• Stream: Carriages – Like a Child

    March 9, 2016 - By 

    The third release from the pair, ‘Like a Child’ by Dublin’s Harry Bookless and Aaron Page AKA Carriages started as a percussion loop recorded using flower pots and a garden sweeping brush. A curious birth betraying the twosome’s wonderfully idiosyncratic leanings, the final product is a slick slice of minimalist electronica in which repetition (not least in the song’s chorus of “Like a child I run to you”) comfortably tunnels in one’s auditory cortex. Released on March 23 – and followed a week later with a remix by Bantum – stream ‘Like a Child’ via Soundcloud below.

  • Playlist: 15 Irish Acts at SXSW 2016

    March 9, 2016 - By 

    As positively hectic as any festival on the face of the globe, SXSW has long been established as a veritable cornucopia of film, music and interactive media from far and very wide. And with festivals of much smaller scale: where the excess of choice becomes something of a burden, planning ahead and knocking up a makeshift “must-see” guide is next to obligatory to ensure FOMO doesn’t become an all-consuming spectre during your festival stay. Just as important is getting some essential listening in before heading off in said sensory abyss. So if you’re SXSW-bound this year and want to check out some…

  • Watch: DIE HEXEN – Siamese

    March 9, 2016 - By 

    Every once in a while a homegrown act will crop up, catch you completely off guard with and make you wonder, fist-clenched and all but tormented for eternity, just h0w they managed to pass you by up until that shameful moment of latter-day discovery. The latest to befall us comes in the form of Belfast dark ambient chanteuse DIE HEXEN, whose latest single ‘Siamese’ is a phantasmal brew of gothic influence and image, conjuring everyone from Grouper and Chelsea Wolfe to Gary Numan and Siouxsie at her most ensorcelling. A “ceremonial magic audio-visual created in response to a visually powerful mutual lucid and reoccurring dream…

  • Watch: Orchid Collective – Lay As Stone

    March 8, 2016 - By 

    When we shared the track two weeks ago we said ‘Lay As Stone’ by Dublin quartet Orchid Collective was “unwinding alt-folk meditation on weariness and reprieve that sees wonderfully-woven harmonies come to the fore across the track’s nigh on four minutes”. Having zig-zagged around the country playing shows in the time since, the band have released a video for the single directed by Cill Farrell, the moral of which we’ve deduced is: it’s often – if not always – advisable to drink a few glasses of milk before going on the rip. Orchid Collective launch ‘Lay As Stone’ at Dublin’s…

  • Roving Eye: Bell X1 in London

    March 8, 2016 - By 

    In the latest installment of her air miles-inducing Thin Air feature Roving Eye, Tara Thomas captures Dublin’s Bell X1 at London’s Union Chapel. I couldn’t stay away from London, and particularly Islington, for too long before being drawn back to the entertainment hotbed on another Roving Eye. This time around I was destined for Union Chapel, one of the most alluring venues in the city. Founded in 1799, the architecture has acoustics at its core and provides a glorious platform for the human voice. Tonight, after sixteen sold out dates, Bell X1 conclude their tour in what is arguably the perfect…

  • Stream: Oaks – Knowledge Spice

    March 8, 2016 - By 

    Featuring Jess Edlin and fellow Matua Trap member Steven Butler, ‘Knowledge Spice’ is the latest track to drop from Belfast-based producer James Bruce AKA Oaks. Assuredly building on early material including his debut album Safe Haven (revisit here), it summons subtly cascading Brainfeeder grooves, enveloping, Of Montrealian vocal harmonies and a sonic terrain inhabited by everyone from The Books and Ametsub to Madlib and Boards of Canada. Stream it and Rachael Boyd’s remix below.

  • Watch: No Monster Club – Charity Shop/Slaughterhouse

    March 4, 2016 - By 

    No Monster Club’s Bobby Aherne doesn’t as much shirk convention as he takes it to one side and kindly conveys that it has absolutely no place at his party. Set to launch his new album I Feel Magic at Dublin’s Bello Bar this very evening (Friday, March 4) Aherne has unveiled the perfectly oddball video for the release’s second single ‘Charity Shop/Slaughterhouse’, a “surreal video sees Bobby playing a mysterious stranger getting to know the last few inhabitants of an otherwise abandoned planet. Uniquely, it also features a sign language interpreter for the hard of hearing.” Beware: this track – nicely placed between…

  • Premiere + Interview: Ryan Vail – Invert

    March 4, 2016 - By 

    Whether you’re a newcomer or have been following his slow-burning, revelatory evolution as of late, Derry’s Ryan Vail has always commanded a domain that he can call his own. A master of subtlety, nuance and the hallowed space between the notes, his debut EP These Words revealed fully-formed promise that has only grown (and grown into itself) in the half-decade since. Whether you look to EPs including Fade and Grow, tracks such as ‘Sunlight’ and ‘Days’, superb new single ‘Wounds’ or Sea Legs, his well-received concept collaboration with Ciaran Lavery, Vail’s music and the sphere he conjures via slowly bobbing, synth-laden electronica has always…

  • The Gloaming – 2

    March 3, 2016 - By 

    We’re fast approaching the centenary of the one of the most significant events of contemporary Irish history, but we all know that with all the ceremony and pomp comes memorials for a handful of inflated personalities and footnotes for the rest. What if we dropped the politicism and the commemoration of a failed rebellion and instead focused on one of the key tenets behind the act: culture. So many of the key figures were artists, writers and poets, striving to tell the tales of the land in their native tongue and yet we’ve opted to sideline that part of the…