• Choice Cuts: The Best Track of September

    October 7, 2014 - By 

    Not just a pretty face (“Not even a pretty face!”) Aaron Hamilton is a man of fine and discerning taste. So much so, he has his own monthly column here at the Thin Air dedicated to looking back at the very best tracks released in the month previous. As we’re edging our way very cosily into October, here’s his Choice Cuts from September, the equally parts terrific and tumultuous month that was. Busdriver – Retirement Ode (Big Dada) The opener from Busdriver’s just-released masterclass in experimental rap Perfect Hair, Retirement Ode lists the costs involved in the production of the album…

  • Premiere: Edward F Butler – Running From Fears

    October 7, 2014 - By 

    Originally from London, Belfast-based musician and filmmaker Edward F Butler first made his mark here with the now defunct HOWL, a genre-spanning outfit driven by Butler’s soulful, nigh on beatific vocals. Going several steps further – both in sound and scope – the artist’s debut single, ‘Running From Fears’, is an extremely impressive first gambit, marrying Butler’s idiosyncratic electro-acoustic music with his extraordinary vocals. Conjuring the likes of James Vincent McMorrow, James Blake and Nina Simone, they serve as a transformative centre-piece of a sound bearing the hallmarks of resounding inspiration. And if that wasn’t enough to convince you of his talents, Butler –…

  • AAA: Fight Like Apes @ Meeting House Square, Dublin

    October 7, 2014 - By 

    The minute we heard Fight Like Apes were selected as one of the three ‘Heroes’ at this year’s Hard Working Class Heroes and closing the festival for 2014, we knew we had to send one of our awesome photographers down to document their evening. Carlos Daly was up for the challenge and you can view his set below.

  • Avi Buffalo – At Best Cuckold

    October 7, 2014 - By 

    In this day and age a four year gap between album releases can be viewed as a lifetime for any young band, such is the way music is consumed (more often than not, spat back out the very same week). It’s just as easy for a new group to garner positive column inches or be thrown into the world of magazine photo-shoots as fresh cannon fodder following a critically-lauded debut album, as it is for them to implode, or find themselves lost amidst the immediate and frenzied media response. In Avi Buffalo’s instance they seemed to have it all going…

  • Download: Princess – Molly

    October 7, 2014 - By 

    Another highlight from Hard Working Class Heroes festival at the weekend, Dublin noise-pop band Princess have released the bewitching ‘Molly’, the follow-up to their breakthrough single ‘Neverlook’, released back in June. A spectre-weaving, superbly slow-burning eight minutes of astrally-inclined rapture, the single evokes the likes of Bardo Pond, Galaxie 500, Beach House and fellow Irish sonicosmonauts The Altered Hours‘ more subtle efforts. Expect it to feature quite highly in our annual Best Irish Tracks End of Year list in December. Stream/download ‘Molly’ – produced by the band, engineered by Ian McNulty and mixed by Solar Bears’ Rian Trench – via Bandcamp below. Molly by Princess