• Tethers – Skinwalker

    April 4, 2018 - By 

    Lisburn-based post-hardcore outfit Tethers are set to release their debut EP Skinwalker via Swallow Song Records. While retaining the kind of pop inclination that made Biffy Clyro household names, the trio channel Derry’s Jetplane Landing, and mathier elements of the post-hardcore sound – the likes of which made Faraquet such an incredibly instinctive, yet compositionally complex outfit. Recorded by Chris Ryan, the EP gets its title from a term in Navajo folklore that denotes a shape-shifting witch, which they’re re-envisioning as ‘a future slang for artificially-enhanced humanoids’, an aspect of the band’s outlook, which – in a way that would please Philip K Dick, Neil Gaiman or Warren Ellis…

  • Lunch Machine – Alt Facts

    April 3, 2018 - By 

    Letterkenny garage indie rock trio Lunch Machine have just released their debut EP, the five track Alt Facts, produced by Fugue State & Tuath. The band is led by Jude Barriscale, whose laconic delivery recalls earlier (and best) Courtney Barnett, Barriscale’s knack for injecting personal, universal truths with a detached sincerity elevates what could be slack meanderings into idiosyncratically-woven pieces, that veer from frustration at rural isolation, political outrage and, in the evocatively smoky, poignant-in-the-AM closer ‘Obi Wan for the Road’, love and loss. Take, for example, the 7> minute highlight ‘Yellow Door’, which is, in her own words “about me being humbled by my past mistakes and about how…

  • Girls Names – Stains on Silence

    March 26, 2018 - By 

    It stands to reason that many vital albums come critically close to never being made. The eight-track upshot of doubt, upheaval and financial strain, Stains on Silence by Girls Names is one such release. Following 2015’s Arms Around a Vision, and the parting of drummer Gib Cassidy just over a year later, the Belfast band suddenly found themselves facing down a looming void. “There was a finished – and then aborted – mix of the album, which was shelved for six months,” reveals Girls Names frontman Cathal Cully. “We then took a break from all music and went back to full-time work. We chilled…

  • Doomed & Stoned in Ireland

    March 14, 2018 - By 

    Since its inception, international metal blog Doomed & Stoned has went to great lengths to appraise and give voice to the heft-inclined communities across time and space throughout its sprawling back catalogue of compilations, from obvious hotspots like Portland, to 70s proto-doom, to current day Asia. Incredibly, they’re all available on Bandcamp, on a name-your-price basis. Being one of our most fertile and certainly overlooked creative grounds, it’s vindicating then, that no less than 24 tracks from all corners of Ireland’s doom, stoner & sludge scene comprise Doomed & Stoned In Ireland, the latest in the series. Outright sludge-doom exports like Nomadic Rituals and Slomatics, who’ve played stoner Mecca –  Roadburn Festival – and beyond, are represented alongside…

  • Robocobra Quartet – Plays Hard To Get

    March 12, 2018 - By 

    Belfast-based jazz-punk ensemble Robocobra Quartet have just announced details of the follow-up to their NI Music Prize-nominated debut album, entitled Plays Hard To Get. Released through Abbreviated Records on May 25 on digital & vinyl formats, it’s going to be one of Ireland’s finest releases of 2018. With drummer, vocalist & producer Chris Ryan once more at the helm, it features a broader palette of sounds, it rocks harder, pushes its avant-garde & contemporary classical flourishes further out there, and is more lyrically daring than ever before – no small statement for arguably the most unique outfit on the island. Never resting on any one idea or preconceived notion, its blackly comic, starkly…

  • Album Stream: David Kitt – Yous

    March 8, 2018 - By 

    Back with his first solo full length in almost a decade, one of modern Ireland’s most enduring, chameleonic songwriters, David Kitt, has just released Yous through All City Records after its preceding Still Don’t Know EP. It’s a soothing, typically stellar effort from Kitt, who, since breaking through with 2001’s bedroom indie mini-masterpiece The Big Romance, consistently remains one step ahead at every point of his musical path, with him in the running for this year’s Choice Music Prize for his electronic New Jackson project. Entirely written and produced by Kitt, aside from a cover of Fever Ray’s ‘Keep The Streets Empty For Me’, it’s a wistful, intimate release, with flashes of a JJ Cale’s Troubadour for the 21st century. As…

  • Album Premiere: Zombie Picnic – Rise of a New Ideology

    March 9, 2018 - By 

    Progressive instrumental post-rock four piece Zombie Picnic release their new album, Rise of a New Ideology today. This follows up on the Limerick outfit’s 2016 debut LP, A Suburb of Earth, and is available on a limited run 12″ vinyl through Bandcamp and Burning Shed. Ideologically, it’s an ambitious work that’s inspired by political figures & commentators, and the most respected names in science fiction literature. As with acts like King Crimson, the finest progressive bands are unconfined by the box in which modern prog rock & post-rock artists find themselves trapped; Zombie Picnic’s sound is imbued with the kind of exploratory, trippy experimentalism found in classic psychedelic & space rock that’s been dragged forward a millennia,…

  • Bicurious – I’m So Confused

    February 28, 2018 - By 

    Riff-strewn Irish-French instrumental math-rock duo Bicurious release their new EP, I’m So Confused on March 9. Blending looped guitar layers and rhythmic spontaneity & dynamism, they channel the spirit of Sargent House and the sadly-departed Richter Collective. It’s understandable then, that they went over to Cheshire to record the EP with Alpha Male Tea Party‘s Tom Peters – with whom they’re set to tour across Ireland in early May. Their previous release was the ‘T.O.I.‘ single, and as with it, their new material is set to channel the spirit of righteous anger, vocals arriving, as ever, in the form of pointed samples. I’m So Confused holds its launch upstairs at Whelan’s…

  • The Barbiturates – Only Folkin’ Jokin’

    February 23, 2018 - By 

    Arguably the Irish group most deserving – in the literal sense – of the cult band status, Derry’s The Barbiturates have just released their latest LP, Only Folkin Jokin. Like its mini-album predecessor The Holy Mountain, it comes with  a visual accompaniment that threatens ocular trauma. Loaded with a sense of backwoods fear of the urban sprawl and the powers beyond their control, it’s another self-produced release that comes as act II in a larger thematic trilogy. With an Easter Egg that begs to be discovered – trust us – The Barbiturates’ leader has crafted what feels like an extended invitation to tune in, drop out, with pieces that casually dabble in acid…

  • Paddy Hanna – Frankly, I Mutate

    February 14, 2018 - By 

    It’s been a long time coming, but singer-songwriter Paddy Hanna‘s new album Frankly, I Mutate, is upon us through Strange Brew on March 2. This follows his 2014 debut album, Leafy Stiletto, and the string of strong singles he’s since released – the likes of ‘Unprotected’ and ‘Bad Boys‘. Also the frontman of supergroup Autre Monde, it’s a long-held view of ours that Hanna is one of Ireland’s most accomplished true songwriters; elusive, nuanced, capable of broad truths, while invoking the kind of Elvis Costello, Jarvis Cocker or Scott Walker-esque dark humour & vulnerability that catches one offguard in an otherwise ’70s pop tune. Frankly, I Mutate is filled with rich, retro-current…