For connoisseurs of indie music, the Hot Press New Band Stage will provide a weekend-long bonanza. Here, Patrick Freyne selects 10 acts who will grace the stage that are essential viewing.
Vampire Weekend, the preppy Ivy Leaguers whose Afro-beat references indie pop, talk about instant fame, their fondness for nice trousers and class politics in America.
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.
Paul Smith of Geordie punk-pop sensations Maxïmo Park talks to Phil Udell about breaking out of stylistic straight-jackets, the band's affinity with fellow northerners The Futureheads, and why Jose Mourinho's managerial philiosophy is equally as applicable to music as it is to football.
She's the red-haired electro-pop debutante of the year. La Roux frontwoman Elly Jackson talks about her love of the 80s and tells us why Blur were the only decent rock band of the past 20 years.
Phil Udell meets a Coral disenchanted with their Hotpress review, but gains Brownie points for recognising that they're NOT - repeat NOT - from Liverpool.
Cork Independent outfit The Waiting Room have just released their debut album Losing Patience, yet they're quite prepared to hold on to the day jobs for a little while yet as Marc O'Sullivan discovers
Although dissatisfied with mainstream media and wary of having his own work pigeonholed, former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr revels in his role as elder statesman to a generation of maverick musicians and is no less proud of his new album, Boomslang.
Having crammed more into their first four years than some acts do in a decade, Gomez took a much-needed break. But now they’re back with a new album in our gun. "We just got pissed, played a few tunes and started recording," they tell John Walshe
Having already triumphed at this year's National Student Music Awards, ambitious Waterford quartet Floyd Soul & The Wolf are determined to go on to even greater success.
With preparations well underway for Cork city’s hosting of the European City Of Culture festivities in 2005, the indigenous music scene is already rising to the challenge
Recorded in the bucolic splendour of County Westmeath, Bloc Party's second album is a labyrinthine concept album about urban living. Better to take a risk, says frontman Kelé Okereke, than to repeat yourself .
New album, new look, new attitude: having turned the big three-oh, DIVINE COMEDY's Neil Hannon says he's much more sure of his place in the world. "Basically, the one thing I have to offer humanity is a good time with interesting words," he tells Olaf Tyaransen. Divine camera intervention: MICK QUINN
The pen behind "My Beautiful Launderette" and "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid", HANIF KUREISHI has been treated as an outsider in his home, Britain, and as a traitor by some elements within his own race. But, he maintains, it's the job of the writer to "stir the shit" - and now he's got the fundamentalists in his sights. Interview: OLAF TYARANSEN
Jape and Lisa Hannigan may inhabit opposite ends of the musical spectrum but their careers have followed remarkably similar paths. On the road together in the UK, he talks about bagging the Choice Music Prize and she discusses her dramatic split from Damien Rice
When Nirvana exploded out of Seattle with the classic grunge album Nevermind, they were hailed as modern primitives, punk upstarts whose hard musical edge and authentic street style were the antithesis of the dominant ethos of corporate rock. Two years on however, their reputation as Rock 'n' Roll rebels is somewhat less secure. Bill Graham sifts through two new biographies of the band, and talks to Victoria clarke, the co-author of a third which has been effectively surpressed by the Nirvana 'corporation'.
It has to be up there with the greatest of 2004’s travesties: Chichester’s brightest, Hope Of The States, received a relatively muted response to their incendiary debut album. Additionally, the tragic suicide of guitarist Jimmi Lawrence in 2004 – perhaps more publicised than the record itself - merely served to infuse The Lost Riots with an overwhelming sense of poignancy, thus eclipsing its true beauty and essence.
...a Road Records benefit & celebration: The Large Corporation, Adrian Crowley, Si Schroeder, The Jimmy Cake & Jape live at Andrew’s Lane Theatre, Dublin.
New Order will play this summer's Oxegen festival and there is a strong possibility that Queens Of The Stone Age and the Cocteau Twins will also be added to the bill
By now we’ve become used to new bands arriving in a blaze of their own hyperbole, but even still Leicester’s Kasabian do seem to fancy themselves a fair bit.
Championing alternative music in the west of Ireland, Galway's student station Flirt FM 101.3 has extended its new schedule, broadcasting up to 100 hours a week from next Monday.
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
It may well be their fate to end up on some future compilation entitled The Classic Sounds of January 2007, but, for tonight at least, The Automatic are indie rock’s (ahem) undisputed heavyweight champions.
Morty McCarthy, drummer with the Sultans of Ping and unreconstructed Corkman, is teaching English in Stockholm University. He gives us the lowdown on local attractions.
Musicians Pat Clafferty, Amanda Claxton, Eoin Young, Darren Nolan and Fiachra McCarthy pay tribute to their friend and comrade-in-arms, the late Derrick Dalton.
In the new Hot Press, Peter Murphy picks his 20 highlights from the last 35 years of home-grown alternative culture (in strictly chronological order!). Take a look and then have your say on the indie moments that rocked in your lifetime...
