Stephen Holland - Multimedia Journalist

This radio series, that originally aired on Flirt.FM a licensed student radio station for NUIG, takes one particular type of music, subculture, sub-genre, or moment in time each week and examines it in detail. Listening to some of the best or underrated music of that time and looking at the history behind it. Episode 23 explores emo music, a genre characterized by an emphasis on emotional expression, sometimes through confessional lyrics. It emerged as a style of post-hardcore from the mid-1980s hardcore punk movement in Washington, D.C., where it was known as emotional hardcore or emocore and pioneered by bands such as Rites of Spring and Embrace. In the early–mid 1990s, emo was adopted and reinvented by alternative rock, indie rock and pop punk bands such as Sunny Day Real Estate, Jawbreaker, Weezer, Cap'n Jazz, and Jimmy Eat World, with Weezer breaking into the mainstream during this time. By the mid-1990s, bands such as Braid, the Promise Ring and the Get Up Kids emerged from ...

This radio series, that originally aired on Flirt.FM a licensed student radio station for NUIG, takes one particular type of music, subculture, sub-genre, or moment in time each week and examines it in detail. Listening to some of the best or underrated music of that time and looking at the history behind it. Episode 22 explores the world of synth-pop, a subgenre of new wave that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic, art rock, disco and particularly in the Krautrock of bands like Kraftwerk. It arose as a distinct genre in Japan and the United Kingdom in the post-punk era as part of the new wave movement of the late 1970s to the mid-1980s.

  The Bowie Project #1 – David Bowie (1967) Click here to listen to an audio version of this review on Spotify The David Bowie we find on his 1967 debut album is not quite the Bowie so many would later come to know and love. The pieces are there, the ambition, the creativity, the lyricism but it never quite manages to come together as a cohesive whole. There’s a strange mix of genres on display here, ranging from baroque to music hall to psychedelic rock with Bowie himself stating that the album “seemed to have its roots all over the place, in rock and vaudeville and music hall. I didn't know if I was Max Miller or Elvis Presley ". But in a way, that’s part of its charm. Bowie is finding his feet and personally I find that rather enjoyable. It’s nice to know that his artistic vision didn’t arrive fully formed, that there was a couple of false starts before the real good stuff, that even if we’re not fully satisfied with the things we create, we can go back to the drawing ...