• Santigold – 99¢

    March 7, 2016 - By 

    Lousy Smarch weather! We’ve got Baltic temperatures, snow and whole host of other Winter wonderland treats that we were supposed to piss off back in February that have opted remain, ratcheting up the March misery. It’s cold and overcast and what we need is some good straightforward fun; fortunately, Philadelphia’s Santigold has kindly provided her new album, 99¢, to help get us through this tough time. The album offers up twelve slices of delightful poppy, reggae-tinged electro-pop songs that help to blast away remnants of the winter blues and, except a handful of cuts which should have been culled, the…

  • 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…

  • Stream: Solar Bears – Gravity Calling

    March 2, 2016 - By 

    This time last month we were rather giddily raving about Solar Bears‘ ‘Wild Flowers’, a track we said seen the Dublin duo “as prismatic and sorcerous as ever”. Very much following in that vein, ‘Gravity Calling’ is the latest track to be streamed from their forthcoming third album, Advancement, which drops via Sunday Best Recordings on March 18. Inducing yet another neon-lit netherworld of lambent retro-futurism, it’s a superbly synth-driven, soundtrack-like four minutes of flawless mastery from the twosome. Solar Bears play Belfast’s Lavery’s on Friday, March 18. Pre-order Advancement here.

  • Watch: New Secret Weapon – You’re Still Losing (Live)

    March 1, 2016 - By 

    Few Irish alt-rock bands command their own sound quite as convincingly as Dublin’s New Secret Weapon. Counting The Fear, The Late Late Show and OJ Simpson as their many influences on their Facebook page, the David Griffin-fronted trio have unveiled a live version of ‘You’re Still Losing’, a riff-fuelled, multi-part ode to the interminable, Sisyphean strife of The Everyday. Evoking everything from Jeff Buckley’s more tenacious efforts to the backwashed urban doom of Enablers and Incubus’ earlier, more emphatic material. Created by Scan and recorded by Deaf Bros, watch the video below.

  • Watch: Bad Bones – Games

    March 1, 2016 - By 

    Set to play the next installment of Psykick Dancehall – our new night with Medium presents at Dublin’s Bello Bar – Dublin producer Sal Stapleton AKA Bad Bones released her shadowy, wonderfully cloistered first gambit last month in the form of ‘Beg’. Going one better, her new single ‘Games’ is a delicious slice of darkly electronica weaving perfectly-spliced beats, bobbing bass and modulated vocals in a fine, cimmerian mesh of noise. Check out the video for ‘Games’ – also created by Stapleton – below.  

  • Watch: Moon City Boys – City

    March 1, 2016 - By 

    Stockholm four-piece Moon City Boys recently released their new track, ‘City’, a song which, for those of us outside of Sweden who haven’t had the pleasure of seeing them live yet, served as only the fifth piece of officially released music to come from the band. Having formed in 2011 but conscientiously taking their time before putting out a lengthy release, the group have released two 7″s to date, the Rockets/Stranger in 2014 and Let My Love Dance/Washing Machine in August 2015. Each of the songs on those releases showcased a group with clear influences taken from the likes of Jefferson Airplane (‘Washing Machine’) and The…

  • Ciara O’Neill – The Ebony Trail

    March 1, 2016 - By 

    The modern folk music scene is all too often seen as the playground of minimal imagination. In recent years it has divided opinion more than most and rightfully so, suffering as it does from sub-par input with lazy, introspective lyrics and generic instrumentation. Such is the dilution of the genre, it takes something special to stand out and demand attention. Ciara O’Neill’s album, The Ebony Trail is a largely sparkling piece of work with inventive themes, ideas and directions yet it is also an album which occasionally fails to match its own high standards. Ciara takes a worn out trope and twists it into something…

  • EP Premiere: Bouts – Unlearn

    February 29, 2016 - By 

    Self-described as a “pop-grunge noise rock band with an inherent, unashamed attachment to big pop hooks” Dublin indie rock quartet Bouts have well and truly lived up to that explication over the last few years. Having fully arrived with their stupendous debut album Nothing Good Gets Away back in 2013, today marks the release of a five-track EP that sees their craft as downright convincing as ever, in spite of two members living overseas. Recorded at various points in 2015, at no point during the process where all members present together – a fact that both underlines the studio efforts of John Murphy and Shane…