State meets Anto and Ray from Twinkranes in the library bar of Dublin’s Central Hotel. It’s an old-fashioned, carpety sort of place, full of high-backed chairs, table lamps, and bookcases. It somehow doesn’t feel like the most appropriate place to meet members of a band who describe themselves as a “psychedelic power trio specialising…

Shackleton’s techno haunted dub (or should that be dub haunted techno?) productions always had a freakish, mummified feel to them. They lived up to his old label’s name too – Skull Disco. Listen to the labyrinthine and rolling rhythms of older tracks like ‘Stalker’ or ‘Blood on my Hands’, and it is easy to…

Nick Hemming (AKA The Leisure Society) was either very astute or having a Mystic Meg moment when he named his debut album The Sleeper, as its success has followed the textbook trajectory of sleeper hit. Barely noticed on its initial release, this pop flecked folk album has trundled quietly along and gathered enough moss…

A lot of Sunday is spent at a relaxed pace and wandering in and out of tents to check out stuff just because it’s nearby. This pot luck approach leads to a minor revelation with THE MACCABEES, a once jaunty, but lightweight Brighton based guitar band who have recently recast themselves as a more…

When THE SAW DOCTORS stroll out onto the main stage in the early afternoon a nostalgic feeling of Irish festivals past floats through the air. People are sitting out on the woodchip covered slope and GAA jerseys and flags start to materialise out of nowhere. The first drop of rain has yet to fall,…

This year it is definitely the year of the pop princesses at Oxegen, with the big three of the moment – Lily Allen, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga – all keeping the tabloids happy. With the latter two playing sets on the big stages on Sunday, it’s irresistible to see their appearances as a…

It’s literally the calm before the storm. During the early evening of day one at Oxegen an odd feeling of quiet hangs in the air. There just aren’t all that many punters around, and the festival doesn’t take off properly until BLUR slay the masses later on. In the meantime smaller bands are playing…

When trying to describe the mercurial music of the avant-garde San Franciscan band Deerhoof, you might be forgiven for grabbing the big handbook of psychology disorders instead of the thesaurus. This music is fractured, intense, manic, symptomatic of multiple personality disorder, and volatile as hell. Over the last decade they’ve recorded ten albums which…

Apparat (aka Sascha Ring) is a slick collaborator. His cerebral and spacey take on techno works like a cosmic angle-grinder, smoothing other people’s tunes into edgeless beautiful things, like musical pebbles. On the Orchestra Of Bubbles album he produced with Ellen Allien, the overall feeling was of gaseous propulsion. Allien’s usually severe minimal stylings…

By the time day three of Primavera rolls around, even the most battle hardened punters are feeling worn out. The mood around the festival is one of weary contentment. People are lobster-faced, dehydrated and running on empty but drawing on their last reserves for a final night of good times in sunny Spain.
Our…

Because of the logistical problems associated with getting our motley mob to leave their various apartments we arrive too late to see Bat for Lashes. The first act we catch are Spiritualized on the Rock Delux stage. True to retiring form Jason Pierce is positioned about as far to the right of the stage…

It’s day one in Barcelona and apparently some local team won a football match of importance. Catalans like to celebrate their football victories with fireworks. 2009’s Primavera festival takes place against a background of randomly detonated bangers, whistlers, roman candles and rockets. A giddy air of celebration seems to have permeated the entire festival…

In a year likely to be defined by intergalactic songbirds with synths and Animal Collective’s maximalistic psychedelia, The Thermals’ ballsy punk pop sounds curiously fresh. Fourth album Now We Can See finds Hutch Harris and his faintly uncool crew crashing the hip party, smelling of beer and dragging a whopper sack of bargain-bin Big…

Junior, Royksopp’s third album proper, starts with a sample of producers Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland laughing like kids. It’s hard not to interpret this as a statement of intent. Especially if you consider the track that follows; ‘Happy up Here’ bounces in on a huge, rubbery space-hopper of a sample, trailing handclaps and…