THE Sound of Belfast music festival has returned for its fifth year of live gigs and music related events this week, courtesy of local music hub Oh Yeah.
That's where you'll find tonight's Volume Control: Clash of The New Breeds event taking place, featuring a slew of fresh musical meat/vegan-approved 'sources of protein' strutting their stuffs in an effort to be deemed deserving of some top prizes.
Kick-off is at 7pm and admission is £5 – see FB.com/volumecontrolbelfast for full line-up details and other essential info.
Tomorrow afternoon (12pm to 5pm) at Oh Yeah, Native Music Mart offers you the chance to load up on merch and music from some of our best up 'n' coming bands: Roe, The Wood Burning Savages, Son of The Hound and The Emerald Armada will be performing live in an effort to generate sales at this free admission event.
On Saturday evening Oh Yeah will host The Midnight Organ Fight Re-visited, (7pm, tickets £10) a musical tribute to the late Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchinson with Amidships, Jealous of The Birds, Brash Isaac and Kitt Philippa covering songs from the Scottish band's LP to raise money for mental health charity Aware NI and in support of the Gig Buddies 'befriending' initiative.
There's also another Aware NI fundraiser on Sunday afternoon at The Limelight 'complex': Rude Health (3pm, £12) will be an all-dayer featuring live music by Catalan! (more about whom in a moment), Hot Cops, Malojian, Hiva Oa and others.
The live music element of Sound of Belfast will reach a suitably noisy climax next Thursday night with the annual NI Music Prize awards (7pm, £10), which moves to The Ulster Hall for the first time and will include performances from Ryan Vail, The Wood Burning Savages, Brand New Friend, Hannah Peel, Ciaran Lavery and Roe.
Snow Patrol man Gary Lightbody will also be on hand to receive the NI Music Prize's inaugural Outstanding Contribution To Music award: the campaign to ensure that Lazer Gun Nun/Backwater/Torgas Valley Reds frontman, key Ash-influencer and general NI indie rock legend Barry Peak is year's recipient has already begun.
Full programme details at Soundofbelfast.com.
In yet more local music festival-related news, the north coast-centric Atlantic Sessions returns next weekend to celebrate its 10th anniversary with a packed programme of – you guessed it – live music and music-related events at multiple venues in Portrush and Portstewart.
The festival's 'headline events' (there's also a ton of music happening on its daily 'music trail') get under way on Friday November 15 at Flowerfield Arts Centre in Portrush with a special concert featuring poems and music from Neil Martin, Frank Ormsby and Anthony Toner (7:30pm, £10).
The festival continues on Saturday at Portrush Town Hall with Joe Lindsay Presents: Johnny Cash Live at Folsom Prison – A 50th Anniversary Tribute (7pm, £8), which will find the Junior Johnson Band and special guests attempting to recreate the man in black's legendary live album, before BBC music head Phil Taggart curates his very own Slacker night at The Atlantic in Portrush (8:30pm, £11) with All Tvvins, Brand New Friend, Son of The Hound and Susie Blue all performing.
Sunday November 17 brings the mighty Bronagh Gallagher to The Arcadia in Portrush with support from Gerry Norman (3pm, £11), Noise Annoys favourite Malojian will perform a brand new show at Portrush Town Hall (6pm, £10) backed by strings (that's classical instruments, not puppetry) and Colm Laverty's excellent visuals, and Snow Patrol imprint Third Bar will curate a live showcase at The Atlantic featuring music from David C Clements, Rosborough and Strange New Places.
Finally, Irish News columnist and Radio Ulster presenter extraordinaire Ralph McLean will bring the 10th Atlantic Sessions to a soothing conclusion with his popular Sunday Brunch event (12pm, £15), this year featuring Kitt Philippa, Arborist, Ciara O'Neill and Matt McGinn all performing 'in the round' at Flowerfield Arts Centre.
Full programme information can be had at Atlanticsessions.com.
