Get Physical launches a sub-label with a genre-worrying release: 'Freefall' is all about the grimy bass and menacing rhythms, while 'Marsha' teems with chiming chords and hazy FX, but is underpinned by steely Chicago drums and a sinister low end.
A deep bass vocal intro that includes the sound of saliva-sticky mumbles and soft-sinister chuckles is the perfect preamble to this downtempo post-funk track that evokes inner city alienation by breathing it in your ear. A satisfying assault of obfuscation stimulation.
After examining the strange world of outsider conspiracy theorists in 2001’s acclaimed Them, chronicler of cultural weirditude Jon Ronson has now turned his attention to the murkey milieu of covert US military ops and sinister, Pentagon-sanctioned psychological experiments. Peter Murphy switches on the interrogation lamp and probes the Cardiff-born author for details on Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, the tactical deployment of Barney the Dinosaur, and the men who attempted to kill goats simply by staring at them.
Written, recorded, arranged, produced and mastered in Kevin’s flat is the boast on this self financed release and, well, it shows. This is not only literally bedroom music but sounds like Nolan saw very little of the light of day when he was making it, such is the rather sinister mood. The complete lack of budget does tend to undermine the ambition, yet you can’t fault him for trying.
A mix of South American rhythms, sea shanties and faintly sinister guitars, this is the kind of weird and absolutely wonderful record that could only come out of a thriving independent music scene
With Master of Puppets, Metallica pushed their taste for the epic to the ultimate with what is their finest moment, that once-in-a-career phase when all members of a band seem to peak at the same time. It was their last album before the tragic death of bassist Cliff Burton, and also the album on which James Hetfield came into his true voice, as on ‘Battery’. With layers of grinding guitars creating a truly dark, sinister sound, Kirk Hammet peeled off riff after limitless riff.
Master Of Puppets proved that Metallica were one of the most important metal bands of all time.
Channel 6’s Michelle Doherty is the major new addition to the line-up as Phantom 105.2 attempts to boost its ratings by rejigging its weekday morning and lunchtime schedule.
Better known these days as a shlocky horror film director, Rob Zombie’s first album since 2001's The Sinister Urge draws from a wider frame of music, with glam rock and sleek, smooth electronic grooves infusing the most potent of these new songs.
There are certain rules that govern the modern J-horror, particularly those spawned within The Ring and Grudge franchises. Sure enough, you can check long black hair, dark water, mirrors, sinister children and things that go bump in the shower off the list with Takashi Shimizu’s sequel to his 2004 American remake.
If nothing else, The Jacket kicks off with plenty by way of intrigue. Adrien Brody is shipped home following a near fatal gunshot in 1991 but his post-combat sanity is far from assured. One snowy Vermont moment, he’s assisting a drunk woman (Kelly Lynch) and her little girl at a roadside, then a memory lapse later, he’s being electroshocked by Kris Kristofferson’s sinister shrink after being found guilty of killing a cop.
There is a tendency to regard Bill Callahan, the morose Kentucky songwriter who trades as Smog, as a sort of bargain-basement Will Oldham, a rural malingerer perched perpetually on the brink of an emotional fault-line.
For all its starkness though, Callahan’s oeuvre is tinged with a cautious beauty. Beneath the artist’s pained snarl – he’s one of those live performers who seems in constant distress – one begins to detect the hint of a rueful grin.
For his 12th record, Callahan retreats from the mannered melancholia of his recent albums. Here, the ominous tranquility of nature is Callahan’s obsession. Where most see a tranquil lake, Callahan senses the sinister undertow.
Like Salvatores’ Mediterraneo, this is a beautiful, idyllic piece of cinema that feels like you’re sunbathing throughout, though the lazy, stifling sun is counterpointed by a lively child-centric zest and a dark, vaguely sinister edge. Indeed, I’m Not Scared is decidedly more thrilling than your average pretty Miramax chocolate-box picture.
The animation empire’s apparent inability to produce a shit movie really is getting a bit sinister. Their uncanny run of form continues with The Incredibles.
There’s a fair helping of standard Faithless tracks on Outrospective. The sinister dance epics ‘We Come 1’ and the dark and dangerous ‘Tarantula’ come from a familiar place. But the magic of Outrospective lies in the unexpected, which is magic thankfully in abundance.
Despite Roth’s audacious use of squelching gristle and raw tendons, Hostel pivots around an old-fashioned standard within the genre – if you fuck, you will die. Or, more accurately in this case, if you backpack into Slovakia chasing easy eastern bloc girls, you will find yourself at the mercy of a sinister snuff ring.
Thankfully, once you've sat through an opening hour, the film settles down to become a stylish and pacy yarn about missing nukes and sinister shadowy international neo-Nazi organisations
Joining the ranks of surveillance flicks such as My Little Eye and Section 8, this latest post-reality TV offering is (initially) suitably sinister, conceptually quite challenging and loaded with big, hefty ideas that nod toward Foucault and Orwell and so forth. But just as you’re there thinking ‘Ah, so we make our own prisons’ and, ‘So Big Brother isn’t just a vile televisual concept of ever-limboing standards’, things go terrifically awry.
IT is every journalist’s worst nightmare. It doesn’t often happen that a story is either important or sinister enough to lead a writer into direct conflict with dangerous forces.
In the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks, a growing number, including respected foreign correspondent Robert Fisk, are starting to ask uncomfortable questions about September 11 and the War on Terror it provoked.
