The Sick Livers are proud to be part of this years Camden Rocks Festival on Saturday 1st June 2013. Tickets available from ourselves shorty along with limited spaces on a bus we’re running from South Wales. We’d like to thank Underkill TV’s Alastair Reilly, Danny McCormack of The Yo-Yo’s and Jubilee Club’s Chris McCormack for making this happen. Tidy.

Northern Ireland’s finest exports have thankfully still got their swagger after an impressive twenty four years in the business.  The alternative metal trio, made up of Andy Cairns (Guitar/Vocals), Michael Mc Keegan (bass) and Neil Cooper (drums) have perfected their art and continue to deliver such a high quality of work to add to their already legendary back-catalogue.  Studio album number thirteen and counting sees the trio in top form yet again and picking up from where they left off with 2009’s Crooked Timber.  Opening track and lead single ‘Living in The Shadow Of The Terrible Thing’ hits like a direct sucker-punch to the jaw, the trademark smack of Cooper’s free-floating brass snare sounds completely impenetrable.  Instrumental track ‘Marlow’ is infectiously catchy and is perhaps some of the groups most widely accessible work in recent times.  ‘Before You, With You, After You’ is catchier than the norovirus and sounds just as impressive in a live venue as it does on record.  The repetitive riff that runs through the whole five and a half minutes of ‘Ghost Trio’ is a bold move, for a band that has built a career on their ability to consistently churns out riff after riff.  Closing track ‘Ecclesiastes’ is an awe-inspiring and wondrous track, and one that has been getting plenty of play here at Feedback, truly sensational and thought provoking.  The use of talk-box effects is fitting.  The simplicity of stripped back drums reinforce the point, as Cairns sings “Everything under the sun, is absurd”, no need to dress it up!

A Brief Crack of Light is available now via Blast Records.

Buy it here!

Therapy? are:
Andy Cairns (Guitar/Vocals), Michael Mc Keegan (bass) and Neil Cooper (drums).

Official site.

On an icy cold December night in Cardiff, the truly legendary Therapy? returned after eight years to play to a full-house at The Globe.  Supported by fellow Northern Ireland group LaFaro and Hawk Eyes.  One thing I have noticed over the years is the increase of the price of merchandise at gigs, forty pounds for a hoody seems alarmingly steep, whilst coughing up twenty five gold pieces for a long-sleeve T-Shirt is a hell of a lot after paying for fuel and a ticket.  However, this is probably a result of illegal downloading and something that is increasingly the norm.  Openers LaFaro play a short set that goes down very well with the locals.  Most notably, guitarist Dave has an impressive style on guitar that sounds fantastic in such an intimate setting.  Leeds based quartet Hawk Eyes have been receiving rave reviews of late, for their cracking record ‘Ideas’ and also quite rightly for their energetic live performances.  They comfortably fill their thirty minute slot and set (little) tongues wagging in the crowd once they exit stage left.

And like the true professionals they are the ‘Norn Iron’ trio take to the stage on time to the sound of one of the best songs from their latest record ‘Marlow’.  Cairns wastes no time in breaking out with the one-two crowd-pleasers ‘Stories’ and ‘Isolation’. The band play with huge grins on their faces the whole way through their one hour forty minute set, it is great to see.  Also, some old lesser aired classics like the mind-blowing brilliance of ‘Misery’ and ‘Bad Mother’ from the groups 1995 album ‘Infernal Love’, an album that has received some negative criticism, (rather unfairly in our honest opinion).  Cairns is ever the perfect front-man  he warmly jokes with fans and shakes their hands – always nice to see that someone who has been doing this for so long has not forgotten how important the fans are to him.  A special mention must be made for the breath-taking drumming of Neil Cooper, he performs some really wonderful and complex rhythms with relative ease, and puts his own stamp on classics such as ‘Teethgrinder’, ‘Turn’ and ‘Unbeliever’.  The dark and menacing lurk of ‘Get Your Dead hand Off My Shoulder’ is a slow-burner on record and seems to go down well live.  This is quickly followed by a band version of Hüsker Dü’s ‘Diane’, however I preferred the distorted cello version, which can be found on the B-side to ‘Lonely, Cryin’, Only’, well worth digging for.  Other highlights include the superb ‘Meat Abstract’ ‘Stop It You’re Killing Me’ and closer ‘Potato Junkie’.  All in all a successful return to the Welsh capital for the guys after an eight year absence.  Cairns promises that they won’t leave it as long until they return again, let’s hope not.

