The forensic pop-visions of Brian Eno frequently feel dredged from places alien to human emotion. How, his music seems to ask, can the vapid and random flutterings of the heart compare with technology’s unblinking perfection?
For such reasons, Eno’s first album of five years, strikes a curiously retrograde note.
Brian Eno sums up his musical philosophy as an attempt to balance the intellect and the emotions. From Life is about the simplest aesthetics: beauty, pleasure, pure sensation
Damien Dempsey has battled his way centre stage, winning the support of luminaries as diverse as Morrissey, Robert Plant, Sinéad O'Connor, Larry Mullen and Brian Eno along the way. Now with the release of his third album Shots, he is poised to make a major breakthrough. Interview by Tanya Sweeney. Photos by Cathal Dawson.
Brian Eno sums up his musical philosophy as an attempt to balance the intellect and the emotions. From Life is about the simplest aesthetics: beauty, pleasure, pure sensation
Produced and co-written by Brian Eno, the New Yorkers’ fourth album found them replacing the angular rhythms of yore with a fuller, funkier sound that brought the Studio 54 crowd on board. Leading the way was ‘Once In A Lifetime’, a glorious howl of adult disaffection.
They may sport one of the most original sounds in rock’n’roll – but along the way they’ve been influenced by some of the greats.
STUART BAILIE identifies the ten (plus!) key influences on the music of U2
Having conquered Africa, Youssou N’Dour is now turning his attentions to the rest of the world. With Eno, Peter Gabriel and Wyclef Jean all singing his praises, Sam Healy reckons it’s only a matter of time before he has his evil way with us
Featuring contributions from Sinéad O’Connor and Brian Eno, Seize The Day entered the Irish charts at number 5 and has gone on to achieve platinum status.
Pioneering ambient artist, film-scorer, and producer of choice for everyone from Willie Nelson to U2, Daniel Lanois has assembled one of the most impressive CVs in modern rock. And with his new album, Shine, having just hit the racks, he’s far from done yet, as he tells Peter Murphy
Peter Murphy meets former Led Zeppelin bassist JOHN PAUL JONES as he releases his first solo album. On the agenda pacts with the Devil, Jones musical education, and thoughts on Eno, Nico and Charles Mingus.
For many people it is U2's greatest album. Twenty years on, to mark it's re-release, Colm O'Hare talks to Daniel Lanois and reflects on the extraordinary background to a monumental album.
U2 are set to feature prominently in Here Is What Is, a new fly-on-the-studio-wall documentary that’s been put together by their long-time confidante Daniel Lanois.
The initial rumours were that it was going to be a rock n roll record . Then subsequent whispers hinted at everything from trip-hop to techno to ambient. But U2 s eighth studio album, Pop, is all of these things and more. It s the first album since 1983 that they ve made without the assistance of Brian Eno, it s been a long time in the making roughly a full year, all told and it s selling like the proverbial warm buns. Here, NIALL STOKES talks to BONO and ADAM CLAYTON, as well as co-producers FLOOD, HOWIE B and THE EDGE, about its lengthy genesis and what the band hoped to accomplish in creating it.
Pix: STEPHANE SEDNAOUI .
Once you see the names Brian Eno and David Holmes printed on a soundtrack tracklist, you know it has to possess at least some serious heavyweight potential.
The tunes on Of Pattern And Purpose – are so cool that they offer the kind of pleasing, relaxing, thought-disengaging, space-creating emotional detachment that we find in Steve Reich or Brian Eno circa Music For Airports.
So then: a Francophile Belinda Carlisle album featuring Brian Eno, Sharon Shannon and Fiachna O Braonain on songs written and/or popularised by Piaf, Brel, Gainsbourg and Hardy. I swear, I haven’t been at the brown acid.
Recorded in Slane Castle in Co. Meath, this was the first U2 album on which the quartet used the studio as brush rather than canvas, with results that were often dense and impressionistic: the majestic title track, the fractious punk-funk of ‘Wire’, the slow motion fireworks of ‘MLK’ and ‘Bad’.
Astronomical record sales, sell-out tours and critical plaudits have not dimmed Coldplay's reputation as the worried men of pop. Bassist Guy Berryman gives us the lowdown.
