Blog: State Magazine

Sargent House are the label in charge for bringing And So I Watch You From Afar and Adebisi Shank to North America and for their first podcast, Ireland's Niamh Hegarty is at the helm to return the favour by introducing some of Sargent's roster in return. The focus is on Sargent's SXSW showcase next month with music from Gypsy Blood, ASIWYFA and an interview with Indian Handcrafts.

The Thinker and the Prover is a melding of old and new, that moves Limerick's MyNameIsJohn into a space in hip-hop he can almost call his own. He hasn't reinvented the wheel here but he has tastefully repackaged the sample-based hip-hop exemplified by Shadow et al of 15 years ago and placed it in the context of contemporary bass music scenes from London, Glasgow, LA and the Southern US via the Irish west coast. 'Portals' exudes that idea by repackaging a classic rhythm you can really throw your back into, beat juggling inspired vocals cuts, [...]

Despite how it can sometimes seems, UK bands don't always follow the same lazy tradition (The Beatles, Sex Pistols, The Cure, The Smiths or Oasis) of their contemporaries. It's a relief as conservatism has never inspired creativity, either in music or in politics. Cardiff quartet Islet are not into fancy jackets, romantic-drunk-loser lyrics, anthemic riffs or even cold skinny depressing tunes. Instead they are far out and seemingly used to running in poppy fields and summoning the great Valhalla for their own end of the world. More than psychedelic, Islet's music is primal and instinctive, [...]

Already an apparent dead cert for success following her 2012's Brits Critics Choice, Emeli Sandé finally releases her debut album, nearly six months after her first single caught people's attention. Sande has been steadily building her profile over that period, collaborating with Chipmunk, Professor Green and Tinie Tempah, as well as song-writing for Leona Lewis, Susan Boyle, Cheryl Cole and Alesha Dixon. Given the variety of these acts, it was interesting to see what direction she was going to take on the album. Sadly, that's where the interesting element ends, with the few great upbeat [...]

So after years spent in the no-man's land of collaborations, co-signs and guest appearances, the baritone voiced bluesman Mark Lanegan has repatriated to his troubled existence as a solo performer. Since his days with cult heroes (or more accurately, grunge also-rans) Screaming Trees, Lanegan has carved a narrow niche for himself with the sometimes winning combination of that unfiltered baritone voice and a pretty heavily cemented lyrical persona. Opening with 'The Gravedigger's Song', the record sets no grand ambition to outpace any of Lanegan's prior oeuvre. Melding ominous blues to the throbbing pulse of a [...]

As the world's first science fiction film, Georges Melies' Le Voyage Dans La Luna stunned the audiences of 1902 with state of the art techniques and unique creativity. All of the surviving copies of Le Voyage... were thought to be in black and white, it wasn't until 1993 that a colour copy was found in Barcelona. After 12 years of painstaking restoration on over 14,000 individual frames the film was successfully reconstructed last year but the producers wanted to take this a step further and attach a modern score to the renowned classic. So given their [...]

UK electronic trio We Have Band are out on tour this month in support of their second album Ternion . They play the Academy 2 in Dublin on Saturday 18th. Here's what makes them tick. Who are you and where are you from? We are Thomas W-P and Darren Bancroft from London. Dede W-P from Manchester. Collectively we are We Have Band. Who are your favourite artists from your hometown? Joy Division - Manchester. Blur - London. What's it [...]

Electronic experimentalist Alec Koone, better known as Balam Acab , will play Twisted Pepper in Dublin on Saturday, February 11th - details below. Playing live, Koone will be dropping eerie jams from is debut record Wander/Wonder and hopefully some remixes too. We have a pair of passes to giveaway, mail us on giveaway@state.ie with your contact details and we'll be in touch. Balam Acab (Live) The Twisted Pepper February 11th 8pm / e12/e10

The first in a series of shows presented by 12Sundays, Brooklyn synth-ravers Blondes will play their first ever Irish show in The Bernard Shaw, Dublin on Sunday, February 12th. The duo released their debut album Wine just last week, opening with the throbbing 'Lover' and 'Hater' singles, on RVNG Intl - full stream below. 12Sundays presents BLONDES (Rvng Intl, NY - Debut Irish show) Tayor Simon Conway Sunday 12th February Doors 12pm Free in The Bernard Shaw 11-12 [...]

Up, down. In, out. A trial by Twitter can see a career soar, crash, then burn before a single is released or live show played; a rising star can burn white hot only to be quenched without becoming a household name. The ascent of Azealia Banks would appear to be on such a trajectory – with a banging hit that could be considered novelty due to its expletive nature, and the unforeseen embrace from the glossies and fashion world on account of her Disney Ts and cut-off shorts (radical right?) – only her groundwork would imply a steadier ramp, approached [...]