* All images Gerry Gilroy

Question:

Supermodel Naomi Campbell appeared in the Special Court for Sierra Leone over conflict diamonds. Is it somehow important in the context of whole issue of conflict diamonds or it is just the media buzz?

Answer:

Krijn Peters, Lecturer and Head of Teaching, Centre for Development Studies, Swansea University

I think that if you put the Naomi Campbell case into the wider context something becomes clear. The Court was established (much with the support of America which saw these kind of ad hoc courts as an alternative to the ICC in the Hague to which they have signed up) to try and prosecute the so-called “big fishes” that is the top leaders. Of the three factions on trial, the leader of the RUF and his second man have both died, the leader of the AFRC is reportedly dead and the leader of the CDF is dead as well, all before justice could be done to them. In other words, the only big fish remaining for the Court to prove that is a good tool to deliver justice and address impunity of top leaders/warlords is Charles Taylor, so I guess they will go all the way to make known to the world that they are still there and that it is still a good way to deliver justice. This is all the more necessary because the court depends on voluntary contributions and is now both taking much longer than anticipated and is much more expensive. The court has now spend 200 to 250 million dollar and is not really a success. In comparison, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone worked on a budget of 6 million dollar and covered nearly all chiefdoms, being very visible for the local population (in contrast to the Freetown based (and Netherlands based) court. So that brings you to the question for who this court really is: the people of Sierra Leone which is still one of the poorest countries on earth and has a local justice system that could really do with some extra money/manpower/training (partly a root cause of the conflict, corruption of local courts) or for the international community, which for many years refused to intervene in the conflict or pay serious attention to it and now after the war takes the moral high-ground and goes all about punishing the leaders of who have left over. Perhaps Naomi is a key witness but I would expect that there are better witnesses, so I guess it is mainly/partly a publicity stunt.

Neil Cooper, School of Social and International Studies, University of Bradford

The short answer is – mostly but not completely media buzz – there are many other witnesses who have testified and there are also earlier reports from the UN that detail the links between Taylor and the RUF in Sierra Leone as well as the role of the diamond trade from, Sierra Leone via Liberia in providing funds for arms acquisition. However, the challenge is to meet the evidentiary standards required in a court of law – In this context Campbells evidence has the potential to demonstrate Taylors own possession of rough diamonds. Having said which there would still be a question mark over the provenance of any rough diamonds-  one would have to prove for example that they came from, Sierra Leone rather than from the diamond fields  in Liberia.

Ploughing settlement land, Karnataka, South India

Winnowing maze, Karnataka

Building new refugee health centre

Harvesting bananas at refugee camp, Karnataka

Ploughing land at refugee settlement, Orissa, East India

Delivering milk to settlement diary, Karnataka

‘Peeling’ maize cobs

Roadside Tibetan gift store, Pokhara, Nepal

Cataract removal operation at settlement hospital, Karnataka

Mothers leaving the health centre, Bir, India

On the temple steps in Pokhara, Nepal

School for children newly arrived from Tibet, Bir, North India

Monks at ceremony in Tibetan monastery, Karnataka

THE MAGIC THREAD

Winding wool for carpet weaving, Karnataka

Winding wool for carpets at refugee handicraft centre, Pokhara, Nepal

Sorting wool for carpets weaving

Weaving carpets at refugee handicrafts centre, Kathmandu, Nepal

Finishing carpets, refugee handicraft centre, Pokhara

Working from home, Pokhara

Photography with the courtesy of Neil Cooper

Please visit www.neilcooper.co.uk for related photography