• Album stream: Runaway[GO] – Alive

    Four years and a string of short releases in, Belfast-based duo Dave Jackson and Fiona O’Kane AKA Runaway[GO] have cultivated a carefully considered, wonderfully delivered pop sound that has grown so innately distinctive that the release of their debut album, Alive, feels every week worth the wait. As much about poise and restraint as it is unabashed, nigh on ridiculously infectious melodic bombast, it’s a consistent and solid release (in both senses of the word) for the hotly-tipped twosome. Stream the album via Soundcloud now below.

  • Premiere: Thrash Hat – Mend and Make Safe Remix (ASIWYFA) & Owkwerd

    Invariably trotting the globe wielding guitar and gusto as part of North Coast post-rock machine And So I Watch You From Afar, Rory Friers can also be found as found making electronic music as Thrash Hat. Having set beats to kill on debut track ‘Pandaface‘ back in August – thereby setting the ball in motion for a hugely disparate yet no less enthralling sonic path in the making – we’re pleased to premiere two new tracks from Friers, ‘Owkwerd’ and a remix of his band’s very ‘Mend and Make Safe’. Where the former effort’s glitchy, darkly unravelling majesty stirs with some wonderfully discriminating shapes…

  • Watch: Good Friend – The Return of Fionn & The Fianna

    Currently based in Newcastle, North Coast alt-punk three-piece Good Friend have grown in leaps and bounds over the last couple of years. Having spent 2015 recording their forthcoming debut album, Ride The Storm, the Adam Carroll-fronted band have just re-emerged with ‘The Return of Fionn & The Fianna’, an equally urgent and anthemic new track that features on compilation Paper + Plastick; Welcome to the UK. Re-adapting stories from Irish Mythology to a contemporary context, it’s a strong and purposeful cut hinting at promising things for Ride The Storm. Check out the video for the track below.

  • Watch: Sea Pinks – Depth of Field

    First shared last month – just over a year on from the release of the stellar Dreaming Tracks – we reckoned ‘Depth of Field’ by Belfast three-piece Sea Pinks was “yet another masterfully sanguine slice of melancholia from the Neil Brogan-fronted band, relating ambivalence and doubt in ways they mastered many moons ago.” Now the track – one of our favourite Sea Pinks’ tracks to date – has a video, which you can check out below. Sea Pinks’ new album, Soft Days, will be released via CF Records on January 8.

  • Stream: MMOTHS – Deu

    Having long been one of the country’s most curious producers – an artist that has always felt right on the cusp of delivering something that little bit special – Jack Colleran AKA MMOTHS first grabbed our attention back in 2013 with his placating Diaries EP, a release full of restraint and cunning ambient power. Two years and a handful of impressive outings later, the Kildare artist has us smitten all over again with ‘Deu’, a warm, bewitching slice of electronica, taken from his forthcoming LP, Luneworks. Most definitely one for fans of Ulrich Schnauss, Baths and Boards of Canada, stream the track via…

  • Premiere: VerseChorusVerse & David Lyttle – Have Some Soul

    Sticking to your guns and carving out your own path has many payoffs, least of all when it’s rewarded with some much-warranted recognition. Released via Lyte Records on Friday, Say & Do by North Coast singer-songwriter/ex-And So I Watch You From Afar guitarist Tony Wright AKA VerseChorusVerse and jazz maestro/drummer extraordinaire David Lyttle is a wonderfully instinctive and stripped-back collaboration that has seen the pair climb the charts this week, namely currently at 24 in the UK singer-songwriter charts, 28 in the UK new releases and no. 19 in the Irish charts. In an age when of varyingly soul-destroying, blitzkrieg-like PR campaigns, the duo’s…

  • Stream: Badlands – Caramisou

    An artist who considers Ireland and Italy as two other home countries, Swedish producer Catharina Jaunviksna AKA Badlands‘ dusky and interstellar craft is very nicely pronounced on new single, ‘Caramisou’, the lead cut off her forthcoming debut album, which is set for release in Spring of 2016. Set to support Somadrone at his Oracle album launch gig at Dublin’s Unitarian Church on November 28 alongside Sorcha McGrath (Wounded Healer/Ships) and Danny Snow of Villagers, stream Jaunviksna’s latest effort below.

  • Playlist: Björk at 50

    Fifty years ago today, Hildur Rúna Hauksdóttir – an Icelandic activist of Irish ancestry – gave birth to a baby girl named Björk who would become one of the most inimitable, fiercely original and independent musicians of all time. Having boldly and consistently transformed the landscape of both Icelandic and experimental music and culture over the last four decades, we have compiled a career-spanning, twenty-track playlist featuring our favourite Björk tracks, from House-heavy debut cut ‘Big Time Sensuality’ to the sweeping brilliance of ‘Joga’, a tribute to both her native land of Iceland. Here’s to the next fifty years.

  • Watch: Rachael Boyd – Esoteric Path (Live)

    Released in tandem with the single itself, Belfast contemporary/electronic musician Rachael Boyd has unveiled a live video of her performing ‘Esoteric Path’, a wonderfully woven post-classical mesh of piano, strings and enveloping rhythmic patterns. Written, performed and produced entirely by Boyd, it’s yet another brilliantly arranged and becalming effort from the artist, who last caught our attention back in February with live, four-track release Recordings.  As well as the studio and live video versions of the track, Belfast-based producer James Bruce AKA OAKS has also offered up an impressive remix of the track. Stream it along with the original and watch the…

  • Sense Prevails: Funding Restored for 32 Northern Irish Arts Organisations

    Having been told that they were set to lose 7% of their planned funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, 32 of the biggest and most vital arts organisations in Northern Ireland have been informed that’s been reversed as part of the Stormont executive’s November budget. Amongst those organisations – a collective cultural beating heart in the North of the country – are the MAC, Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, The Ulster Orchestra, the Lyric Theatre and Derry’s With the Culture Minister Carál Nί Chuilίn having been criticised over cuts to the Art’s Council budget, the Department of Culture, Arts and…