• Little Green Cars – Ephemera

    March 11, 2016 - By 

    Following on from Little Green Cars’ stunning debut LP Absolute Zero was always going to be a challenge. The album, which was released in 2013, was a culmination of a young band’s determined and remarkably capable work up to that point. It was rife with brittle, anxious lyrics, ambitious yet subtle musicianship and stunning vocal harmonies, and was at times almost like listening to someone speak when their nerves have lead to a jarringly frantic output. Everything they had to give was thrown at us to ensure something stuck. And it did. Thankfully, there was scarcely a note on that…

  • 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.

  • Watch: Jealous of the Birds – Goji Berry Sunset

    March 9, 2016 - By 

    In the seventh issue of our magazine back in May last year, TTA’s Stevie Lennox said of ‘Goji Berry Sunset’ by fast-rising Armagh singer-songwriter Naomi Hamilton AKA Jealous of the Birds: “The whimsy of its whistled intro might have you believe that you’re in for another young-girl-sings-naivete-strewn-intimate-acoustic-indie-folk; and perhaps on surface level it could be taken this way, but further listens reveal a deeper thread of melancholy.” Going on to extol the then huge promise of Hamilton, the piece offered a snapshot of an artist who has covered some remarkable ground in the time since. With her debut album, Parma Violets, set for…

  • Emmy The Great – Second Love

    March 9, 2016 - By 

    Second Love, the new LP by Emmy The Great and her first in five years, is secure enough to know exactly what it wants to be. The title, which by design immediately evokes her 2009 debut First Love, implies this continuation and growth that runs deep at the core of the album. Musically, ETG begins moving away from the acoustic folk styling which characterised her earlier releases in exchange for a more minimalist electronica. While the record as a whole is a very mixed bag, what shines throughout are the lyrics, which still retain the incisive power of her debut…

  • Big Ups – Before A Million Universes

    March 11, 2016 - By 

    Of all the notions one can fling at post-hardcore, the much maligned and misattributed genre, it does have one undeniable strength: tension. The key songs in the genre’s oeuvre are not built around a typical rock structure of verse-chorus-verse, but rather on a more fluid, almost progressive structure that emphasizes the disquiet over all else. It’s best envisioned like a constantly tightening torture rack, constantly ratcheting the tension, keeping the listener in this state of unease and the brink of real discomfort before discharging in the most cathartic manner possible. It’s one of punk’s hydra heads taken to its logical…

  • 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…

  • 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.

  • M. Ward – More Rain

    March 8, 2016 - By 

    More Rain has been four years in the making. In truth, M. Ward has been making this album his whole career, such is the omnipresence of the main ingredients weaving through the songwriter’s back catalogue. Sometimes, you just know what you are going to get with an album. Sometimes, that is a really good thing. More Rain continues to show Matthew Ward as a musician enthralled with capturing a 60s sound and wrapping it around skilled arrangements and engaging melodies. Though 12 songs long, it still feels like a piece of flash fiction, such is the tight and minimalist make up of the songs on…

  • Video Premiere: Edward F Butler – Joke Until Caught

    March 7, 2016 - By 

    Having spent the last few years making his mark in Belfast with HOWL and solo adventures, audio-visual maestro Edward F Butler is currently back home in Norfolk, working in a wood and home studio having recently returning from recording material in Berlin. Ahead of recording with LCON in Canada in May and playing shows in Toronto, New York and Montreal in May/June, Butler is releasing 12 releases in 2016, the second and latest of which, ‘Joke Until Caught’, distils his very prismatic craft to four consuming minutes. Keep up to date with Butler’s 12 releases in 2016 here. Created by Butler, check…