For Esmeralda Road, 2024 has brought a new lease of life to the band. They just never thought that a rebirth would happen so early in their career.
Under the name Moonboot, they had garnered a following that helped them to take Single Of The Year at 2023’s NI Music Prize for their debut track, and first song they had ever written together, ‘To U’. Yet within a matter of days, the band’s social media accounts were taken down due to complications with a footwear company of the same name. Eager to let people know they hadn’t disappeared after this success, the band knew they needed to rebrand. After throwing around ideas they finally landed on Esmeralda Road, named after the street where they had lived in London. Continue Reading…
Before she was a music journalist, Carol Clerk was a teenage music fanatic in Belfast, navigating the local scene, or what was left of it, as the Troubles intensified in the early 1970s. Carol wrote her first article for Melody Maker, published May 23, 1973, when she was just 18. Ultimately, she became News Editor of the music paper in London.
Below is an image of protesters with dustbin lids, taken at a pro-Palestinian rally on Donegall Place Belfast, 30 March 2024.
Steve Pyke takes astounding photos of faces and hands, landscapes and astronauts. He has pictured war veterans, roadside shrines, monumental thinkers and the countenance of Shane MacGowan.
Ram, bam, thank you man. Huartan play Irish trad music with rave dynamics, masks and pagan intent. They attach meaning to pre-Christian spirits, especially the hawthorn tree, a species you don’t want to mess with. Just to make the point clear, there are two dancers on stage, representing the fairy folk – alternately good and evil, light and dark. They are denizens of the hawthorn manor and they have assembled at the Black Box to enact síogaí magic. 
GUB is a parcel of poems, alive with Belfast vernacular and spitball zen. It sees heaven in a gravy chip. It is wise to Captain Beefheart, Snap! and Roxy Music. The guy in the ice cream van serves up Embassy Regal on the sly until he is shopped by a tout. But hey, he was once a boss feature of the Lower Shankill and he made a classy entrance: 
Elaine Howley first came to my attention (writes Timmy Stewart) via the heartbreakingly good The Distance Between Heart and Mouth on the always on point Irish imprint, Touch Sensitive. It’s a beautifully emotive collection of work that shifts between ethereal folk, hazy psyche and otherworldly electronics. An album I return to time and time again and know it’s got a classic yet unique sound that will have me coming back forever. I managed to catch Elaine’s live show at the Courthouse in Bangor last Summer and exactly like the album, it’s impressive how she builds layers of such rich warm audio tapestry while flying solo. What makes the album so incredible, also truly carries over to the live experience.
Fancy the greatest commission? Stuart Bailie took the call in 1987 to meet The Pogues in NYC, preparing for their breakthrough moment, ‘Fairytale of New York’. What follows is a remembrance of that visit, with some pictures from his personal archive plus an extract from the original Record Mirror cover story…
In a local electronic music landscape often dominated by house and techno, Emma Hart stands out as an electronic artist ploughing a different kind of groove. Whether pushing more laidback tempos and textures fusing elements of hip-hop and jazz as HART (check her excellent, choppy audio collage Moon Jazz album, for some hazy summer soul) or as Nyphaea, where she ups the energy level with faster UK garage influences. Timmy Stewart caught up with Emma to give Dig With It the overview, in five. 
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