With many more acts yet to be announced, legendary English folk singer-songwriter Donovan and Kerbdog will play Ireland’s “Best Small Festival” Stendhal Festival in Limavady across August 7-8. With Donovan headlining the Friday night, DJ Format, Televisor, Kila, Ciaran Lavery, Robyn G Shiels and Ryan Vail are also amongst the first acts announced. Check out the current line-up below and go here to buy tickets.
A self-proclaimed “incredible party on the edge of the world”, Valentia Isle has unveiled a second wave of acts set to play the festival in July. With musician, DJ, broadcaster and founding member of Big Audio Dynamite, Don Letts topping the latest announcement, Dublin’s The Hot Sprockets, New Zealand indie pop musician Pikachunes and Cork dream-pop band Elastic Sleep also feature. A string of other Irish acts make up the remainder of the latest announcement: Dirty Dubsters, New Secret Weapon, Fox Jaw, Sounds of System Breakdown, Toy Soldier, Karma Parking, Mongoose, Collie Hz U, Strange Attractor, Markas Carcas, Cal Folger…
As we posted about last week, Blur are amongst several new acts set to play this year’s Electric Picnic. Also confirmed to play the annual Co. Laois festival – set to take place from September 4-6 – are Interpol, FKA Twigs, Grace Jones, Mac DeMarco, Sam Smith, Despacio, Yasiin Bey (Mos Def), MK, Gavin James, Printer Clips, Julio Bashmore, Paul Kalkbrenner, The Riptide Movement, The 2 Bears, SOAK, Viet Cong, Fickle Friends, Kwamie Liv, Honne, Fat White Family, Dawes and Benjamin Clementine. Blur and Sam Smith join Florence and the Machine as the festival’s headliners. With many more acts to be announced,…
Having announced their return back in February, Super Furry Animals are amongst several new acts announced to play this year’s Body & Soul festival. Set to take place at Co. Westmeath’s Ballinlough Castle from June 19-21, the festival has also revealed that Tiga, Kuenta i Tambu, Kiasmos, SOAK, Cu, Vin Gordon and the Real Rock Band, Cloud Castle Lake, Planet Parade and Bleeding Heart will also perform. With many more acts set to be confirmed, check out the current line-up for the festival below and go here to buy tickets.
Comprised of Richard Butler and Paul Shevlin, C-Beams is, for those of you not in the loop, an electronic audio/visual project based in Belfast. Thirteen months on from the release of the first installment, ‘Tannhauser’, the duo have unveiled the second of the four-part endeavour, titled ‘Le Voile’. A perfectly drifting, three-minute slice of layered, nuanced alt-pop, the track is accompanied by a visuals – featuring Shevlin atop Belfast’s Cavehill – shot by Butler and Dan Brown. Fingers and all else crossed that the installment of the project comes around quicker than part two, as we’re most definitely fans.
Evoking the likes of Bardo Pond, Black Angels and early My Bloody Valentine, Dublin psych rockers DAÄG HUR have really caught our attention with new track, ‘Buried My Head’. Opting for hyper-hyphenation over self-myopia, the band call themselves a “dream-pop-doom-rock band” – a fitting descriptor for a sound that straddles the balance between dread and ecstasy. ‘Buried My Head’ embodies that very nicely indeed, proving an all-too brief, psych-soaked traipse into the nether regions of the psyche, bound by cirrus streams of reverb and release. This is the theme from a soundtrack to emerging from a bad trip in a friend of a friend’s shite…
The latest in a spate of new material, Belfast electronic producer Chris Hanna AKA OneKnown has unveiled a new track, ‘Jektify’. Speaking of a forthcoming EP, titled Blue Galaxy, Hanna said, “I might just release it on Bandcamp as a Pay What You Want thing. I wanted the EP to be a bit spacey and weirder. Maybe I’m hanging out with Jack (Space Dimension Controller) too much.” Stream the track via Soundcloud below.
One of Ireland’s most naturally gifted songsmiths, Rory Nellis‘ music betrays an increasingly tangible sense of conviction and candor. Where no lyric or phrase feels throwaway, no chord progression or melodic flourish seems kneejerk or unconsidered. This almost meditative attention to detail is something that has often set his music apart from many of his peers, something that’s more than evident on his forthcoming debut album, Ready For You Now. Recorded with Phil D’Alton of Master & Dog, the album – currently available to fund on Pledgemusic – features a cast of local musicians including Herb Magee (formerly of LaFaro, now of Goons), Pete…
Belfast dream-pop bands are few and far between. Deeming themselves just that – exactly 3,339 miles to the east of Baltimore’s Beach House – are Pleasure Beach, a new-fangled five-piece who met whilst working in the “estimable coffee shops of Belfast”. Featuring members of Northern Irish acts including Yes Cadets and In An Instant, the band’s debut single, ‘Go’, takes its cue from “pounding stadium Americana, hypnotic krautrock and blurry-eyed Scandinavian pop”, forging a self-assured and decidedly mesmeric four-and-a-half minutes of sun-kissed, wanderlust-driven pop. A self-proclaimed “part bruised break-up song, part existential post-apocalyptic horror story”, you can stream the track below.
A masterclass in woozy, nocturnal electro-pop, You Want The Night by Dublin three-piece Sleep Thieves is easily one of our favourite debut albums by an Irish band in… well, forever. A year on from its release, the Sorcha Brennan-fronted band have unveiled the video for its title (and arguably best track) ‘You Want The Night’ – and what a distance director Mike P. Nelson has gone to wonderfully, rather cinematically capture the song’s dark, marauding tangents.