• Girls Rock Dublin Announce 2019 Camp

    Following the success of the past two years, Girls Rock Dublin has announced the return of its summer camp for 12-17 year olds. Set to take place over the last week of June, from 25th-29th, the camp has taken great care in ensuring more inclusivity than ever before. There are spaces for 20 (cis & trans) girls and gender non-binary folks, with half of this number designated as scholarships to applicants from Direct Provision and low-income households. Over the five days, twenty applicants will form a band, learn an instrument, write a song & perform onstage by the end, with no previous…

  • Bats – Alter Nature

    At long last, one of Ireland’s finest, most singular time-signature-wielding visionaries are back. One of the figureheads in the Richter Collective sound that sculpted independent Dublin music some years ago, BATS are set to release their third album later this year. Titled Alter Nature, it’s been 7 years in the making. The album was recorded by Rian Trench and Robert Watson at The Meadow in Delgany. Frontman Rupert Morris says “It’s fully in keeping with BATS ethos of promoting science and reason over superstition and features songs about CRISPR technology, artificial intelligence, Christian science and a legendary giant hammerhead shark called Old Hitler.” Slated for release…

  • Premiere: Any Joy – The Sea

    One of the great hidden gems in Irish independent music today are Cork’s Any Joy. Sublimating varied strains of psych, post-punk & indie rock, they manage to recall the quintessential Deerhunter-esque pop-conscious, experimentally-natured sound of internalised dreams. Their 2017 debut album, Cycles, was a minor triumph, and was followed up last year with ‘Sucker’, a track that was included on last year’s Irish compilation A Litany of Failures: Volume II. Their new single, ‘The Sea’, bears all the Any Joy hallmarks: alpine guitar lines, tension, an impenetrable, masked vocal, and a wall of sound, all imbued with tape adulation. It’s their finest work to date. Another self-recorded effort in…

  • Oranges – Hey Zeus

    Last December, we premiered first single ‘The Way You Look’ by Dublin three-piece Oranges. We said it “recalled the abrasive, minimalist alchemy of The Fall”. The following single, ‘Upside Upside’ was a “skeletal post-punk riposte that, in its simmering climb and surging climax”. Taken from their forthcoming debut album Hey Zeus, they’re both firm hints at something special. A bare-bones approach has been applied to the entire process of Hey Zeus, which saw band members Gavin Duffy, Mici Durnin and Ed Kelly spit the LP out live in six hours with renowned engineer Stephen Quinn in a room on North Frederick Lane, Dublin, with only two of its eleven segments passing…

  • EP Premiere: His Father’s Voice – Context and Perspective

    The caveat with most ‘scenes’ tends to be that there’ll be some nadir to follow, once its signature sound has had a post-rock-esque fall into over-saturation and self-parody, but Limerick seemingly has no throughline other than its open ear and fiercely independent streak. The city has been responsible for galvanising a new school of Irish artists, and Blindboy seems to be very much emblematic of that. At DIY LK shows, we’ve borne witness to abstract field recording-based performances and 90s-recalling indie rock bands comfortably side-by-side in an idealistic cultural mindset that functions as a microcosm for how we’d love music to be widely presented. A great number…

  • Premiere: Angular Hank – I Don’t Always Like You

    It’s been a pretty sweet year for idiosyncratic Irish indie rock thus far – look no further than releases from Hot Cops, Postcard Versions & Larry for that – and another name you can add to that heap is Dublin-based quartet Angular Hank. Having only played a handful of shows to date, debut single ‘I Don’t Always Like You’ seeps into the signature Popical Island-style Dublin bedroom jangle that comes pre-loaded with chorus pedals, with a wonderfully human baritone vocal from Mathieu Doogan. Kicking back with dissonance at the hint of a melody getting too cosy like its protagonist does at showing too much vulnerability, the single is a…

  • Stream: The Claque – Hush

    If you’re missing the gaping void in game-changing guitar music left by Girl Band in the last couple of years, here’s something to sate your appetite. The Claque comprises long-time friends in vocalist Kate Brady, Paddy Ormond – of Jet Setter & Postcard Versions, who released their wonderful debut album last month – and and Girl Band guitarist Alan Duggan. Debut single ‘Hush’ and its noise-pop flipside ‘Stray’ immediately bear Duggan’s inimitable, jarring sonic imprint, dragged into humanity by the oneiric warmth of synth layers & Brady’s soulful vocal – which could be incongruous in the hands of less masterful musicians. Produced by Girl Band bassist…

  • Preview: Brian Irvine Ensemble @ Brilliant Corners Jazz Festival

    It was at last year’s Brilliant Corners when the Brian Irvine Ensemble ended their 6-year hiatus, and for good reason. Irvine cuts a singular figure not just in Northern Irish music, but worldwide, as one who embodies the spirit of the perpetually open-minded Brilliant Corners and all that jazz music encompasses, by pushing ever forward, with only a slight glance at anything that preceded.  The ensemble comprises around a dozen in number, drawn from varying backgrounds of contemporary classical, jazz & improvised music in Europe & Russia. As with many of artists comprising the Brilliant Corners 2019 lineup, their performances give themselves entirely over to neither formless improvisation…

  • Preview: Izumi Kimura @ The Black Box Green Room, Sunday March 3

    Brilliant Corners, as we’ve said before, is “the finest patchwork of jazz & sonic digression that Belfast has to offer”, and, in its seventh year, has pulled out all the stops to make this another memorable piece of scheduling. It officially kicks off tomorrow with Ulster Youth Jazz Orchestra & The Comet Is Coming – the latter of which is sold out – and we’ll be highlighting some of the events on offer throughout its run from March 2-9. Firstly, we have contemporary pianist Izumi Kimura, who plays an afternoon show this Sunday in the intimate Black Box Green Room. Her liminal craft is one of nuance, subtlety and precipitous…

  • Listen: Jackie Beverly – Talk It Through

    Here at TTA, we like our pop to be danced to with unselfconscious reckless abandon, and that’s why the second single from Dublin indietronic artist Jackie Beverly is our bag. As with previous single ‘Out of Reasons’, it’s club-ready as it is a nuanced, brooding study of human relationships that avoids the usual poptimistic pitfalls. Bolstered with nostalgia-charged synths and rich harmonies, thanks in no small part to the subtly buoyant production of Darragh Nolan & Joseph Panama. Of the song, Jackie “wanted to venture into the difficult aspects of loving someone, and tease out the idea that it’s possible to break through and recover something…