Ritual, the first full length record from Jape since his 2004 cult favourite, The Monkey's in the Zoo Have More Fun Then Me, finally arrived earlier this year after our protagonist had spent many months on the major label merry-go-round, the releas

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Fifty-three years young, and still going from strength to strength, the Corona Cork Film Festival now ranks among the most vital, well-organised celebratory endeavours this country can lay claim to. Through good times and bad, the festival, by th

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Ever since Joanna Newsom waltzed onto the scene with her harp and set about combining pop, avant-garde experimentation, folk and traditional rhythms, to generally stunning effects, there's been a slew of like-minded classically trained female songs

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Cats and Cats and Cats ply their trademark brand of hook-laden math rock with folk inspired post rock sections. Starting in early 2005 when friends Ben and Tom met Doug at the University of Hertfordshire, they were soon earning good reviews for the

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From the pen of Martin McDonagh, the writer who gave us the darkly comical and at times violently unsettling In Bruges, and the Oscar winning short Six Shooter, comes The Cripple of Inishmaan, another slice of coal-black humour and macabre cruelty

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The month of October sees Cork furiously grab, with both hands, its 'City of Festivals' crown back from those pretenders to the throne as Leeside braces itself for a flurry of both film and musical activity.

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As the son of one of world music's most influential figureheads, Seun Kuti has had to follow in some pretty large footsteps. His father, the renowned composer and activist Fela Kuti not only pioneered the musical styling of the Afrobeat movement bu

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The independent UK label FatCat Records is considered to be among the most forward thinking imprints out there today. Their ability to discover and nurture a multitude of diverse musical talents is well documented by a series of considerable succes

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Circuses are strange, disorientating places at the best of times. And that's just from the audiences perspective. Under that big top when the lights go down and the haphazardly applied demonic face-painted grins are removed one wonders what exactly

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First things first, lets get that name out of the way - Fujiya's a turntable company, and Miyagi's the filmic Okinawan played by Pat Morita who instructs sullen white kids how to kick ass, get the girls and wax on/wax off. But while Fujiya & Mi

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Dead Meadow have been slugging it out in the psych-rock trenches for 10 years now traversing through behemoth six-string, echo drenched fuzzed jams completely oblivious to the passing of time and trends. The group has always revealed in its own aut

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What is there to say about that enigma that is body-suit wearing, motor-cycle helmet attired, four-bar-blues rocking Bob Log III? Well, you could say he likes his scotch stirred, not shaken…you could go further and say he likes something 'pi

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My Space and I, an exhibition of selected works from the University College Cork collection, opened this past week at the West Cork Arts Centre.

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He may not have anything approaching the same profile as fellow jazz fusion six stringers John McLaughlin, Bill Frisell or Pat Metheny, but US guitarist John Abercrombie has nevertheless earned himself a reputation as a veritable powerhouse and dexte

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Stalwarts of the vibrant Montreal music scene, Islands, led by a former member of respected lo-fi poppers Unicorns, and featuring a bass playing prodigy and ex-Prince sidekick as well as associates of, among others, epic indie rockers Arcade Fire and

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This Saturday, September 6, a new club night with a decidedly old-school slant gets underway at the Imperial Hotel. Northern Soul takes it's name from the timeless form of music which successfully crossed audiences, gender, race and the oceans wate

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It's a musical four-way…a face off of potentially deadly proportions...the kind of show your mother warned you about…a slap in the face of decency, morals, good taste and musical refinement. It's the skid marks on your underpants, it'

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The Everyman Palace Theatre reopens its doors to the public after refurbishments with the highly acclaimed Gate Theatre Production of Samuel Beckett's masterpiece Waiting for Godot. New seating in the auditorium will undoubtedly provide a luxurious

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Caryl Churchill’s iconic play, Top Girls, mixes fantasy and reality, history and heresy to bring you the story of Marlene. A bit too old to be a ‘girl’, with a healthy taste for whisky, Marlene has just been promoted at work. In a world where men are

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Described as ‘Seinfield set to music’, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, the longest running off-Broadway musical ever, is returning to Cork after the Cork Musical Theatre Company’s sell out run at the Cork Arts Theatre back in June. Having run

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Metal-kings-in-waiting Mastodon have confirmed that they are to return to Cork following their debut show here last year when they supported Slayer during the Live at the Marquee series. The news of their impending arrival is good for two reasons, th

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Imagine a pulsating arena inspired by nature and filled with music, beauty, art, performance, holistic therapies, tipis and log fires, sumptuous gardens, bean bag lounging rooms and night time installations.

