970s, or the impossibly suave crooner engulfed in elegant adult pop. But who […]
Should we care about The Streets’ comeback when Mike Skinner doesn’t seem too fussed?
Last October, rapper Mike Skinner announced the return of his landmark project The Streets with as little fanfare as the project’s ‘retirement’ in 2011. “Spoke to my old band! Told them we need to sing […]
Irish gigs round-up…
GOAT GIRL: Grand Social, Dublin, tonight (€12.50) “Build a bonfire, build a bonfire, put the Tories on the top/Put the DUP in the middle and we’ll burn the fucking lot.” No, it’s not some obscure […]
Tinfoil interview: ‘We feel techno in a very primal kind of way’
There’s a cliche of modern dance music as a solitary pursuit — of producers locked in studios fine-tuning DJ tools, hunched over screens, nano-checking every frequency for big-room optimisation. Irish duo Tinfoil’s visceral analogue techno […]
Mouse On Mars’ Dimensional People feels a bit… 2D
Amid all the obituaries and tributes after Mark E Smith’s death, there wasn’t enough love for his team-up with Mouse On Mars as Von Südenfed. The trio’s 2007 album Tromatic Reflexxions is an industrial-glitch master […]
Irish gigs round-up
SHAME | Whelan’s, Dublin, tomorrow, SOLD OUT. With their debut album Songs of Praise, English post-punk outfit Shame sneer all over the BBC’s hallowed hymn-filled institution – and the sleeve with the lads holding baby […]
Is Arcade Fire’s Everything Now really that bad?
Where do you go after one of the the most revered indie-rock albums of the 21st century? Arcade Fire’s 2005 debut Funeral has gone down as one of the defining albums of this generation, with […]
Premiere: Mount Alaska’s hypnotic remix of Feather Beds’ Headache Dreams
Dublin electronic production duo Mount Alaska have finally opened up their 2018 account with a remix of Headache Dreams by shoegaze-electronica artist Feather Beds, and it’s their most hypnotic and transcendent release to date. Dublin […]
March 2018 in 21 tracks
A post-Easter bank holiday comedown is easier to digest when you wash it down with industrial minimalism and techno, cosmic psychedelia, black metal gospel, fist-up hip-hop and a hymn to good ol’ planet Earth from […]
Zeal & Ardor bring the horror blues on Gravedigger’s Chant
Swiss act Zeal & Ardor was the bowel-churning highlight of Eurosonic 2018 – an avant-garde metal project that just might cross over this year, going by the justified hype from outside the regular metal channels. […]
Irish gigs round-up
ACTRESS & MOUNT KIMBIE, Button Factory, Dublin, Tomorrow, €20. Expect a few hours of curveballs as Mount Kimbie and Actress form like a three-headed Voltron and go back-to-back in this rare team-up. Actress, aka UK […]
Loah interview: ‘It’s all just a big human experiment of creating stuff’
After the recent Imagining Ireland showcase at the Barbican in London, the Guardian nailed it in a review by saying “this was Ireland, but not as we are told we know it”. The concert could […]
If you know what’s good for you: The Weetabix skinhead gang stomping all over the 80s
In the ongoing cultural appropriation wars we forget that skinheads got a serious raw deal in the 80s. Firstly, the subculture informed in part by Jamaican reggae and ska was infiltrated by Nazi punks who […]
Gerald Donald morphs into XOR Gate for new solo album Conic Sections
Drexciyan electro conceptualist Gerald Donald has sidestepped his regular aliases and collaborations for a new solo album of abstract electro futurism. The ever-elusive Donald is revered as one half of Detroit electro visionaries Drexciya, and […]
Moo Kid 