• Michael Black – Memoirs

    May 29, 2018 - By 

    Having recently been featured on the official Piano Day 2018 playlist, curated by Nils Frahm, Belfast-based multi-instrumentalist & composer Michael Black is set to release his debut album, Memoirs, on June 13. Across its fifteen tracks of unaccompanied piano, Black weaves the personal with the classical, evoking contemporary classic composers like Arvo Pärt and minimalism’s man-of-the-moment, Nils Frahm. “I understood that by releasing something as intimate as Memoirs, I’d leave myself very exposed and somewhat vulnerable. but I couldn’t expect the listener to dwell and reflect on these thoughts in their own manner unless I provided an honest account in the first place. My wish is that Memoirs…

  • Watch: Bouts – Face Up

    May 16, 2018 - By 

    It’s been five years since debut LP Nothing Good Gets Away, and four since their last release, Unlearn, but back in style are Dublin indie rock Bouts, with ‘Face Up’. Influenced by the kind of breezy, hook-laden indie rock best placed to soundtrack the main stages of the Irish summer, its DIY video fittingly  papers over the malaise with emphatic optimism. Of the song, frontman Barry Bracken says: “Face Up is a no-filter, punch the air plea for staring things down and pushing on through. Some songs you write, others just materialise. This seemed born ready. Its immediacy excites us as much now as those first moments playing it.…

  • Curfew Festival Announced For Twelfth of July

    May 11, 2018 - By 

    Making its return for the first time in many years, Belfast’s alternative, inclusive Twelfth of July proceeding Curfew, takes place across two of Belfast’s finest small venues – The Black Box & Voodoo. The whole day is kindly run by original runner Pete Jez’ Solid Choice Industries. In direct opposition of ‘the other one’, we don’t have to pretend to enjoy the rad tunes. The only cultural division to be seen is in the cross-genre venue booking -Voodoo is set to host the riff-centric acts, headed by Dublin’s synth-driven space-metal trio No Spill Blood, sludgy heavy rock trio Slomatics, Dublin hardcore act Destriers, space punks Wild Rocket, sludge-doom act Nomadic…

  • The Bonk & Percolator Announce Co-Headline Tour

    May 3, 2018 - By 

    The artists behind two thirds of our top three Irish albums of last year embark on a run of dates spanning the island over the next few months. Improvised psych-pop outfit The Bonk are set to play five shows with kraut/drone trio Percolator. We’ll be hosting the Belfast date at the Menagerie on June 28 – more details will be announced on that shortly. The Bonk An incredible, dynamic live outfit, The Bonk is a broad-based musical project headed by Waterford songwriter and improviser Phil Christie (O Emperor). Gathering influences from 60’s garage, jazz and experimental pop, the band’s arrangements bring recursive rhythms and improvised melodies…

  • Video Premiere: Jimmy Penguin x Post Punk Podge – Synthesize Our Faith

    May 3, 2018 - By 

    Jimmy Penguin is a prolific producer & founder of Galway’s Community Skratch collective. Limerick-based Post Punk Podge is one of Ireland’s increasingly infamous vitriolic, satirical, and fast-rising hip-hop artists. ‘Synthesize Our Faith’ is taken from Penguin’s new collaborative EP, Savages – which features guests across the world of turntablism including Chilean Redmist – who cut much of the EP – and Dublin’s DJ Crutch, who co-authored the beats. Besides Podge, appearances come from Djackulate, Clockwork, Krayb, Hadoshrooms. ctlFSH also uses a unique filter scratch technique on the record, which involves “using a fader for filter instead of the on-off. He’s been practising it for years and…

  • Watch: Robocobra Quartet – You’ll Wade

    May 1, 2018 - By 

    Very few things excite us more than the prospect of new music from (by far) one of Ireland’s difficult, and genuine, pioneers, Robocobra Quartet. Ahead of second album, Plays Hard To Get, out on May 25th, the band have just released their video for ‘You’ll Wade’. We’ve already covered the song – “Culminating in a cry of “Everything is old news” before petering out in a plume of funereal ambience, its recording and composition distils the band’s ongoing, masterfully unconventional approach” – but the video’s conceit is strong enough to warrant another visit. Shot by Colin Armstrong & edited by Robocobra leader Chris Ryan, it’s…

  • Watch: Pale Lanterns – In The Dark We Are

    April 25, 2018 - By 

    One thing that Northern Ireland produces with astonishing prolificacy is high calibre indie-folk alternative pop, as a cursory glance at the NI Music Prize winner list might dictate. Belfast-based singer-songwriter Darragh Donnelly, aka Pale Lanterns, has released an EP and four singles in the past 11 months, and with each has come a firm compositional forward stride. With long-time production partner Carl Small of Start Together once more at the helm, new single ‘In The Dark We Are’ further broadens the aperture on Pale Lanterns’ sound, as it metamorphoses from somnambulant reverie into crystal clear self-questioning. Melodically, Donnelly’s tied to the earthly Irish indie-folk & pop subtle experimentation of recent years, bordering…

  • Hilary Woods – Colt

    April 25, 2018 - By 

    Some artists are just destined to wind up on certain rosters. One such act is Dublin’s Hilary Woods, an artist whose solo craft we’ve followed with a certain glee over the last couple of years. On June 8, the musician, ex-JJ72 member and multi-instrumentalist will release her debut full-length album, Colt, via Brooklyn’s Sacred Bones, an indie imprint whose discerning (and, so far, pretty impeccable) penchant for repping acts such as Zola Jesus, Jenny Hval, David Lynch, John Carpenter, Blanck Mass and Marissa Nadler runs directly parallel with Woods’ very own crepuscular craft. Her minimal composition & otherwordly layered atmospherics follow two acclaimed EPs and recent scoring of a horror film for IFI’s Weimar…

  • Just Mustard – Wednesday

    April 24, 2018 - By 

    We’ve already said it, but it bears repeating – Dundalk’s Just Mustard are becoming one of our favourite bands in Ireland, and on May 2, they release their debut LP, Wednesday. Moulding swooning, soaring psych-gaze from elements of post-punk, lo-fi electronic & trip-hop, their space-conscious guitar abrasions and delicately haunting aquatic vocals, as we’ve described, “taps right into that exact feeling that creeps in at great small Irish festivals around the early evening. You know the one we’re talking about.” The band have “made a conscious effort to provide the listener with the experience of hearing the band in a room, in their natural state, with little to…

  • Brand New Friend – Seatbelts For Aeroplanes

    April 24, 2018 - By 

    Unless you’ve been living under a rock up north, you might have heard about the crest of a wave atop which Brand New Friend have been surfing for the past couple of years. Hype was high based on their live shows even ahead of the release of their almost dangerously-earworming debut EP, American Wives, back in 2016. Fronted by the impossibly charming sibling duo of Castlerock-born Taylor & Lauren Johnson, the band’s brand of starry-eyed, harmony-driven indie-pop is on full display on their forthcoming debut album, Seatbelts For Airplanes.  Johnson’s confessional lyrics allude to the unspoken things in relationships, the nature of overthinking and self-doubt – shaped by the purity of a youthful mind and the Brand New Friend…