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Power Of Dreams interview
He’d been away a long time but, three quarters of the way through last year, Craig Walker came home. Much had changed since he first left Dublin for London some twenty years ago. The cause of his departure was Power Of Dreams, the band he formed at school with his drummer brother Keith and Mick…
My Roots Are Showing – Orange Juice
When I first heard them something stirred within me. It was a typically dire Scottish summer’s evening in 1981, and I was sitting alone in my dad’s car, as many of us did during the golden age of CB radio. Sadly, my schoolmates, Pioneer and Velocity Girl, weren’t available to chat on channel 14, so…
Interview: The Stooges
Ron Asheton of The Stooges was found dead at his house in Michigan this week. He was one of the founding members and guitarist of the band . Police say he may have been dead for a number of days before he was found. The cause is said to be a heart attack. Iggy Pop …
Anger Management – Rent Boy
It’s funny how something as simple as a dirty plate can tip you over the edge. One minute you’re whistling the theme tune to Family Guy, the next you’re daubing yourself in red marker, tying a tea towel around your head and starting every sentence with ‘your move motherfucker’. Or maybe that’s just how I…
Interview: La Rocca
The voyeuristic nature of being over 25 and watching teen dramas is not lost on La Rocca. ‘You have to try and not get involved with the stories,’ warns bassist Simon Baillie. ‘Then you don’t get hooked.’ It’s not life on the road that has led to such infatuations though, more the hunt for their…
Interview: Lightspeed Champion
You could be forgiven for expecting Falling Off The Lavender Bridge…, the debut album from Lightspeed Champion (aka Dev from noisenik experimental terrorists Test Icicles), to be a prog-ish mosh-fest. You’d be very wrong indeed. But then nothing about this 21-year old multi-instrumentalist is conventional.
In person, Dev – Devonte Hynes to his mum
Interview: Ham Sandwich
Some bands form at school, some at university, while others get together through a chance meeting in a pub. The Meteor Award-winning Ham Sandwich, however, decided that music was their destiny at a crucifixion party one Easter night in Kells. It figures. Of all of the bands doing the rounds in Ireland at the moment,…
Interview: Cadence Weapon
If you’ve ever bemoaned your own lack of ambition or cursed your inability to succeed, a quick glance at Rollie Pemberton’s Curriculum Vitae may push the jealousy button up a notch. A self-professed writer, rapper, producer and remixer, Rollie has achieved more in his short 21 years of life than many of his peers ever…
Interview: Los Campesinos!
If you’re over 21, the music of Welsh septet, Los Campesinos! will make you feel old. If you’re younger, they’ll probably be your new favorite band. For the purposes of this interview State is over 21 and right now, asking them what they studied in university is making us feel ancient. That said, they’re practically…
Interview: Adele
As with Ella Fitzgerald, as with Billie Holiday, as with Dusty Springfield, as with Etta James, as with Lauryn Hill, Adele Adkins possesses a soulful voice which makes hairs stand on end with its melodious honesty. It’s a characteristic that revered singers share: the ability to make you understand their joys and troubles (but mostly…
Circuit Breakers: A primer on the Irish Electronic scene
Friday, midnight: while waiting to order at the bar, State… is suddenly aware that pint
glasses are vibrating across the counter top like wind-up toys moving hilariously to their doom. The bass frequencies are so loud that vision is blurry and the labels on the bottles stocked behind the bar are obfuscated and hallucinatory. There’s
Interview: Goldfrapp
Alison Goldfrapp is exhausted. It’s the end of a non-stop week of press around Europe, that could justify diva antics, but instead she’s pleasant and just a smidge grumpy, but then she and Will Gregory have waited for an hour for State after a delayed flight. Thankfully Seventh Tree…, their fourth album, makes for
Interview: The Jimmy Cake
You’d imagine it would be hard to lose something that has 18 legs, a combined weight of over 80 stones and more instruments than the Moscow Symphony Orchestra , but Dublin’s finest avant-garde instrumental music collective The Jimmy Cake have been conspicuous by their absence for half a decade.
Sure there was the odd live…