The Israeli army has deliberately targeted civilians in Lebanon and behaved like a terrorist gang. Their excuses will only convince the terminally gullible.
THERE S NOTHING I enjoy more after leaving Hot Press than to go home, loosen my cravat and indulge in a good nutty shag. However, it is increasingly the practice of the working classes and newly-moneyed to pour scorn on such manly pursuits. The days of a public school education automatically earning one respect are, it appears, at an end. The landscape would be unbearably bleak were it not for The Chap, a new gentleman s quarterly which has become quite the rage in polite society.
Colin Carberry looks back at twelve months in which Bill Drummond’s Soup Line tour of Ulster was one of the Northern arts scene’s undoubted highlights.
Watching racist bullying on Celebrity Big Brother was horrific, argues Hot Press’ very own Shilpa, but that shouldn’t mean we need to become PC fascists.
Popular culture has seldom been this unremittingly grim. Resurrection Man is based on the blood-curdling activities of
the Shankill Butcher, and it stars
stuart townsend.
Interview: craig Fitzsimons.
They dress as surgeons on stage and punctuate their records with spoken-word monologues. You could say indie electro oddballs Clinic are determined to do things their own way.
Louis Walsh and Bono suffer a roasting as Echo And The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch talks to Hot Press about life as an indie-pop legend and explains why he’s rock music’s answer to Frank Sinatra.
As Ireland’s Latin American solidarity committee prepares to mark the 30th anniversary of the coup which overthrew Chilean President Salvador Allende, Michael D. Higgins TD remembers the inspirational life, poetry and music of the great folk singer Victor Jara who was brutally murdered in 1973.
Masters of the macabre the League Of Gentlemen have now extended their reign of terror beyond the confines of sinister township Royston Vasey. Their feature film sees Tubbs, Edward and the rest of the gang set their sights on a fresh target – the real world. Interview by Tara Brady.
Sinister psychological experimnets and political subterfuge are at the centre of Jonathan Demme’s intriguing new remake of The Manchurian Candidate. Luckily for us however, the film’s star Liev Schreiber happens to be an amiable, erudite ex-New Yorker with a degree in semiotics. Oh, and some nice cheekbones.
Back in their terrifying heyday, they threw pigs’ heads around on stage, covered themselves in muck, provided Marilyn Manson with a career and wrote ‘Community Games’ for Aidan Walsh. Having escaped the clutches of a sinister born-again Christian turned transvestite, they’re now making movies with Neil Jordan, dining with Damien Hirst and consorting with Tony Blair. All in all, it’s been a long, strange trip for The Virgin Prunes
GARBAGE are a band who absorb all the detritus, darkness and despair of the pre-millennial zeitgeist and spit it back out in a torrent of searing guitars, futuristic technological trickery and lyrics that freeze the blood. They've also made two of the most sinister pop records of modern times - the second of which, Version 2.0, is due for imminent release. PETER MURPHY met them in London to discuss sex, surveillance, studio strife, pre-2000 tension and their special fondness for The Beach Boys.
In Jon Ronson’s new collection of his newspaper columns, this most provocative of commentators turns the spotlight on his own life and family, where things are not quite as normal as you might think.
Phuture are the creators of 'Acid Trax', and the people who introduced the Roland 303 'acid box' to the music world. They are arguably one of the most influential groups ever. So why are they still doing day jobs? Richard Brophy talks to original member Spanky and new addition Professor Trax, and reports on a travesty of justice in the dance world.
We see the reports on television and hear the voices on the radio but the brutal adrenaline-charged reality of the rioting in North Belfast can only be fully understood if you're in the thick of it. Gerry Ryan Show reporter Brenda O' Donoghue briefly was.
Cast as fictional conjoined twins who start their own punk band Harry and Luke Treadaway have delivered one of the year’s funniest and most moving performances in the mocumentary Brothers Of The Head.
Grappling with weighty political themes is grist to the mill for Colin Meloy of Oregon art-rockers The Decemberists. He’s even written a song about the Shankill Butchers.
...Or at least it does where Halloween is concerned, as the old pagan feast is transformed into an orgy of amateur pyrotechnics, civil disobedience and open-air boozing.
They’re the hottest thing to have come out of Belfast in years. Ahead of the release of their hugely anticipated long-play debut, guitar-abusing noiseniks and so I watched you from afar, give us a track-by-track lowdown on the album.
"This is very much my love-letter to wine," says trained sommelier and film director Jonathon Nossiter. So why then is his new documentary Mondovino coming under fire from the global wine industry? Because, as he tells Tara Brady, it exposes how the globalisation of the wine industry is destroying thousands of years of heritage.
Whilst the old authoritarian ethos of the church is losing its grip on Irish society, a new order of conservative moralism has arisen to take its place.
Australian director Philip Noyce has directed such Hollywood blockbusters as Patriot Games and The Bone Collector yet his latest offering Rabbit Proof Fence is an altogether more considered offering. Tara Brady asks if this latest work and the forthcoming The Quiet American signifies a change in his approach to film-making?
Acclaimed Sandman creator Neil Gaiman has turned his dark imagination to children’s fiction with Coraline, a book whose subject matter is even more timely in the light of the tragic events in Soham
Tara Brady takes a look at the enduring appeal of Japanese cultural icon Hello Kitty – the billion-dollar company which has spread into areas as diverse as mobile phones, toasters, leopard-skin legwarmers and – you guessed it – porn.