Madonna has a pretty high opinion of herself these days. Last week she was asked about her ticket prices for the world tour which was revealed this morning... "Start saving your pennies now," she said. "People spend $300 on crazy things all the time, things like handbags. So work all year, scrape the money together, and come to my show. I'm worth it." You can find out for yourself when Madonna hits Dublin on July 24th in the Aviva Stadium. Tickets range from €54.65 to €141 including booking fee on sale 8am on Tuesday February 7th [...]

De La Soul's Plug One and Plug Two, aka Deen Whitter and Jacob 'Pop Life' Barrow have a side-project entitled First Serve where they are indulging their goofy pop side. 'Must B The Music' is the debut single from it out on March 23rd with the album First Serve out the following week. The pair say the album is "funky, it's hip-hop, it's disco and it's classic." It was produced by French producers Chokolate & Khalid in Paris and with an emphasis on fun and the concept of a hip-hop fable. Check out the polychromatic [...]

It's been 18 months since Cathy Davey has graced a Dublin venue with her presence, and tonight marks the beginning of a three date residency at Whelan's. One of the forthcoming shows is to be a reprise of Davey's 2008 Fringe Festival show Songs That Scare Children , the other a celebration of her favourite artists of decades gone by – but tonight's show is all about the woman herself, delving into her back catalogue to perform the best of her own material albums to date. It's a shaky start with 'Habit' and 'Reuben', the band hit [...]

Whatever side of the Lennon/ McCartney divide you fall, it would be spurious to question the song writing talents the latter's displayed over the years. Equally, though, it's an almost inarguable fact that over the past decade or three, McCartney's standards have dropped off quite spectacularly. Hell, it would be something of a miracle if they hadn't. In Kisses On The Bottom , he takes things a step further in edging out of the song-writing process almost entirely. The album, widely touted as a belated acknowledgement of the Beatles pre-war influences, features only two McCartney [...]

As premiered over on DIY , Sinéad O'Connor recruited London band / multi-media crew Breton, or BretonLABS, to create the video to her latest single,'The Wolf is Getting Married' - the result is an unraveling, lacy affair. The song itself is both delicate and strong, reminiscent of The Lion and the Cobra days. Taking to Facebook , Breton posted: Man: Would you like to direct the new Sinead O'Connor video? BretonLABS: Ok Sinéad will release her ninth album, How About I [...]

What's that tapping sound, is it…no..yes…it's my foot! Well there you have it, review by extremity. 28 years ago it was 1984, and the world was covered in spandex. With their album, the coincidentally titled 1984 , selling roughly 12,000,000 units per second, Van Halen lorded it over the hairwaves. It was the '80s, everything was big. Hair was big, crotch bulges were big, bands travelled the world in liveried jumbo jets and Alex Van Halen's bass drum sounded like a bomb going off. Van Halen ruled the world (Eddie even contributing his trademark axe shredding sound [...]

Watching a new Madonna video in 2012 certainly feels like a step into another era. 'Give Me Your Luvin' is a fairly standard fluffy track with Madonna sounding a bit weak and a nod to "dubstep". Let's face it, nothing we say here is going to matter a jot because it's Madonna and this is going to be played to death on radio until you end up singing it all day for four weeks straight. The video directed by Megaforce is an old-fashioned big budget affair with Madge co-opting Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. to be actual [...]

"That's all I need, to sit in the sun," sings Porcelain Raft , aka Mauro Remiddi, during the beautifully titled 'Unless You Speak from Your Heart'. Coming midway through Remiddi's debut album, it's a line that sums up the feeling for the majority of the Rome-native's record. Sounding beautifully lazy for large parts, it's perfect for sauntering through the early spring morning light. A gentle, spacey pick-me-up (despite the romantic travails of much of the lyrics) before a day's work perhaps. The early stages are the most seductive; when Remiddi remembers that his ghostly, over-dubbed vocals work best when [...]

Director: Roman Polanski Cast: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, John C.Reilly & Christoph Waltz Certificate: 15a Running Time: 78 minutes There's always been a problem with watching a movie based on a play. It's glaringly obvious you're watching a play. You can dress it with elaborate sets and locations, garnish it with evocative orchestral scores or contemporary pop tunes and frame your shots seven ways from Sunday. It's still a play. Not that that is something to be criticised, and with Carnage , Roman Polanski's adaptation of Yasmina Reza's play God Of [...]

It's sad when the lofty statements around an album distort how it's perceived. Cloud Nothings ' main man Dylan Baldi has been keen to big up Attack On Memory as a declaration of opposition to the current norm of passive, lackadaisical reverb drenched indie, the title targeted squarely at its rampant nostalgia. But upon hearing it, it's not exactly the forward-thinking blast of radicalism you'd anticipate. Rather, the album really just offers up a slightly uglier, tougher past, one torn straight from the more noise-friendly independent rock of the late '80s and early '90s. We're talking the [...]