• Stream: Michael Mormecha – Family

    February 17, 2016 - By 

    Long one of the country’s more indomitable and fiercely individual musicians, Michael Mormecha is best known as the frontman of quintessential NI alt-rock band Mojo Fury. But rather than ever been bound to either that realm or moniker, Mormecha has pursued his music-making thus far with an idiosyncratic wanderlust via many collaborations, his work as Clown Parlour and – more recently – his own sounds, under his very own name. Having very recently launched a Pledge Campaign to ensure its release, the proverbial seeds of Lofi-Life, the forthcoming debut solo album by Mormecha, were first openly sown a couple of years now. Forever…

  • Stream: Shrug Life – Making Progress

    February 16, 2016 - By 

    With varyingly mind-numbing electioneering currently frying a good portion of the island’s collective head, Dublin indie-rock trio Shrug Life want your vote… … of confidence pertaining to the release of their excellent new single, ‘Making Progress’. One of our 16 For ’16 acts, the Danny Carroll-fronted maestros set out with the following Five Point Plan in mind: 1. Danny (lyrics, vox & guitars), Josh (drums) & Keith (bass) write song. 2. Get song recorded & mixed by Fiachra McCarthy (HEFTTRAX). 3. Get song mastered by Mark Chester. 4. Get artwork designed by Sean Conroy (deadl.ie) 5. Release song via online platforms. They have succeeded and…

  • Texture and Physicality with ELLLL

    February 16, 2016 - By 

    Having featuring as an Inbound act in the second issue of our magazine, Cork-based producer Ellen King AKA ELLLL has well and truly kicked into gear with recent release ‘Romance’, a self-professed “beat-driven collage with a playful and sinister narrative”. Touching on her creative process, Irish electronic music and what the future holds, King talks to fellow Cork native Mike McGrath Bryan. Photos by Louise Adelaide McKeown. How did ELLLL start? Where does Ellen King end and ELLLL begin? I had been writing some music as an undergrad and was approached to play live. I needed a name. So, that’s how it came…

  • Album Premiere: Heliopause – How Can We Laugh After This…

    February 15, 2016 - By 

    Released ten years to the day since performing his first ever show, How Can We Laugh After This… by Belfast’s Richard Davis AKA Heliopause is an exquisite electro-acoustic release confronting creativity, self-questioning and mental health with a refined, incisive delicacy that goes some distance in revealing the musician’s rejuvenated prowess. His 13th release to be self-released via Bandcamp, the 12 track album was mostly composed using Ableton Live, in which his usual backbone of acoustic guitar is replaced in favour of a baritone electric. Occasionally shaped by literary influences including Mysterious Stranger, the final novel by Mark Twain and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Davis’ lyrics…

  • Watch: OCHO – Vines

    February 11, 2016 - By 

    Set for release via Cork’s Feel Good Lost tomorrow, ‘Vines’ by Dublin act OCHO is a masterfully creeping, all-too-short burst of wonderfully subdued electronica. Accompanied by a phenomenal, cunningly claustophobic DIY video by the band (hands down one of the best we’ve seen in a while) it is OCHO’s first release since 2012’s debut LP ‘Young Hunting’. With live dates in the pipeline, the single is out digitally via Feel Good Lost tomorrow and on 12″ with a Darshan Jesrani (Metro Area) remix via Dublin’s Bodytonic later this year.

  • Premiere: Hot Cops – Scared of Everything

    February 11, 2016 - By 

    It’s no coincidence that we’ve hosted Belfast indie rock trio Hot Cops in four different TTA shows over the last couple of years, most recently at a packed-out show at Belfast’s Lavery’s on Tuesday night for the launch of their stellar new single ‘Passive Passive‘. The b-side to that, ‘Scared of Everything’ is an equally emphatic effort from the fast-rising threesome, forging pounding, fuzzed-out chords and frontman Carl Eccles’ admissions of apprehension (“I’m afraid to go outside/I don’t want to see your skin/I’m afraid to let you in”). Conjuring the likes of Pinkerton-era Weezer and Cloud Nothings’ more tuneful throwdowns, it gives everyday quasi-agoraphobic dread yet another…

  • Watch: Bantum & Loah – Take It

    February 10, 2016 - By 

    Cork born, Dublin based producer Ruari Lynch (AKA Bantum) and Irish/Sierra Leonean vocalist Loah are two artists who have been keen to take their time with regard to individual releases over the past couple of years. The last piece of released music from Bantum was his 2014 collaborative EP with Eimear O’Donovan and Owensie while, despite her soulful and much lauded live performances, we will not be hearing a debut EP from Loah until later this year. What a treat it is then to hear these two artists collaborate on brand new track ‘Take It’, a swelling electronic arrangement embellished…

  • Watch: Talos – In Time

    February 9, 2016 - By 

    Having first streamed it back in September last year, the exquisite  ‘In Time’ by Cork singer-songwriter and producer Eoin French AKA Talos has been brought to life via what should probably be commonly referred to as the Feel Good Lost treatment. Speaking about video for the track, FGL’s Brendan Canty said, “It is an abstract portrayal of searching for a lost love, clinging onto memories and doing everything you can to save it.” Wonderfully mirroring lyrics including, “I was loved and now that loves lost I know they’ll never find us/Way out amongst the madness I feel free” Canty summons an arcane world in which every movement…

  • Watch: September Girls – Love No One

    February 8, 2016 - By 

    A dark and charging effort from the South by Southwest-bound Dublin five-piece, September Girls have re-emerged with new single ‘Love No One’. Pretty much exactly what we’d imagine the opening theme from a revenge horror re-imaging of a spaghetti Western to sound like, it’s a wonderfully tempestuous cut taken from their forthcoming album, Age of Indignation, which is set for released on April 8.  Check out the suitably baleful video for the single, courtesy of the band’s vocalist and lead guitarist Jessie Ward O’Sullivan, below.

  • Download: The Crytearions – Selected Recordings From The Album Trilogy

    February 8, 2016 - By 

    Concisely self-summed up as “Lo-fi punk by an Irish man” on his Bandcamp page, The Crytearions is prolific Co. Mayo musician Jimmy Monaghan, also of Music For Dead Birds. Brilliantly ramshackle and fuzzily ecstatic in all the right places, he has just released Selected Recordings From The Album Trilogy, described as “The best bits [from his first three albums]. All the imaginary hits. No shits. One for the inquisitors, the idle listeners. The loners, the stoners, and the perpetual boners.” And the perpetual boners, like. Pure poetry. Clocking in at 16 minutes in length, stream/download the album below. Selected Recordings From The Album…