East Timor is a small island close to Indonesia. Invaded in 1975 by its much larger neighbour, in the intervening years almost one third of its population has been wiped out in an ongoing campaign of international terrorism and genocide. The arms being used to terrorise this small island are being supplied by Britain. Report: LIAM FAY
Three teenagers from Craigavon High School have committed suicide in the past month. So why are young men in the North taking their lives in record numbers? And what can be done to prevent further tragedy?
Torquil Campbell, singer with Canadian indie achievers Stars, is a thoroughly nice guy – when he’s not plotting to put photographs of his naked, crucified, Spiddal-born wife on his album covers.
Spraycan and scaffolding at the ready, the culture jammers are going to work on a billboard near you. james kelleher (words and pictures) investigates the world of ad busting
As well as being a rising actress and Playboy cover girl, Dumplings starlet Bai Ling has at least eight spirits currently inhabiting her body, one of whom is so shy it insists she has sex with the lights off. Alrighty then.
Razorlight are one of the best bands in the world, or so reckons their dapper frontman Johnny Borrell. In an exclusive interview, he talks about heroin addiction, his troubled friendship with Pete Doherty and explains why Arctic Monkeys are also-rans.
Reporting from the frontline of the Palestine-Israel conflict has convinced RTÉ’s Richard Crowley that the spiral of violence is likely to continue. But it is wrong to believe that the blame is equal.
Last month the eternally under-rated indie outfit The Cribs released Ignore The Ignorant, easily their most ambitious and critically acclaimed record to date. Catching up with the band in Belfast Edwin McFee talks to Gary Jarman and new recruit Johnny Marr about press attention and expectations as well as hearing about how the former Smiths guitarist has found a new home with the brothers from Wakefield.
An overnight sensation after ten years and a theatrical star with no special love of the theatre, Martin McDonagh is a playwright with his eyes set firmly on the big screen.
Interview: Olaf Tyaransen.
With the increasingly multi-cultural aspect of Irish life, how does Christmas – in either its religious or its commercial manifestation – impact on Muslim, Jewish and immigrant communities living here?
The books of author PATRICK McGRATH depict insanity and psychological breakdown with a detail and accuracy that are second to none. LIAM FAY meets the mental hospital worker-turned-writer to discuss the very particular nature(s) of madness. Pic: CATHAL DAWSON.
Allegations of racist literature and links to the British National Party have once more brought the activities of the immigration Control Platform into focus. Peter Murphy reports
An overnight sensation after ten years and a theatrical star with no special love of the theatre, Martin McDonagh is a playwright with his eyes set firmly on the big screen.
Interview: Olaf Tyaransen.
The books of author PATRICK McGRATH depict insanity and psychological breakdown with a detail and accuracy that are second to none. LIAM FAY meets the mental hospital worker-turned-writer to discuss the very particular nature(s) of madness. Pic: CATHAL DAWSON.
Occasionally, music from Derry effects the wider scheme of things with spectacular results. This year, the fun centred on the use of D:Ream?s ?Things Can Only Get Better? as a Labour Party anthem. The touchy-feely, get-off-your-arse-and-participate message of the song was just what Tony Blair wanted for his born-again campaign theme.
Motherhood has done little to diminish maria doyle kennedy‘s snarling rock chick attitude. Here, she talks about censorship, Chuck Palahniuk and how she’s managed to balance music with big-league acting.
Music journalist-turned-publicist KEITH ALTHAM has spent more than 35 years behind the scenes with the likes of The Who, Rolling Stones, Small Faces and Van Morrison. His new book reveals (almost) all. Interview: GEORGE BYRNE.
co.uk, with their spiky sound and their hearts set on superstardom, are the new great white hopes of the northern rock scene. STUART CLARK met them.
PiX: MICHAEL TAYLOR
Public Enemies is an extraordinary and controversial book of photographs of British neo-Nazis, taken by Hot Press’ London photographer Leo Regan. “You’re never going to combat racism unless you know where it’s coming from”, he says. Report: Stuart Clark.
From the early excesses of the Birthday Party through meisterwerks like The Good Son to his new release, Live Seeds, Nick Cave has spent nearly fifteen years probing those crevices of the human psyche that few care, or even dare, to venture into.
Here, in a highly personal, in-depth interview, Gerry McGovern grills the god of Goth about his ambivalence towards and obsession with religion, his love of dysfunctional people, his thoughts on the past and his hope for the future, oh, and how to reconcile life as an internationally renowned icon of doom with being a mummy’s boy! (Only joking, Nick!).
Although critics have discerned all manner of political and religious significance in There Will Be Blood, director Paul Thomas Anderson insists that it's a horror film about the birth of California.
For the most part, the May Day protests – timed to coincide with Europe’s Day of Welcomes – were peaceful. But outside Farmleigh House, where the European Union’s 25 Prime
Ministers were meeting, the shit finally hit the fan.
The on-going trauma of being a Liverpool supporter isn?t the only reason that author, journalist and broadcaster declan lynch has been kept away from the Foul Play desk over recent issues ? he?s also
been readying his
theatrical debut, Massive Damages,
a tale, at once
rip-roaring and
sobering, of libel,
barristers, journalists, showbands . . . and Sting. Interview: jonathan o?brien.
Pix: MICK QUINN.