For 20 years, iarla o lionaird has steeped himself in the neglected tradition of sean nss singing. Now signed to Peter Gabriel s Realworld label, he believes that the late 90s could finally see a breakthrough for his beloved art form. siobhan long talks to the man with what Martin Hayes calls the lonesome touch
David bickley, aka Mobius of hyper[borea], tells Olaf Tyaransen about dance music as gaeilge, Bronze Age atmospheres and how he came to throw his Hot Press Award off a cliff.
He has one or two other things going on at the moment, but if The Edge happens to be free on the first day of the Electric Picnic there’s a good chance you’ll find him and his wooly hat front of stage for reformed post-punks Magazine.
The former NME rock crit, ZTT founder and hyper of Frankie has written a book. But it s not about pop it s about the suicide of his dad. PETER MURPHY reports on how Nothing matters.
30th Anniversary Retrospective: In a special interview, The Edge reminisces about the early days of Hotpress, explains Bill Graham’s role in U2’s development, and comes clean about what the band have been up to recently in Morocco.
This month, the 2006 RTÉ Living Music Festival, sponsored by IMRO, celebrates Steve Reich, arguably America’s greatest living composer. Jackie Hayden meets the 70-year-old whose influences stretch beyond the contemporary classical world to rock and rap music.
30th Birthday Retrospective: He was the original art-rocker and the quintessential ladies’ man. Bryan Ferry looks back at three decades spent at the frontline of pop.
Tim Booth does. The James frontman chats candidly to John Walshe about fame, riches, sexuality, being called a 'faggot' on the Lollapalooza tour, and the band's
brilliant 10th album, Millionaires.
When DAVID DONOHUE set out to make a television documentary about horse racing he had no idea of just how high the stakes would become.
Reporting: LIAM MACKEY
Stuart Clark discusses Michael Jackson’s trial, Roxy Music, The Killers, David Bowie and the ideal soundtrack for bonking with a newly peaceful and content Moby.
Stuart Clark discusses Michael Jackson’s trial, Roxy Music, The Killers, David Bowie and the ideal soundtrack for bonking with a newly peaceful and content Moby.
On the eve of Kraftwerk’s headlining appearance at the Electric Picnic, mainman Ralf Hütter talks with rare candour about David Bowie, U2, hip-hop, cycling and why sometimes even man-machines have to smile.
If not reinventing the wheel, Arctic Monkeys are certainly giving the spokes a good polish. Stuart Clark takes his place in the moshpit for their recent Dublin show.
Steve Lillywhite, who produced U2's first three albums – and has featured on the production team of almost all of their records – looks back over the band's career and recalls the highs... and the lows
With the launch of a commemorative series of Irish postage stamps celebrating four of the nation's most important rock legends, we revisit some of the seminal moments in the careers of Phil Lynott, Rory Gallagher, Van Morrison and - first - U2
Time magazine dubbed him The Renaissance Man Of Rock . With and without Talking Heads, he s made some of the most innovative music of the last two decades, as well as being an author, photographer, director, sound-track scorer, Academy Award winner, and all-round friendly neighbourhood psycho-killer. David Byrne allowed Hot Press to put him on the couch for thirty minutes when he arrived in Dublin for his recent Olympia Theatre show.
Peter Murphy was there to hear the Head man
talking.
Roisin Dwyer catches up with electropop duo MGMT to discuss their greatest rock 'n' roll moment, Jools Holland and their growing reputation as popular music's new trouble-makers.
While the entity that is U2 continues to be the dominant focus in the creative lives of its four members, away from the band, Bono, The Edge, Adam and Larry have all indulged in extra-curricular activities, bringing them – and their music - into contact with such legends as Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Keith Richards, and Roy Orbison, By Dermot Stokes
Discovered that there is life after Brett-pop, that is. nick kelly gets the lowdown from "the bloke who left Suede", Bernard Butler, whose mightily impressive solo debut People Move On, has just been released.
He was a midwife to grunge and has worked with artists as diverse as Marilyn Manson, Hole and Ozzy Osbourne. Far from being a studio boffin, though, Michael Beinhorn believes modern music is too often reliant on technology.
As the founder of Island Records Chris Blackwell can claim a unique role in the evolution of popular music. He pulls up a chair and shoots the breeze about his Jamaican heritage, his relationship with Bob Marley and taking power-lunches with U2.
