“I was dreaming in my dreaming
Of an aspect bright and fair
And my sleeping it was broken
But my dream it lingered near…”
Patti Smith, ‘People Have The Power’
Patti Smith, Conor Hall, Belfast, 2003. Image by Stuart Bailie
Archives For Uncategorized
Gavin Martin, 1961-2022. Music writer, NME mainstay, poet, cuss, proclaimer, natural mystic. Raised in Bangor, Co Down. Co-founder of the Alternative Ulster fanzine with Dave McCullough (also RIP). First published in the NME letters page when he was 13. Wrote for the paper when he was still at school at Bangor Grammar. Moved as a teenager to London to work alongside Tony Parsons, Julie Burchill and Danny Baker. Continue Reading…
We hear that Ukrainian writers are holding out in basements and some are offline for their own safety. In Odessa, they’re working on a literary magazine between bombardments. Several authors are in exile, understandably anxious about their family. And tonight we’re glad to know that some of these artists are viewing a live stream of a tribute night at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast.
Charlie Hanlon is laughing in the corner of a quiet cafe in Belfast. In a few days time the singer-songwriter from Downpatrick will celebrate his seventeenth birthday, a milestone for more reasons than one.
“It’s going to be two years since I wrote ‘I Lost Myself’. I remember so clearly writing that song on my fifteenth birthday. I didn’t want to have a party, I just wanted to sit with my guitar and record. I stuck a demo of the track on Soundcloud and the next day ATL Introducing played it, I couldn’t believe it. I remember asking myself ‘how have I blagged this one?’. It was such a feeling, that was the start for me.”
Wynona Bleach led me to learn of saudade – an untranslatable Portuguese term designed to capture a simultaneously melancholy and euphoric nostalgia. According to one particular Portuguese writer it is – “a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy.”
Wynona Bleach make music which shouldn’t sound as it does. They nod to faintly miserable bands, most of whom peaked during that most confusing decade (the 90s) – Smashing Pumpkins, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and the like. The lyrics are often quite dark, the artwork a touch goth, the videos a little creepy. It absolutely should not be fun.
In 1992 Brian Eno delivered a lecture called Perfume, Defence and David Bowie’s Wedding. The last part of the talk was about his David and Iman declaring their love, in Florence. This moment also fetched an exclusive media deal for Hello magazine. Eno presented the celebrity manoeuvres of the day in a diagram form. He saw it as a ritualised, kabuki theatre – public and yet strangely private. It was transactional, but little was delivered.
The binary system of politics in the north of Ireland is dying. We’re now witnessing the last thrash of the old dragon’s tail. Horrible, but going be over soon, if you want it. Agitate, educate, organise. Vote the monsters out. #AlternativeUlster
“I wanna make loads of money,” howls Rory Nellis with a handful of gravel, a hint of age, “to justify all this time.”
His opening outburst on this new record exists alongside the type of sustained feedback / acoustic strums combo which made multi-millionaires of the Followills. Just 20 seconds in and Written & Underlined sounds very bold indeed.
This is the season of the Vigilante Cannibal Nun. Her name is Maggie Murtagh and she’s made an online visitation from the Irish famine, feasting on the raw innards of clergy, nobility and English soldiers. She wears hip-hop bling and commits heretical acts. She channels trauma and terror and often, she’s as funny as all get-out.
In her novels to date, the Belfast writer Jan Carson has always explored overarching themes of trauma and guilt in inventive and witty ways, often through the voices of children. In her debut novel Malcolm Orange Disappears, her 11-year-old protagonist begins to literally vanish because of the stress of his difficult family life. In her critically acclaimed second novel The Fire Starters, which won the EU Prize for Literature, two very different fathers in Belfast wrestle with concerns for their children against a backdrop of fire and the threat of violence.
Twitter