Irish director Terry George has made one of the most powerful movies of the year in Hotel Rwanda, the Oscar-nominated film that tells the harrowing story of the genocide of the Tutsi tribe by Hutu extremists. Here, the ex-Republican activist – and former hotpress contributor – talks to Tara Brady about collaborating with Nick Nolte, Don Cheadle and Joaquin Phoenix, the challenges of bringing such provocative material to the screen, and why the West's failure to intervene contributed to the scale of the atrocity.
The latest wave of right-wing attacks on US musicians is likely to have a knock-on effect here, with the words and actions of our own artists coming under increased scrutiny. In a special hotpress report, Ed Power enlists the help of Marilyn Manson and a number of major Irish players to pick his way through the censorship minefield.
On the eve of the release of the group’s new album Winning Days, The Vines’ bassist Patrick Mathews gives hannah Hamilton the inside story on the tensions that threatened to split the band, hanging with Steve-o and the Jackass crew, and the group’s heretofore undeclared love of the Clancy Brothers.
From Belfast, NIALL STANAGE reports on the still-growing controversy surrounding Brian Nelson, British Intelligence and the murder of solicitor Pat Finucane.
STEPHEN MORRIS takes time out from humming the theme to Green Acres and terrorising everyone within a five-mile radius of his newly-aquired Yorkshire farm (with his equally newly-acquired heavy artillery) to talk to STUART CLARK about his and Gillian Gilbert's New Order offshoot The Other Two.
For the Chinese community in Northern Ireland, life can at times be difficult in the face of racism and violent attacks. But they can also spare a little time to party, as our very own Chinese checker Colin Carberry discovered on a visit to the hectic offices of the Chinese Welfare Association. Photos: Amberlea Trainor.
GREG BAKER on the rise of neo-fascism and the disturbing - and violent - implications of the election of a British National Party councillor in the East End of London.
A disquieting true-life tale of family intrigue, child abuse and inept judicial proceedings, capturing the friedmans is one of the most compelling and acclaimed documentaries of recent years. Tara Brady talks to the film’s director, Andrew Jarecki.
LIAM FAY not a man who subscribes to Shaved Orientals swallowed his pride and morality recently to attend the PLAYBOY magazine 1st-anniversary-in-Ireland celebration bash.
There he met Miss December 1996, VICTORIA SILVSTEDT. Did he succumb to her boundless, eh, force of personality? Read on and find out . . . Pix: MICK QUINN
JAMES HANRATTY, the son of Irish parents, was hanged for a notorious murder in England in 1961. Following the recent release of the Bridgewater Three, another miscarriage of justice now looks set to be overturned, posthumously clearing the name of a 25-year-old who was wrongfully sent to the gallows. Report: RICHARD BALLS.
There is only one way to combat AIDS and that is to resist it - with information, education, safer sex, condoms, awareness, agitation and solidarity. We're all in this together - and we're in it for the long haul. Report: Liam Fay.
As the body double for Saddam Hussein's son, Latif Yahia suffered several assassination attempts. Having escaped to Offaly, the controversial figure is now seriously at odds with his adopted country.
Christy Dignam of Aslan has never been one to pull his punches and, as a result, controversy has dogged the band with every new public utterance. Now as their debut album Feel No Shame nestles at the top of the Irish charts, in an in-depth interview he attempts to set the record straight, on his attitude to U2, poverty, drugs, groupies, his personal life and the macho implications of the band s image and music. Sceptical Eye: Cathy Dillon
The godfather of the modern Irish gothic tradition, Patrick McCabe, has released what critics are hailing as his darkest, and arguably finest, novel yet, Winterwood.
One of the nation’s most acclaimed playwrights, Conor McPherson has examined the Irish condition in forensic detail in plays and films such as The Weir, Port Authority and Saltwater. In his new play Shining City, McPherson uses the disturbed psyches of his lead characters as a means to explore loneliness, isolation, friendship and salvation in the ghostly setting of contemporary Dublin. “The city holds some very dark feelings for me,” he admits to Kim Porcelli.
andy darlington meets skunk anansie with a live grenade in his hand
Peter Murphy s damning Hot Press review of their latest album Stoosh. You could cut the tension with a knife
which appears to be exactly what Skin wants at this very moment. Will anyone here get out alive?
In a highly revealing interview, Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke talks about the inspiration behind one of the albums of the year, his current listening and the band's plans for the future.
29,028 feet above sea level: that’s where Dawson Stelfox found himself last year when he successfully completed the first Irish Everest expedition. Interview: Síobhan Long.
Expelled by the Labour Party and reviled by some of his former colleagues, JOE HIGGINS is seen by his own supporters as the only genuinely socialist politician in Dail Iireann. No friend or fan of Labour, golden circles or U2, he tells JOE JACKSON that revolutionary change is not just possible but essential. Pix: Colm Henry.
Sometimes it's hard to be a woman, especially when it involves piling on layers of latex, strapping on corsets, and getting to grips with false eyelashes. And yet, whether it's Kurt Cobain donning a scruffy frock, Robin Williams in full matronly guise for Mrs Doubtfire, or the 6'7 Ru Paul co-presenting The Brits, transvestism seems to have acquired a stronger multi-media allure than ever before. Andy Darlington examines the portrayal of TVs in cinema and the arts, and considers the sexual and social implications of the ancient art of cross-dressing.
One of the greatest penslingers in rockdom, he’s championed U2, Joy Division and Kylie and taken a critical scalpel to Oasis, The Strokes and their “miserably narrow mates”. he’s also locked horns with Germaine Greer, helped Frankie to relax and let The Frames slip through his fingers.
