• Shortlist revealed for Northern Irish Music Prize 2014

    September 29, 2014 - By 

    With Bangor singer-songwriter Foy Vance having scooped the inaugural award last year, the twelve-act shortlist for this year’s Northern Irish Music Prize has been revealed. Recognising the very best albums released in the last twelve months by a Northern Irish act, this year’s ceremony will see Belfast-based singer-songwriter Robyn G Shiels (above), alt-rock heroes Mojo Fury, the Smalltown America-signed More Than Conquerors, Derry indie-pop quartet Wonder Villains, transatlantic indie-rap duo Malibu Shark Attack, singer-songwriter Tony Wright AKA VerseChorusVerse, electro-pop band Ed Zealous, Nathan Connolly’s Little Matador, singer-songwriter duo Sullivan and Gold, Dungannon folk songstress Alana Henderson, Belfast doom masters Slomatics and multi-instrumentalist Peter McCauley AKA Rams Pocket Radio vie for prize. The shortlist was compiled…

  • Watch: The Wood Burning Savages – Boom

    September 29, 2014 - By 

    The follow-up to their breakthrough single, ‘America’, Derry quartet The Wood Burning Savages have only gone and released a video for ‘Boom’ – and what an skilfully urgent effort it is. Shot and edited by Fiachra O’Longain at Derry’s Playhouse, the video nicely mirrors the song’s lyrical content, not least via black-and-white archive footage of the Troubles. The song itself is a surging, Motorik-driven live favourite, and the title track of the band’s forthcoming EP, also released today. Stream Boom in full and watch the video for the single below. Boom EP by The Wood Burning Savages  

  • Watch: A Plastic Rose – Move Islands

    September 29, 2014 - By 

    Nottingham-based Northern Irish alt-rock quartet A Plastic Rose have unveiled the brilliantly adventurous, short film-like video for their new single ‘Move Islands’. Shot in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, the video – directed by David Louis Lankester – features the Ian McHugh and Gerry Norman from the band going on a little journey in an attempt to make contact with something both unseen and unknown. Piqued your interest? Watch the video below. ‘Move Islands’ is the fourth single to be taken from the band’s forthcoming new album, Flickering Light of an Inner War, due out in February. The single itself is officially released…

  • Album Stream: Sea Pinks – Dreaming Tracks

    September 29, 2014 - By 

    Nine months in, Neil Brogan’s Sea Pinks have unveiled what could well be contender for our favourite Irish album of 2014: Dreaming Tracks. Going one better than 2012’s superb Freak Waves – a feat in itself – the album conjures brooding, sun-split coastal trawl imminent Autumnal solipsism via ten tracks of cello-lined melancholia and masterfully blithe jangle-pop. According to the band, “This a record about disorientation, ambivalence, and the overlapping of past, present and future that can happen in dream states as well as in waking life.” Dreaming Tracks is available as a Limited Edition Shell Pink 180g 12″ vinyl LP, which can…

  • Adebisi Shank, Adultrock @ Whelan’s

    September 29, 2014 - By 

    It was only this August that we finally saw the release of This Is The Third Album Of A Band Called Adebisi Shank, a whole four years after its predecessor, and it certainly didn’t disappoint. But barely a month later, the band made the shock announcement that they were calling it a day and that their pair of album launch shows in Whelan’s would in fact double up as farewell shows. The outpouring of love in the Irish music press since the announcement has highlighted just how much this band has meant to music fans in Ireland in the last…