Back in the day, an art combo called the Frank Chickens came up with a performance idea called scratch. The idea was that you shouldn’t be fixated with the finished, tidy product. Rather, you deliver the raw heart of your idea, and burnish the details as you go along. Scratch became a core concept of the Battersea Arts Centre and has traveled widely ever since. Continue Reading…

“I’m an Irish woman and I’m an abused child.”

On the track ‘Sin é Sinéad’, dedicated to the late Sinéad O’Connor, a monologue of O’Connor simmers amongst flashing lights, electronic drum beats and the relentless bounce of bass. This is the work of ‘tradtronica’ act, Huartan. The trio finds liberation in the conflict between rigid boundaries, the sparks that fly when you scrape them together, in both music and subject. Continue Reading…

Kneecap are shouting out to the glue-sniffers and the “low-life scum”. Ten thousand people in Falls Park are loving it. It’s a night of messy humour, beats and singalong. Here we are, in the Gaeltacht of west Belfast, where the seeds of an Irish language movement have grown into a new vernacular of pills, thrills and bellyache. This is the group’s heartland, their “DLA capital”, a community that’s engaged and up for it. Continue Reading…

ELLAS is the first collaborative all-female mixtape in Northern Ireland. It highlights through the work of 16 performers the diverse talent flourishing across the local music scene. The project’s founder, DJ and musician Katie Martinez reveals how the fusion of artists influenced her decision to expand beyond the idea of just a regular album. Continue Reading…

Thursday was the downpour, Friday was the recovery and Saturday is the sun-lashed finale. The fields of Ballymully Cottage Farm embrace the heat as the welly boots are retired to the campsite. The Stendhal Festival organisers are visibly relaxed and the extra footfall (over 10,000 people attending) is proof that this has been a restorative win – a great weekend in spite of funding cutbacks, messy weather and a populace that has been mugged by grim economics. Now they all want to party and Stendhal is willing to oblige. Continue Reading…

Timmy Stewart, one half of Black Bones and a regular Dig With It contributor, puts together a playist to mark gigs this weekend in Liverpool, Todmorden and London. Here are some of the current favourites he has packed for the trip.

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Cathal McNaughton walks through the documentary I Dream in Photos with a fragile, abstracted air. He tugs often at the fraying bill of his baseball cap. With his beard and denim shirt, he looks like a wayward act from Domino Records. He has a severe story to share with you. Continue Reading…

Two years ago, Acoustic Dan gave us the Smick Folk album, a screeching, scatological picture from the disadvantaged slopes of Belfast. There were many ‘c’ bombs and a loathing of grift culture at Stormont. When he sang ‘The Well Below the Valley’ he drew a line back through Christy Moore and Planxty to an older, weirder Ireland. Continue Reading…

Alicia Raye’s brand of R&B and pop is up to the brief, with hooks that you’ll have spinning around your head all day. But before this, she was the girl that sounded like Rihanna. “I was on a couple of other artists’ songs doing backing vocals,” she explains. “I remember one of my friends starting this rumour where he took a video of his song and said, ‘Can’t believe I got Rihanna on my track’ and people believed him somehow. And then he said it was really Alicia Raye, and put my handle out there. That’s when people really started paying attention.” Continue Reading…