He’s the joker in the Irish music pack, a working class hero who has at once conquered and subverted the mainstream. For his first album in six years JERRY FISH and his MUDBUG CLUB have also roped in some top-tier collaborators including rockabilly queen Imelda May and Carol Keogh.
Not since the death of Elvis has the passing of a music legend so gripped the world. As fans and detractors alike struggle to come to grips with the sad, strange end of Michael Jackson we assess his legacy – as musician, celebrity and enduring icon and talk to some of the people who knew and understood him best.
Michael O'Higgins interviews Bertie Ahern, one of Fianna Fail's young tigers and a man many are tipping as a future leader of the party and possible Taoiseach
Director Morgan Spurlock has caused quite a stir with Super Size Me, the McDonald’s-baiting documentary that highlights the perils of a fast-food diet. With McDonald’s currently on the counter-offensive in an attempt to soften the impact of the movie, Spurlock discusses corporate subterfuge, media stardom, losing his libido, and the near fatal toll his super-size diet exerted on his health.
Graham Knuttel talks about his fight with the bottle, his friendship with Sylvester Stallone and why he doesn’t want to be surrounded by his own paintings.
After a lengthy silence, TRICKY is back with an impressively upbeat new album. But the man himself still insists on going against the grain. Here he talks about his aversion to celebrityhood, his dislike of the music biz, his fondness for Bryan Adams and Bono, and how he copes with the terrible burden of having hundreds of women who want to have sex with him. Interview: OLAF TYARANSEN
Comedian of the moment Andrew Maxwell talks about his recent car-crash gig in Dublin, in which he staggered on stage drunk and promptly blacked out, the controversy over Tommy Tiernan's comments on the holocaust and his love/hate relationship with Ireland. Plus, why we're to blame for our current economic crisis and how going to the same school as U2 helped turn him into ther performer he is today.
Ciaran Cuffe [right by Mick Quinn] doesn’t look much like a typical Teachta Dala. So little so, in fact, that when the Green Party TD comes out to greet photographer Mick Quinn and myself in a guarded reception area in Leinster House, we simply don’t recognise him. He just doesn’t look the part.
Kieron "Wolf" Ducie, describes what happened on the night Katy French passed away in compelling detail. He also recalls the build-up to the tragic events that unfolded.
During the late eighties, Aslan were among the most celebrated of Irish rock acts, immensely popular at home and signed to EMI, a major multinational label, on which they released their debut album, Feel No Shame. And then it all came unstuck, amid squalid tabloid accusations of drug addiction, egotism and recrimination. Now they re back, older, wiser and more resolute but with their musical batteries recharged, a new contract with BMG under their belts and that old emotional band intact. Report: Liam Fay (with additional reporting by George Byrne).
During the late eighties, ASLAN were among the most celebrated of Irish rock acts, immensely popular at home and signed to EMI, a major multinational label, on which they released their debut album Feel No Shame. And then it all came unstuck, amid squalid tabloid accusations of drug addiction, egotism and recrimination. Now they’re back, older, wiser and more resolute – but with their musical batteries recharged, a new contract with BMG under their belts and that old emotional band intact. Report: LIAM FAY (with additional reporting by GEORGE BYRNE). Pix: MICK QUINN
Make no mistake about it, cocaine is more widely available in Ireland than at any time in the past. But is it the nasty, evil and dangerous drug of tabloid legend? In this Special Hot Press Report, Olaf Tyaransen goes behind the myths to uncover the history of, and the facts about, what has been dubbed the Champagne Drug. He talks to the Gardai and to dealers – and offers an honest assessment, from his own personal experience, of the drug that's widely used by musicians, media types, accountants, advertising execs and lawyers.
brian hayes is a 28-year-old Fine Gael TD who represents the constituency of Dublin South West. At the last general election, he virtually tripled Fine Gael s vote in the Tallaght area. He opposes the legalisation of cannabis, claims that feminists need to have a fundamental re-think on their current position, feels guilty about not attending Mass regularly, and reckons that You need order in society . . . you need people who know what they re about . Is this the face of young, politically aware Ireland? Interview: liam fay.
Pics: colm henry.
The world was united in condemnation over the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. In a rare print interview Israel ambassador to Dublin Zion Evrony says the campaign was justified and that his country was motivated by the desire to bring peace to the Middle East. And he tells us why comparisons between Northern Ireland the Middle East are fatuous
As escape acts go, it ranked up there with the very best of Harry Houdini. Bishop Brendan Comiskey, in theory at least, was back to face the music and undergo a gruelling, exhaustive interrogation at the hands of the assembled press corps. Instead, his press conference turned into a stage-managed anti-climax, and the media watched helplessly as he slipped from their grasp.
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.
They go together like a horse and carriage. You can't have one without the other - or words to that effect. In fact, however, even rock 'n' roll has yet to invent an erotic language that does justice to the breadth and complexity of human desire. In pushing out the boundaries, madonna has taken on the role of sexual pioneer, and done it with courage and no little success. Niall Stokes weighs up the evidence . . .
The Earlies have corralled an army of musicians, almost 15 in total, to create an unquestionably ambitious, unbearably ominous album, one that stalks the listener from start to finish.
Since this album came my way dressed only in a white promotional sleeve and an accompanying press release for the wrong record, I've had to work blindly without the benefit of any prior information about 23 Skidoo.