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Dead Meadow have been slugging it out in the psych-rock trenches for 10 years now kicking out the six-string behemoth fuzz jams, completely oblivious to the passing of time and trends. A newly shorn three piece, the group relocated to a haunted rural

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The final exhibition of the West Cork Art Centre's Summer season is now at the midway point. Entitled The Plinian Sponge, maybe?, the Royal Hibernian Academy's Ashford Gallery co-ordinator Mark St. John Ellis has curated an exciting exhibition of c

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Ireland enjoys a great richness of masters, who are however, often overlooked and sidelined by the current trends in Irish music. The Masters of Tradition festival was therefore created to provide a much-needed opportunity for the legends of Irish

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Tango Sunday begun this past Sunday (August 10) at the Half Moon Theatre, when the loose limbed Latino's Pablo Rodriguez and Jazmin Chiodi, backed by a three-piece band, set temperatures soaring and hearts racing with their first performance. Runni

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There has been something of a deluge of new independent music festivals on these shores in recent years, catering for all tastes in a variety of settings, from the Warp heavy electronic gig-a-byte happening known as Mantua in the fields of Roscom

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Japanese psych collective Acid Mothers Temple have some 30 members depending on the scenario. But whatever name the line-up happens to be playing under, it can generally be accepted that when the Temple do land in Cork for their latest love-in/frea

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Sweden's classical-guitar-plucking, softly sung folky Jose Gonzalez returns to Cork for another solo show following his sell-out success at the Opera House last year, and a previous guest-spot with UK duo Zero 7 at the Savoy Theatre.

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The ongoing renaissance of the event formerly known as the Mitchelstown Music & Arts Festival continues this year with another strong line-up consisting primarily of both established and up-and-coming Irish talent.

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Could it be possible that those unruly Limerick fiends Steveamanakick and Giveamanakeith, better known to Irish rock fans as Giveamanakick, have…whisper it…grown up? Their latest and greatest album, Welcome to the Cusp certainly seems

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The gods must have been suitably impressed with the efforts of those behind the inaugural Cork X Southwest Festival in Skibbereen last year. In a summer notable only for the treacherous, unmerciful and completely miserable downpours, the CXSW Festi

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As the Everyman Palace Theatre prepares to close its doors for the month of August in order to allow it to undergo refurbishments, it does so on the back of a new production, Rita Dunne, written and directed by the theatre's de-facto head-honcho Pa

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Written by Franz Xaver Kroetz and translated by Katharina Hehn, Stallerhof (The Farmyard) tells the story of Beppi, a girl brutalised by a life of isolation on a rural farmland, where she is starved of human warmth and kindness by her disapproving

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Followers of the Brodsky Quartet would have you believe that no chamber group has done more to push the boundaries of the string quartet's appeal than the British foursome. They may have a point - since forming in 1972, the group has performed more

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Rock & Roll, for all its hard-partying clichés and the supposed rebellious streak that courses through its toxic veins, is inextricably linked to the many trappings of its success, such as thrashed hotel rooms and an endless supply of

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Belfast based Tom McShane and Escape Act, having just put the finishing touches on their split 7', have hit the road for an Irish tour which will see them swing by the Quad on Friday, July 11. Tom's partnership with the world-class Start Together s

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Samuel James launches his first ever Irish tour in Cork's Cyprus Avenue on Saturday, July 12, a double-header with reggae artists Harry J and the Acoustic Conspiracy (featuring honorary Corkman, Niwel Tsumbu). Samuel James is a performer of stunnin

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John William Stevens, an influential British free-jazz drummer once said of the craft of improvisation, "If somebody says to me 'I can't improvise!'- and they could be somebody with the biggest chunk of classical training imaginable in their backgr

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Neil Young has assumed many guises over the years, some more successfully then others – as the country folk-rock poet who gave us the classic Harvest, he was indirectly responsible for the 70s MOR boom! Deterred by success and all its trappings, h

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Danny McCarthy is a man truly immersed in sound. Aside from being one of Irelands leading sound/visual/performance artists, Mc Carthy can be also found leading the Quiet Club (along with Mick O'Shea), one of the countries most sought-after and hig

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Videohippos come straight out of the same Wham City neighborhood that's already given us the madcap electro-cartoon-composer Dan Deacon. But, while there are some similarities between the two camps, most notably in their shared fondness for lo-fi e

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In one regard, writing about the crazy collective that is Sunburned Hand of the Man is a pointless exercise, a lesson in music journo futility, a soon-to-be-doomed attempt to adequately and accurately describe/pigeon-hole (delete as applicable) a g

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They may have cancelled their recently scheduled Irish show (in Dublin with Battles), to go of and support some band called Radiohead (?) in the States, but Los Angeles' Liars haven't forgotten about us. With their North American arena tour now com

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As mysterious musical entities go, Faust rank up there with the most puzzling, the most daring and certainly the most out-there in the unconventional sense of the word(s). Where is 'there' exactly? Well, only the members of Faust, both past and pre

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Jinx Lennon: Nut job or the only sane guy in the village? The Dundalk native certainly doesn't do things by half. The subject of his own RTÉ documentary last year, Lennon is certainly a fascinating character that is capable of unifying and d

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A mainstay on the British psych, drone and free-folk scene, Glasgow's Ben Reynolds is perhaps best know for his contributions to the mesmerizing experimental rough-cut droners Vibracathedral Orchestra and flailing, psychedelic noise beasts Ashtray

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Since launching its programme one month ago, expectations for the annual Cork Midsummer Festival have been fervent to say the least.

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When the Cork Independent last spoke with Fred, just under a year ago, the indie five-piece were gearing up for the release of their latest single, Good One.  But this being Fred, a simple show down the local watering hole wasn’t going to

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Ed Handley and Andy Turner are veritable stalwarts of the UK’s distinguished electronic music scene. Friends since the early 80s, the duo have worked together for the past 20 years in some of the most forward thinking and influential electronic

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