Doubling up as his first release since signing to Lyor Cohen’s 300 Entertainment (home to Fetty Wap, Young Thug et al) Rejjie Snow is streaming his stellar, subtly euphoric new single, ‘D.R.U.G.S’. Featuring a laid-back Rahki-produced beat, it’s a typically slick, blip-heavy three-minutes from the fast-rising Dublin rapper and the lead single from his forthcoming – and long-awaited – debut album.
We in the Republic don’t like to talk about the big things, and if our history of women’s rights is anything to go by, we especially don’t like to talk about the big things that involve women. As Dublin gears up for Saturday’s March For Choice, jangle poppers Shrug Life have decided to celebrate the event with their latest single, the 8th amendment baiting ‘Your Body’. Leaving subtly and nuance at the door, the trio launch into their polemic with the jugular strike of the track’s opening line: “Your body is not your body/ It’s the property of church and state”.…
Johnny Muir AKA Belfast’s Survival Bag, has self-released several tracks recently, most recently the evocative ‘The Vivid Past’, an sonic experience akin to the feeling of emerging from Madchester’s ecstatic haze into the grim reality of Cool Britannia. Like much of Survival Bag’s music, each instrument was played and recorded by Muir, with his own spoken and sung vocals, programmed sounds and discovered samples. Conceptually, the song is about memory loss and confusion, as Muir explains: “When I was growing up, my grandma suffered from severe dementia – always described as ‘hardening of the arteries’ whatever that is – and she came to live with us. But sometimes she…
Melding pitch-shifting, underwater ambience reminiscent of Mica Levi’s Under The Skin soundtrack with The Radio Dept-esque city somnambulism and sparse guitar lines in the vein of Vincent Gallo and early Tortoise, ‘Clouds’ by Wicklow composer/producer Paul Finan is a perfectly inspired audio-visual traipse far beyond with no intention of return. Finan said, “This is a song about changing ones perspective. Changing the script or the lens. There is far more out their than our senses perceive. I like that. So much more to know. This is a quick visual I put to the song, but there is a short film in the pipeline inspired…
Counting Cocteau Twins, Portishead, Wilson Phillips, Lorde and the Staves amongst their key influences Kildare/Dublin duo Deborah Byrne and Suzette Das AKA Hvmmingbyrd originally started out as a folk-based quintet back in 2013. The confident culmination of their steady and steadily impressive evolution to a self-described “harmonic alt-pop duo”, their new EP, Know My Name, is a polished, hook-laden affair that sees the duo’s weaving vocal interplay dance above carefully-composed, FM-friendly electronic pop passages. Where it’s occasionally a shortcoming for certain acts of their ilk, Byrne and Das ensure simplicity and melodic linearity are at the root of each track on offer here.
Ahead of setting off on yet another European tour, Belfast’s Girls Names have released Revisionism, a five-track remix EP featuring re-workings of recent tracks including ‘A Hunger Artist’ and ‘Reticence’ by Mikey Young of Total Control, Group Zero, Broken English Club, Shift Work and Tom Furse. Traversing skeletal, deconstructed electro, synth exorcisms and droning post-punk incantations, the EP is now available via Tough Love Records. Stream it via Spotify and check out the band’s forthcoming European dates below. SEPTEMBER 21st – SE – Gothenburg – Pustervik 22nd – SE – Stockholm – Bar Brooklyn Debaser 24th – FI – Helsinki – Bar Loose 25th –…
If there’s one thing the island of Ireland has no shortage of it’s straight-shooting rock bands. But one such act that has developed that foundation to skilfully – and often very convincingly – accomadate the influence of blues, funk, indie rock and much more besides is Belfast quartet Paper Dogs. Counting such heavy-hitters as Pink Floyd, Miles Davis, Thin Lizzy and Black Sabbath, amongst their key influences, the Chris Rooney-fronted band – an increasingly established staple on the live scene up North over the last while – doth their collective cap to a certain grade of genre-defining greats whilst very consciously framing that imprint with their…
Comprised entirely of new material made in the two/three months ahead of the appearance, Belfast producer Chris Hanna has released a stream of his hour-long set at Twitch last week. Also set to make an appearance at Culture Night in Belfast tonight at Left (well worth swinging by if you get the chance) have a stream of Hanna on fierce form below.
Featuring footage of the Stevie Scullion-fronted band recording their forthcoming new album, This Is Nowhere, with Steve Albini in Chicago early this year, the video for ‘I’ll Be Alright’ by Malojian captures a band very much in their element. Also featuring Joe McGurgan on bass and Michael Mormecha (also of Mojo Fury et al.) on drums, their journey was fully captured by Belfast-based photographer and The Thin Air contributor Colm Laverty; make sure to keep an eye out for the full-length reveal of that soon. The lead track from This Is Nowhere, ‘I’ll Be Alright’ is Malojian at their sharpest. With beautiful harmonies…
Recorded in the small coastal town of Spiddal in the west of Ireland, Lisa Marie Airplane Tour by Brian Kelly’s So Cow – his fifth full-length under the name to date – features “12 songs about anxiety; written in the midst of it, but before actually being aware it was the issue. OCD thoughts making a bus journey to town increasingly impossible, social anxiety making ordering a pint at the local bar a drawn-out task of Herculean proportions.” While influenced by the likes of Game Theory, The Chills, Nick Lowe and The Soft Boys, the album’s primary impetus is – according to Kelly –…