We asked the fans to vote for U2's Greatest Hits and they did - in their thousands. The result is a selection of 20 tracks which, without doubt, would combine to produce a record to rank among the weightiest and most powerful anthologies in the history of rock. The full track listing is not without its controversial selections and omissions, however. Bill Graham and Niall Stokes take us through the fans' vision of the fab four's dream album.
From Donegal to London and beyond, altan s breathtaking music continues to win new converts. As the band showcase material from their latest album, Runaway Sunday, at the international headquarters of Virgin Records,
mairiad nm mhaonaigh tells sarah mcquaid:
It s all about letting it rip.
When he was with PiL he ate cheese rolls and guzzled vintage wine by the neck in Maxim s of Paris. Having gotten the rock n roll lifestyle out of his system, he literally went underground, working as a driver on the London tube. Now he s back, mining the divine power of music with his latest album, The Celtic Poets. saraH Mcquaid meets the inimitable jah wobble.
The Edge talks to Bill Graham about his soundtrack album "Captive" - and about the hidden reservoirs the band are charting in their search for the follow-up to "The Unforgettable Fire"
Sprawling across four restless, angry and sometimes contradictory sides, "Rattle And Hum" is nothing less than U2's most ambitious album yet. Review by Bill Graham
You're right, that's the not so original headline that we used when Jackie Hayden - who signed U2 to CBS Records in Ireland in 1978 and is now General Manager with Hot Press - spoke to the bearded one about further adventures at the Fab Four's mixing desk, and his growing involvement in
Súlán Studios in Cork.
Niall Stokes draws on his best-selling book Into The Heart: The Stories Behind The Songs Of U2 to offer a unique insight into the way in which some of the greatest songs in the history of popular music came into being.
Well when you've conquered the world, what else can the biggest band on the planet do except go into space? BONO and LARRY discuss matters cosmic and personal with Olaf Tyaransen
How did Brandon Flowers, Ronnie Vannucci, Dave Keuning and Mark Stoermer go from the Las Vegas dive bar circuit to selling four million copies of their debut album, Hot Fuss? On the eve of the band's highly-anticipated Oxegen 2005 appearance, Stuart Clark talks to the people involved in the making of The Killers.
When the offer came to produce the new Rolling Stones album in Dublin what answer could Don Was give but a resounding ‘Yes’. Mick, Keef & Co. are the latest in a long and impressive list of the man’s studio credits which includes Bob Dylan, The B-52’s, Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt and Paula Abdu. But throw in the small matter of the career of Was (Not Was) and the musical rehabilitation of errant Beach Boys’ genius Brian Wilson and we’re talking major industry player here. Bill Graham takes up the story . . .
The actor, director, novelist and husband of Uma Thurman on the thrill of being a non-specialist and the challenge presented by "the greatest adventure you can have" - being in love
U2 are about to unleash their new album How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. The world’s media are descending on Dublin. And Bono is back at the punch-bag, getting into fighting shape before the shit storm really explodes. The gloves are off. He’s got work to do. And he’s going to do it. Words Stuart Clark, additional reporting by Niall Stokes.
Moby Comes Out To Play
IT S NOT often a Grammy nominee saunters into the Hot Press offices in the midst of the controlled explosion that is production weekend. But then, Moby s one of those freaks of nature a pop star who seems interested in what goes on around him rather than employing people to block it out.
. . . Or not, as the case may be. In this extremely revealing interview with peter murphy, henry rollins speaks frankly about relationships, violence, depression, squaring up to Al Pacino and the problems that come with a life lived on the road
Falling in love not only altered David Kitt’s heart but helped reshape his musical vision. Olaf Tyaransen visits his home cum studio and hears about the family affair that is his new album and how meeting Poppy reawakened his love of pop. all this and why the son of a Minister opposes the smoking ban! Photography Roger Woolman.
Giant lemons, 100ft toothpicks and enough lights to put Las Vegas on full-scale UFO alert. Helena Mulkerns watches with gob well and truly smacked as U2's PopMart extravaganza opens for business at the Sam Boyd Stadium.