Let's keep those north coast vibes going with words on new music from top Portrush-bred turn Catalan!, the artist formerly known as 'Ewen out of Axis Of'. He's got a brand new song out now called Cornelius, a groovy, trippy, world music-y, post-punky sea shanty suitable for busting moves to.
Cornelius is the lead track from a new Catalan! EP due out early next year – in the meantime, you can catch Ewen live tonight in Limerick at Pharmacia, at Sandinos in Derry tomorrow night and the aforementioned Rude Health fundraiser at The Limelight in Belfast on Sunday.
Visit FB.com/catalanmusic for all your Catalan!-related needs.
Onwards we move to Calling All Horses, the latest project from Skinflints/Corrigan/Alloy Mental/Skymas crooner Martin Corrigan. Out now on Robyn G Shiels's Black Tragick label, debut tune Digging Your Own Grave finds Corrigan teaming up with General Fiasco drummer Leaky, FUEL/Snow Patrol guitarist Nathan Connolly and bass playin' Voodoo big cheese Mickey Brown to make scuzzy rock 'n' roll you can holler to while wrecking the house.
Dig it now via Callingallhorses.bandcamp.com.
While it will soon be time to dust off the Noise Annoys Christmas favourite that is Midwinter Festival by Belfast singer/songwriter Rory Nellis, he's actually got a brand new tune out now called The Fear.
This reassuringly soothing, gloriously melodic gob-iron-enhanced strummer should be ideal for quelling those pesky inner demons when they awaken you in a cold sweat at stupid o'clock and is available now via Rorynellis.bandcamp.com and all decent digital outlets.
Rory's next live engagement is Gifted at The Empire in Belfast on December 6 with the excellent Owen Lamont and Glass Wings.
Onwards to Ireland/France/NYC-spread experimentalists Warriors of The Dystotheque. Having already worked with PWEI shouter Graham Crabb on a previous release, Jonny Mac and co now further cement their grebo/good taste credentials by collaborating with PWEI/Bentley Rhythm Ace man Richard March on their new EP, which features two tunes with lyrics and vocals supplied by Adam from ace Derry garage combo Invaderband.
Rich gives the machine-powered cosmic psychedelia of International Space Station an enjoyably bleepy bass-heavy blow-over. It's one of three remixes included along with German dance commander Sacha Dive's pulsing/pumping reworking of narcotic groover I Know You'll Never Die, the EP's lead track, which also gets an uptempo dancefloor orientated reimagining from popular Dublin electroheads Le Galaxie.
Summon it now via your preferred digital music platform.
Finally for this week, I'm pleased to report that the new album from Newry-bred thrashers Gama Bomb is the band's most focused and funsomely thrash-tastic effort in years.
While 2015's Untouchable Glory and 2013's The Terror Tapes were certainly fine records for violently shaking your brain to, newie Speed Between The Lines just feels that little bit more effortlessly awesome: 'rejuvenated' might be the word I'm frantically scrabbling for, though perhaps 'reanimated' might be more appropriate for this horror flick-obsessed fivesome.
Anyway, the Bomb's sixth LP is stuffed with fast 'n' frantic instant classics like the scorching loser anthem Stay Rotten, Kurt Russell's riotously rampaging tale of bestest friendship named for Hollywood's nicest child star turned sci-fi/action superstar ("you be Tango, I'll be Cash"), the amusingly histrionic Judas Priesty thrash of Give Me Leather ("a short list of the things I like; whips and chains and motorbikes, axle grease and collar spikes, sadists who are businesslike"), Motorgeist's splendidly taut punk metal slam-a-rama, suitably pummelling morning-after memorial A Hanging and 666Teen's crazed ode to metal, movies and mind-altering misbehaviour-packed adolescence – to name but six of its best moments.
Equip yourself with this fine return to top form immediately on the format of your choice via Promo.afm-records.de/en/gama-bomb.
