• Stream: Arborist – A Man of My Age

    June 7, 2016 - By 

    Fronted by Mark McCambridge, Belfast’s Arborist are masters of the subtly-wielded phrase and burrowing melody. A year on from having the one and only Kim Deal feature on their single ‘Twisted Arrow’, the band have returned with ‘A Man of My Age’, a pleasantly reflective six-minute effort brilliantly bolstered by shivering strings and a layered Americana folk ambience that rewards with repeated listens. With fading youth, familial change and growing perspective at the heart of the McCambridge’s words here, we’re treated to something rather special; a carefully considered meditation imbued with a calm sense of acceptance that seals the deal in fine fashion. Stream the single…

  • Stream: Figure of 8 – The Migrant

    May 30, 2016 - By 

    A five-track release borne from “electronic blood, sweat and tears”, The Migrant is Derry producer Dermot McGowan AKA Figure of 8’s first EP in 4 years. From Trans Am-esque opener ‘Future Needs’ via emphatic highlight ‘Click Here To Save The World’ to restrained house closer ‘Celestial Bodies’, it’s a release illustrating remarkable progression, positing McGowan and his Todd Terje-evoking craft as an act that demands your immediate attention. Irish summer festival organisers: it’s never too late to add Figure of 8 to your bill. The Migrant by Figure of 8

  • Open House Festival 2016 Launched

    May 26, 2016 - By 

    With a host of lovingly-compiled, brilliantly diverse outings behind them, Open House Festival have launched the expectedly stellar programme for their 2016 outing in August. With 125 events taking place in more than 40 venues in the Northern Irish seaside town, music, film, food & drink, theatre, literature, comedy, art, magic, mystery, dance and lectures is – as ever – the perfectly balanced order of the day for the annual Bangor festival. Amongst the highlights in this year’s programme are a 40th anniversary show by The Damned, Iron & Wine, a 70th birthday tribute to former AC/DC frontman Bon Scott, Ian Rankin,…

  • Watch: BAD BONES – WORSHIP

    May 26, 2016 - By 

    Featured in the current issue of our physical magazine (available throughout the country now), Dublin producer and visual artist Sal Stapleton AKA BAD BONES first caught our attention back back in March with ‘Games’, a track that we called “a delicious slice of darkly electronica weaving perfectly-spliced beats, bobbing bass and modulated vocals in a fine, cimmerian mesh of noise.” Having since enthralled at the second installment of Psykick Dancehall – our Bello Bar night co-hosted with Medium Presents – in April, Stapleton is back with her another audio-visual gem in the form of ‘WORSHIP’, the fifth and final track to be taken from her…

  • Watch: Hilary Woods – Bathing

    May 25, 2016 - By 

    As we saw in her Track Record piece in the tenth issue of our physical magazine, ex-JJ72 bassist and solo artist Hilary Woods is an artist with a wonderfully diverse taste in music, a fact very keenly reflected her debut EP, Night. Set to release its highly-anticipated follow-up EP, Heartbox, on June 10, her single ‘Bathing’ is a quietly rapt masterstroke about “that feeling of waiting forever”, a sentiment captured with minimalist panache in its accompanying video, directed by Woods herself and filmed at both Dublin Zoo and Co. Wicklow’s rather beautiful Glendalough one “very cold morning” back in January. With more dates to be announced soon, Woods plays…

  • Watch: King Kong Company – Scarity Dan

    May 24, 2016 - By 

    Having built up momentum via YouTube that saw them secure headline slots at Body&Soul and Electric Picnic, the visual element of King Kong Company’s craft has always been an integral part of their appeal. Ensuring they stick to that tried-and-tested track, the Waterford band have unveiled the masterfully disturbing video for their new single, ‘Scarity Dan’. Directed by Jamie O’Rourke of Killer Rabbit Productions, the video – a curious take on the breaking point of the 9 to 5 worker  – “taps into something that might lurk deep within us all, something dangerous and unspeakable waiting to break loose. But even as the vile…

  • Life Festival Announce Site Map, Stage-Times

    May 24, 2016 - By 

    Marking the first Irish music festival of the Summer, Life Festival returns to Belvedere House and Gardens in Co. Westmeath this weekend with their strongest line-up to date. With a small amount of remaining weekend, two day and Sunday tickets still available organisers have just revealed the site map and all-important stage-times for their X1 outing. For all other information, including travel info, please check the Life Festival website.

  • Video Premiere: That Snaake – Go Bricker!

    May 23, 2016 - By 

    Like The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster covering late-80s The Fall, ‘Go Bricker!’ by Dublin “recessionary post-punk” band That Snaake is a vehement, breakneck effort that tells the story of a drinking session that derails and ends up in an armed coup which overthrows the government and sees random sesh-mots on Ketamine put in charge of executing the entire fisheries board (remember: your imagination is everything, folks). That Snaake’s first single, the track – heavily based around the themes of drug abuse, religious oppression and poorly conceived guerrila coups – now comes with a video to boot, marking the remastered edition of the band’s wonderfully frenzied debut…

  • Premiere: Gross Net – Outstanding Debt

    May 23, 2016 - By 

    As one quarter of globetrotting Belfast band Girls Names, Philip Quinn has rarely been off the road recently. Currently enjoying some repose before a new string of dates with Girls Names in Europe throughout the Summer – including a highly-anticipated set at Electric Picnic on September 3 – Quinn’s attention is currently fixed on his work as Gross Net, namely Outstanding Debt, a new seven-track release which we’re pleased to premiere here. The first release for Austerity Drive, it’s a compilation of material mostly drawn from “several aborted releases” that eschews Quinn’s usual guitar-based approach in favour of inducing a netherworld of varyingly…

  • Watch: Slomatics – Electric Breath

    May 19, 2016 - By 

    Not merely one of the best heavy bands in Ireland, Slomatics are undoubtedly right up there with the finest harbingers of brain-bendingly, bone-crushingly hefty sludge-doom anywhere on the face of the planet. With their perfectly-honed live show at its razor-sharp best and a new studio album, Future Echo Returns, set for release via Black Box Records in September, the three-piece have re-emerged with a typically obliterating new track ‘Electric Breath’. The sonic equivalent of self-exorcism in slow-motion, it trounces in a way and with such clinically resounding execution that Slomatics and few others like them can muster. Created by Dermot Faloon,…