Pix: All Action
From "Out Of Control" to "All I Want Is You", Neil McCormick presents a major critical retrospective on the complete recorded works of U2, the band who went from being one of the world's worst cover groups to become a leading force in modern Rock'n'Roll
In the magical, wind-swept landscape of Ireland's remote north-west the cameras roll as U2's Bono and Maire of Clannad make the video for their collaborative single "In A Lifetime". Bill Graham joins the entourage at work and at play and talks to the main protagonists.
DAVID HOLMES is about to leave his native Belfast for New York City, where he will record his third album. STUART BAILIE took a final opportunity to speak to the artist also known as Homer. On the agenda: Hollywood soundtracks, rumours of brawling, past glories and future plans.
Pics: MICHAEL TAYLOR.
Surprise has a looser, more atmospheric approach than we normally get from the pristine and musically-disciplined Simon, with lots of swirling textures serving as provocative soundwashes behind the unmistakeable vocals.
Triumph Of The Will meets Spinal Tap and Bach meets Sabbath as METALLICA join
forces with 101 dinner jackets. Peter Murphy travels to Berlin to sample the results.
Picture the scene. It's a dark room. Lots of serious looking guys. One serious looking bloke hunched over a glowing Powerbook laptop. Waves of deep electronica fall from the speakers.
He may well be RTE s only living intellectual but ANDY O MAHONY, host of The Sunday Show, will long be remembered by many as the man who asked Deirdre Purcell if she ever did the bold thing with Gay Byrne. JOE JACKSON gets the self-styled closet determinist to come out of the closet. Pix: Colm Henry
SINEAD O'CONNOR has been many things - bona fide pop star, tabloid target, controversial activist, mother and priest. But, above all, she is one of Ireland's most compelling musicians.
With a new album due for release, she talks to NIALL STOKES about love, sex, the Church, fame, racism and why "it's important to make it soul music." Pictures: MYLES CLAFFEY
The synth-rock (or electro-indie if you like) bedroom ascetics – who heretofore brought you the charming line “I’m like Stevie Wonder, but I can see things” – have by their own acknowledgement looted the mechanical music museum, spending a lifetime distilling their record collection into manageable, tongue-in-cheek precipitates like whiskey or MSG.
This film's crap: let's remake it and score the soundtrack! Belfast production maverick and film buff David Holmes hits Tinseltown on the wave of Ocean's 11
Following on from Volume 1, released earlier this year, this third album from Echoboy’s Richard Warren is a moody, buzzy amalgam of the pounding guitar-drone Death in Vegas have patented, the brave-new-worldisms of Primal Scream’s Xxtrmntr and the slightly nerdy keyboard manifestos of the retro-80s/Krautrock set. It’s as noisy, mock-threatening and fun – and, occasionally, as disposable – as a high-tech, batteries-not-included toy lasergun.
At the end of an exciting, painful and earthshaking year, Bono reflects on the political and the personal – from drop the debt, September 11, Afghanistan and Genoa to the death of his father Bob, the birth of his son John and the enduring friendship which underpins U2’s music and career. Interview: Niall Stokes
[this interview originally appeared in the spectacular Hot Press Annual 2002 - used in the pictures below - a very limited number of this unique collectors item will shortly be on sale - email u2@hotpress.ie to reserve a copy]
They may be one twin sister down, otherwise things remain stubbornly unchanged in camp Múm. Recorded largely in a deserted lightkeeper’s house, Summer Make Good boasts appropriate titles such as ‘Hu Hviss – A Ship’, ‘Abandoned Ship Bells’and ‘Oh How The Boat Drifts’, and the overall effect is a tender, intimate exploration of heavenly, frosted soundscapes.
The stakes are high, and BOC raise the benchmark further by opting for a final selection of 23 tracks sprawled across a lush electro-symphonic soundscape
Tracing Scott Walker’s journey from reluctant 60s teen idol to leftfield dignitary, this award-winning doc should please both neophytes and dedicated champions alike.
A slight change of pace can be seen in this EP with a hip-hop icon cameo and some Eastern embellishments that may hint to new musical endeavors for Coldplay.
JANE SIBERRY has a voice so exceptional it could stir absolutely anyone, even those whose idea of romance involves fifteen pints of Guinness and an eleventh hour lunge at the least intimidating person in the vicinity.
Hotpress.com got a sneak preview of Coldplay's musically adventurous new EP, which is due for release here on Nov 21. Could it mark the start of an exciting new direction for the band? Read on for the full verdict...
