The Sigla Blog

A quick one I meant to post about earlier this week: if you’re heading out this weekend, go and see James Chance at Maximum Joy. JC is one of those legendary New York muso types, like Larry T, and without whom there’d be no Rapture, no LCD Soundsystem. Niall has an MP3 and passes […]

Over a lukewarm takeaway tea in a gallery this morning, I had a really interesting chat with Anne Enright, who was gracious and charming about the forthcoming Booker Prize. At least she didn’t mind me alluding to it, unlike my innocent-remark-bites-you-on-the-ass Beryl Bainbridge encounter.
Anyway, no better reason than to post the following.
* Read […]

Shakespeare’s finest dramaturgical device is perhaps the play within a play, and while Radio Macbeth sticks textually to the Bard’s every word, there is much more than “The Scottish playâ€? unfolding on stage. A cast of radio-era actors, clad in 1930s costumes, gather to rehearse Macbeth. What begins as an informal run-through, quickly becomes an […]

Today is the birthday of Graham Greene and, according to the Writer’s Almanac entry for October 2nd, Greene had a simple, devastatingly routine way of working. Writing for a precise window of time every day seems to have been helped him clock up an impressive word count, and ultimately write as many books as he […]

Delighted to hear the fantastic Sound Stories back on RTE Radio. I’d missed a couple over the last month, but through the magic of t’internet, you can listen back to them. Presented by Luke Clancy (who also has a fine blog over at The Loy), with Kevin Brew at the helm, it’s a quirky, never-know-what-you’ll-discover […]