In ‘The Ninth Wave’, the dreamy second side of the original vinyl release of Hounds Of Love, Kate Bush borrows a title from Tennyson, only to spin out an entirely unrelated macabre folk tale of a woman lost at sea.
Nu breaks brat Tayo takes up the baton from former ‘Y3K’ resident Hyper for a darker, more nail biting selection. So, while his predecessor supported the progressive end of the break beat sound, Tayo has favoured a more electronic approach.
Trapped bears all the signs of having been scripted by an illiterate chimp on ketamine, while the awfulness of the acting defies conception or description.
Studt has an agreeable voice and a burdgeoning songwriting talent but, as with Lavigne, the problem is that there are so many hands involved with the album’s writing and production that it’s hard to work out where the Studt ends and the corporate machine begins.
Filmed in a manner that its target admirers will no doubt describe as ‘sumptuous’, François Ozon’s curious French musical-cum-murder-mystery, though typically stylised and shallow, utilises its formidable cast of established Gallic screen divas to impressive effect.
So too this fantastic film (honest), which makes for easily the best aquatic night out since they found Nemo. Preserving the quirky surrealist aesthetic of the sublime TV show (one part Tex Avery, two parts John K., one part anti-John K.), the movie sees our pure-hearted porous hero take off with Patrick the starfish on a perilous mission to rescue King Neptune’s crown and save township Bikini Bottom from the ever nefarious schemes of the Napoleonic Plankton.
Pound For Pound is the sound of American rock'n'roll from the 1950s, dragged through a Florida swamp, kicked through cities from Seattle to Dallas, emerging bloodied but unbowed at the far side.
Having rocked up twenty-five years and over thirty albums of sometimes brilliant but always uncompromising progressive punk, Mark E. Smith's singular approach shows no sign of letting up.
Cruelty Without Beauty achieves what many reincarnated acts fail to do, in that it sounds unmistakably like the Soft Cell of then – while at the same time coming on like a work very much of now.
Dismissed in some misguided quarters as “merely” a bunch of singles with some other stuff to help make up the numbers, The Undertones debut album now sounds as it did back then, like a unique collection of rampant and furious stabs of instant, sunny, funny, glorious pop.
"It simply cannot find a grammar to make a bunch of people sitting at computer screens look any more interesting than they might do in a civil service office."
Think of Mary Coughlan crooning Berliner cabaret in a post-grunge landscape. Imagine the archetypal spark of a Tori Amos lyric, only with an Ulster dimension and a harp revealing all manner of associations.
Despite its lofty language, this film appears to have been made on a TV production budget. But it still boasts an interesting plotline and a convincing heroine.
He may be destined to remain the quietly-sung, lesser-known anti-hero of contemporary American songwriting, but Cass McCombs is now accustomed, if not suited to the role.
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
Is Gordon Gano destined to remain forever the geek of the class? Judging by the songs on Freak Magnet (some of which date back as far as 1985) it would appear so.
Bat For Lashes' debut, Fur And Gold, is an album that delivers the listener from any form of humdrum existence into a deeper realm of dream and dementia.
Latest in the bewilderingly long line of generally worthless horror movies 2003 has had to offer, The Dead End isn’t nearly as spectacularly bad as most of the others but despite its impressive atmospherics and sense of claustrophobia, it has neither the originality nor the suspense necessary to overcome its obvious limitations.
Latest in the bewilderingly long line of generally worthless horror movies 2003 has had to offer, The Dead End isn’t nearly as spectacularly bad as most of the others but despite its impressive atmospherics and sense of claustrophobia, it has neither the originality nor the suspense necessary to overcome its obvious limitations.
Damon Gough aka Badly Drawn Boy has been quoted as saying he doesn't mind if it takes twenty years for people to realise how good this album is, but hopes it will one day be considered a classic piece of work.
With the singer-songwriters-versus-guitar-bands debate currently making waves, Derryman Paul Casey’s debut album comes as a timely release, effortlessly straddling the divide and likely to keep both camps happy.
Baxter inhabits a soundscape very much of the moment, with lots of atmospheric noises, shuffling rhythms and shifting arrangements that have you on the edge of your seat for most of the album
Yes, well, let’s remember our manners, shall we?A meticulously, lovingly crafted homage to the Art Deco aesthetic and early twentieth-century matinees, the film is entirely composed using only digital effects and actors, although Jude Law occasionally blurs the distinction between the two.
Eddie Murphy’s career is widely perceived to have been on some kind of upward curve of late – The Nutty Professor and Dr.Dolittle having done the box-office biz in some style – and though unlikely to ever come within sniffing distance of an Oscar, his good name still seems to pack out the ‘plexes effortlessly enough.
This remake of Takashi Shimuzi’s creepy hit, The Grudge belongs firmly within this sub-genre’s successful tradition and happily, the project’s godfather, Sam Raimi has retained the services of the original director and the spooky Tokyo setting.
The film has much deeper problems, though. It relies on the most hackneyed devices (courtroom applause, cutesy kids) in its attempts to deliver an emotional punch.
The second instalment of Harry successfully repeats the same trick as last year’s Philosopher’s Stone adaptation and proves to be a zippy and charming affair, if perhaps lacking the seductive narrative pull of its literary equivalent
It’s a classy production and no mistake. Beautifully crafted from Hideo Nakata’s spectacularly spooky J-horror, this Hollywood remake just screams quality.