Ambient but not a dance album, modern-classical without any of the academic seriousness or rigidity that connotes, and finally a world-beating, thoroughly modern pop record, this marvellous debut from Dubliner Daniel Figgis is an impressionistic gem.
This is a fitting memorial to Sinéad’s relentless struggle to transcend the mundane, the vacuous and the predictable. As a farewell album it’ll do fine until the next one.
Gathering together Dublin maverick Stano’s work from his first recording, ‘Room’ in 1982, to the title track, recorded this year, Reverse Presence is an absolute gem of a collection and a must-have for alternative muso lovers.
They're back. With a bang. Never ones to do it colour by numbers, The Cranberries waited 'til their third trip to the studio before encountering the difficult album syndrome.
The official opening of The Music Show will take place in Trinity College, with an interview with Island records founder Chris Blackwell conducted by our very own Stuart Clark.
Once you see the names Brian Eno and David Holmes printed on a soundtrack tracklist, you know it has to possess at least some serious heavyweight potential.
Directors and their wives have, down the ages, accounted for a hell of a lot of used celluloid. Sometimes, as in the case of Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate on The Fearless Vampire Killers, they’ve only just found love on the casting couch. Then there are the genuine married muses of cinema – Anna Karina for Jean-Luc Godard, Gena Rowlands for John Cassavetes, Melissa Mounds for Russ Meyers.
Getting inside the head of one of modern music’s deepest enigmas was both a challenge and a privilege, says documentary maker Stephen Kijak, director of Scott Walker 30 Century Man.
A woman encouraging her boyfriend to “shit his leg off” during bad sex, doctors diagnosing symptomless comas, death through prolonged ejaculation – looks like Chris Morris is back on TV again. investigating the nocturnal goings-on: Paul Nolan
30th Anniversary Retrospective: It was the funniest Irish comedy ever. A decade after Father Ted, two of the men behind the show - Declan Lowney and Arthur Mathews - reminisce about its impact.
Your writer is just as fond of the throwaway, the frivolous and the ephemeral as the next person, but it takes someone as integral as Damien Dempsey – back, here, with his third studio album – to remind you how empty, or, alternatively, full of shit most music is. That’s not a negative statement, just a true one.
David Holmes is momentarily back in Belfast, fixing up some business, talking with friends and previewing some of the music that he s been cooking up in New York over the past five months.
THE CRITICS PANEL WHO VOTED FOR THE TOP 30 ALBUMS AND SINGLES OF THE YEAR ARE AS FOLLOWS: BILL GRAHAM, LIAM FAY, GEORGE BYRNE, STUART CLARK, LORRAINE FREENEY, TARA McCARTHY, GERRY McGOVERN, NEIL McCORMICK, DERMOT STOKES, OLIVER P. SWEENEY, SIOBHAN LONG, STEVE AVERILL, ANDY DARLINGTON, COLM O’HARE, JOE JACKSON, HELENA MULKERNS, DAN OGGLY, CATHY DILLON, NIALL CRUMLISH, OLAF TYARANSEN, PATRICK BRENNAN, JACKIE HAYDEN AND NIALL STOKES.
On 25 August 2001 - twenty years after first appearing there in support to Thin Lizzy - U2 play Slane Castle. NIALL STOKES reflects on the extraordinary journey that has led up to this historic, and beautiful, day
When we last left U2, at the conclusion of 1997’s Pop, they were marooned on a spaghetti Golgotha, shouting, “Wake up dead man!” at a god who had apparently reneged on his promise to live forever. Well pilgrims, here’s the resurrection shuffle.
THE FRAMES RECEIVED a very special pat on the back last week when Brian Eno described their London Borderline gig as the best he’s been to for five years.
Sprawling across four restless, angry and sometimes contradictory sides, "Rattle And Hum" is nothing less than U2's most ambitious album yet. Review by Bill Graham
Neil McCormick, a friend of U2 in their earliest days, who, as a writer, has closely monitored their progress since then, analyses Eamon Dunphy's much-touted 'authorised' biography "Unforgettable Fire" – and can't quite believe what he reads
All Write Now, we said. And boy did you follow instructions! The entries poured in from all over Ireland, and further afield, in their thousands. We were snowed under – but, as the song says: That’s the way, uh huh, uh huh, we like it…
