• 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

  • 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…

  • PORTS – The Devil is a Songbird

    May 26, 2016 - By 

    ‘Luck’ is a funny old thing, especially in the often unforgiving world of music, although at the start of 2013, Derry’s Little Bear seemed to very much have it on their side. A bout of acute laryngitis in Two Door Cinema Club’s Alex Trimble saw Little Bear step in at the eleventh hour to replace the Bangor indie-poppers at 2013’s Other Voice’s Festival, and their show-stealing set paved the way for massive critical acclaim and a set of huge shows in Belfast’s Limelight and their home town’s Nerve Centre. Luck seemed to turn the other way fairly promptly though, as the band watched the support act…

  • My Tribe Your Tribe – Loyalties

    May 25, 2016 - By 

    Hailing from Kildare, My Tribe Your Tribe – not to be confused with I Have a Tribe – are expanding their fan base after an impressively productive 2015. The self-professed alt-rock trio, comprised of George Mercer, Tod Doyle and Colm Daffy, have continued to build the foundations of a promising trajectory, their songs steadily finding their way as the unique blueprint of My Tribe Your Tribe’s sound. Earlier this month they released their debut EP, Loyalties, a darkly melodic collection of compositions that are not entirely expected to co-exist, yet simultaneously work together. It is hard to comprehensively retrace the…

  • Watch: Glimmermen – Bang

    May 24, 2016 - By 

    “With refreshingly intelligent guitar work evoking both Television and Maps and Atlases, the four tracks on Satellite People are perhaps best surmised in the title track, a tidy hybrid of Mission of Burma circa Signals, Calls and Marches EP, Pop Group and early Captain Beefheart.” So read our time-confirmed verdict (in our previous guise of AU Magazine) of Satellite People, the debut EP by Dublin’s Glimmermen way back in 2012. Four years on – and three years since the release of their impressive debut album I’m Dead – the band have re-emerged with a new single, ‘Bang’. Taken from their forthcoming second album,…

  • 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,…