Essentially a brilliantly produced heavy metal record with lots of strange moments, Origin Of Symmetry will undoubtedly propel Muse further upwards in their quest for stardom
Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space. A few tracks into Air’s stunning show at the Olympia and the redoubtable Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel are already gently elevating us to a higher plane of consciousness.
Whilst Girls Aloud’s debut album, Sound Of The Underground, is a reasonably diverting slice of mainstream pop, it’s about as substantial as tissue-paper and twice as expendable.
Continuing the Coen brothers’ ongoing flirtation with something resembling the ‘mainstream’, this wholly unexpected remake of Alexander Mackendrick’s 1955 screwball comedy The Ladykillers is a real curiosity.
Mikael Håfström’s splendidly camp and genuinely spooky movie is adapted from a short story that’s so recognisably Stephen King, it might have been written by somebody else.
They don’t come more unlikely than this long-distance collaboration between the Scottish-based former Belle and Sebastian chanteuse and the ever-versatile Screaming Trees/Queens of the Stone Age vocalist and LA resident.
Cats And Dogs is a highly appealing and well-executed slice of comedy which should ensure the film has crossover appeal beyond the built-in kiddie market.
Although there's not much room for surprises, this biography of the life and times of current US President George W Bush offers an entertaining re-enactment.
An oddly lyrical, vaguely Hitchcockian thriller with dainty green-tea flavours and Mulholland Drive logic, Chaos isn’t quite the film we were expecting from edgy, head-wrecking horror merchant, Nakata.
After the dreadful Batman & Robin, the prospect of the Caped Crusader making a triumphant return to cinema seemed unlikely. Still, if few beyond the rank and file at Warner Brothers were cheered by news of Batman’s resurrection, the involvement of director Christopher Nolan (Memento, Following, Insomnia) seemed to guarantee that, at the absolute worst, we were in for a fascinatingly messy ride.
One fine day about a decade ago, your reporter was idly hitching a lift to Wexford town when he chanced to glance up and realise that, to his horror, he was thumbing a hearse, the incriminating digit standing obscenely erect in full sight of the driver, the mourners and their grim cavalcade.
Although Trent Reznor has been tried and been found guilty for taste crimes in the international court of pop-cultural opinion (his semi-legendary and frighteningly authentic pseudo snuff-movie, the Peter Christopherson-directed Broken, remains banned on this side of the Atlantic) personally speaking, I have generally found the singer’s fascination with extreme horror imagery, S&M and general underground depravity to be the least startling aspect of his estimable oeuvre.
Attack Of The Clones turns out to be almost as awful as its predecessor, with only the occasional lightsabre fight serving to deflect attention from the demented ridiculousness of the entire enterprise
Lead by leather-skirt clad, shape-throwing glam diva Mika, the ‘Bomb deliver a supremely melodic collection of glitter-flecked garage-punk, reminiscent of early-’90s Nirvana faves Shonen Knife.
"Those who have discerned the link between Goldfrapp’s sartorial caprice and her tendency toward seemingly arbitrary shifts in musical direction will have twigged what’s in store on Black Cherry"
Although Michell’s film is ultimately a little undone by the familiarity of its theme (yes, there’s a scene wherein our hero stumbles upon his stalker’s altar and the inevitable Clerambault’s showdown), Enduring Love is far too clever and far too engaging to be dismissed as a mere bunny-boiler.
The team behind A Knight’s Tale reunite (could you wait?) for this supernatural ‘thriller’ which casts Aussie heart-throb Heath Ledger as an idealistic young priest (yeah, right) who belongs to the arcane, mystical order of the Caroligians.
With 'Green' and its attendant world tour finally thrusting R.E.M. into the mainstream after seven years as the worst-kept secret in the Western hemisphere, it was odds-on that, given the band's predilection for avoiding the obvious, the follow-up would bear little relation to its illustrious predecessor, bar the songwriting credits.
In order to facilitate the emphasis on spectacle, narrative and characterisation are almost completely sacrificed – and while there is some genuine sense of a stand-off for the movie’s final hour, it’ s rendered as an undifferentiated mish-mash of special effects and loud bangs.
Metallica certainly have a lot to prove with Death Magnetic, the follow-up to 2003’s St. Anger, an album which divided the critics and the band’s own audience.
Here he comes again, Tricky, leering out of the spliff-smog, all expectations of ever recreating the warped coffee table perversions of Maxinquaye well and truly dispelled by those difficult second and third albums.
There can be no more compelling argument for outlawing stem cell research and human cloning than the prospect of more movies like Godsend. Who knew that such a complex ethical issue could be distilled down to this tired Bad Seed regurgitation?
In an ideal world, nobody would have been allowed to write anything about The Blair Witch Project before its release, and everybody could have experienced the shock at maximum impact. That might have carried its own dangers, however: people might literally have died from the terror.
The Catholic Church has added Pope John Paul I to the long list of deceased pontiffs who are being considered for canonisation, so does sainthood now come with the job?
Hallelujah, brothers! Mercifully, the rain (which has intermittently fallen in bucket-loads throughout the day) has held off, and so the scene is perfectly set for peerless US noiseniks Sonic Youth to come along and do their alternately corrosive and blissfully melodic garage rock thang.
t's difficult to conceive of a more suitable environment for Decal's moody electronica or Coil's foreboding ambient compositions than the baroque surroundings of City Hall
The decision by the DEAF organisers to take electronic music out of the clubs and into more unorthodox venues is increasingly looking like a masterstroke. It's difficult to conceive of a more suitable environment for Decal's moody electronica or Coil's foreboding ambient compositions than the baroque surroundings of City Hall.
A BRAVE and blisteringly powerful expose of the American tobacco industry's absolute moral bankruptcy, Michael Mann's stunningly accomplished fifth feature is perhaps the most truly important "issue" movie of the last few years,
It was obvious right from the start that there was more to Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart than the restricting format of The Tourists would ever be capable of revealing.
It would take one seriously myopic, heartless wretch to not fall madly, ardently in love with Andrey Zvyagintsev’s scintillating debut. Set in a lushly monochrome, distinctly post-Soviet Russia, The Return is revealed almost entirely through the eyes of the mollycoddled, petulant Vanya. When his long absent father returns unexpectedly and inexplicably having missed a decade of the pre-teen’s life, it threatens to blow the boy’s world apart.
Time, it seems, has not mellowed Cure mainman Robert Smith one iota. If anything, this eponymous album, the band’s first since 1999’s Bloodflowers, is the angriest they’ve ever been.
“Why is it/When a man wants a woman he is called a hunter/But when a woman wants a man she is called a predator?”
Dory Previn (‘When A Man Wants A Woman’)
Colm O’Hare reports on the controversy over death metal whose continuing interest in all things Satanic has been blamed for a series of anti-social activities, from the vandalisation of cemeteries and churches to the deaths of rock stars themselves.
Would you be faithful to someone for the rest of your life? This is a question that’s been plaguing me lately. It does seem like a nice idea, but I’ve always been a bit of a sceptic.
From Bill Clinton’s infidelity to his country’s version of foreign policy, the concept of “moral indefensibility” makes a twisted kind of sense in the United States
The year just gone was one of the most successful yet for Northern musicians. With Snow Patrol, David Holmes and Duke Special riding high, we take a look at 2009’s crop of contenders.
Get ready for the first great Northern Irish record of 2009 – PANDA KOPANDA’s fantastic This Hope Will Kill Us. The band give us a blow-by-blow account.
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da
da-da-da-da-da-da
da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da
I thought that I’d begin with the lyrics, so to speak, of the Match Of The Day theme-tune.
At first, the death of Rosemary Toole Gilhooly must have seemed like any other tale of ordinary tragedy - one more sad suicide to add to the statistics, over which sociologists might in time pore and ponder 'why?'
It entered another realm, however, with the revelation that Gardaí were investigating the possibility that this was Ireland's first case of assisted suicide
SPROG are a four-piece funk/rock band based in Galway. They’ve been together since August 1993 and this demo entitled Scratch’n’Sniff, a six-tracker, was recorded late last year.
There is no such thing as a War On Terrorism. It is not possible to wage war on an idea or an activity. War is waged against military forces or against people or even against States
Black, dark, twisted, perverse, politically incorrect, macabre, obscene, profane, disturbing, gothic… and, oh yes, hilariously funny. Barry Glendenning meets the League of Gentlemen, the unlikely stars of radio, stage and screen who may well be coming to a theatre near you
Rosa Luxemburg once wrote that anyone who steps needlessly on a worm on the road to revolution has committed a crime. But even she might be dismayed by how daft the British media sometimes go about animals.
For a few nerve-wracking days, it seemed that the good times might just have come to an end. But if things had bounced differently, what would she have done?
“Guilty until proved innocent” seems to be the unthinking philosophy behind the recent introduction of ASBOs, providing just one more opportunity for the authorities to abuse their powers.
As the number of homeless people increases, plans are unveiled to have smoke police in the pubs. Once again the government is getting its priorities badly wrong.
Sometimes symbols are powerful and universal; they carry an archetypal, numinous force. Sometimes symbols are subtle; only those trained psychoanalytically or esoterically can help you come to some understanding of what they mean to you.
Despite routine speed limit violations, Dublin's Port Tunnel is one of the country's safest stretches of road. So why install cameras to police a speed restriction that is too low?
Indie rock isn’t just about hip fringes and attitude. It means doing your own thing – not because you’re looking for fame and fortune but because you care deeply about music
GIVE the devil his due , we say. But we don t. A county Carlow priest has spoken of his fears that local teenagers are practising devil worship . Fr Edward Dowling (PP, retired) last month told church-goers in Bagenalstown to be permanently vigilant for signs of involvement in the occult by local youngsters.
“The best four million pounds I ever spent,” beamed Dermot Desmond last month from the front page of Celtic View, the official magazine of Glasgow Celtic FC.
For 25 years Music Maker have been a central force in the Irish instruments industry, their premises in Exchequer Street in Dublin a veritable musical mecca for international and Irish customers alike. Latterly they have expanded into distribution with MIDI (Musical Instrument Distribution Ireland) and were also involved in the initiative to create the permanent memorial to Rory Gallagher being unveiled this week. Jackie Hayden talked to the key players about the Music Maker success story, and even heard the one about the man with the child's organ!
The sense of shock about what happened when football-related violence erupted at Lansdowne Road for the first time during the Ireland v. England game still lingers, almost a week on.
With so many quality movies being screened, buffs will be spoilt for choice at this year’s Jameson Dublin International Film Festival. To help you out, Hot Press has picked its 20 essential flicks, with appropriate ‘tasting’ notes.
There are those who believe that the future of music as an art form is seriously under threat from the rise of music piracy. Where will it all end? The truth is that no one truly knows.
