• The Mighty Stef – Year of the Horse

    April 27, 2015 - By 

    Dublin’s The Mighty Stef went for nailed-on quality with the production of The Year Of The Horse, traveling to California to splash out on Arctic Monkeys and QOTSA studio legend Alain Johannes. It’s a solid tactic, and sees the rocker’s tight, clean yet snarling stomp polished to a complex gem of a guitar album. It’s been a long road at a full eight year since Stefan Murphy released his debut, entitled The Sins Of Sainte Catherine. Perhaps that heady sense of an album slimmed down and refined over an extended period is a product of the wait; the outcome of…

  • Album stream: Screaming Parent – The Completist

    April 20, 2015 - By 

    Tagged on Bandcamp with terms including “bad glitch” and “cubase disasters”, The Completist by Screaming Parent AKA Dudley Colley of Dublin’s Dudley Corporation is ten tracks of self-proclaimed “spare-room recorded bedroom classics”. Knowing self-deprecation aside, it’s most definitely not a “disaster” from the musician. With ridiculously infectious melodies, Of Montreal-esque harmonies and Postal Service-like beats melding very nicely across a collection of tracks, the album evokes, at different points, the likes of The Books, Pinback and Metronomy. According to Colley, the album – released in advance of The Dudley Corporation’s fifth studio album – is his first solo “misadventure”, recorded in between school runs and…

  • Premiere: Swimmers – Body Ahernia

    April 15, 2015 - By 

    A week on from the release of stellar debut track, ‘Lose Myself’, Dublin band Swimmers have given us an exclusive first look at the video for its equally impressive follow-up, ‘Body Ahernia’. According to Niall Jackson from the band, it is “a track about getting death out of the way in order to enjoy living. The sooner we all die the sooner we can stop worrying about it, so I died a few years ago and have had a ball since. The title track is a tribute to the late Bobby Aherne who isn’t dead at all but rather instilling a very…

  • Stream: And So I Watch You From Afar – Redesigned A Million Times

    April 15, 2015 - By 

    A few days on from playing new material to a handful of fans and friends at a secret show in Belfast, And So I Watch You From Afar are streaming the triumphant ‘Redesigned A Million Times’. Taken from their new album, Heirs, is track has a distinctly more linear, pop-centric feel to previous material, whilst maintaining some of the classic hallmarks of the Northern Irish quartet’s sound. ASIWYFA play Dublin’s Olympia on June 19 and Belfast’s Mandela Hall on June 20 as part of a massive European tour. Go here to win tickets to the former show.

  • Watch: SOAK – Blud

    April 15, 2015 - By 

    With her debut album, Before We Forgot How To Dream, set for release via Rough Trade on June 1, SOAK has unveiled the video for ‘Blud’. Capturing different aspects of the Derry’s artist’s recent skatepark tour and more, the release is the second version of the video, the first, pre-Rough Trade video being released last year. Win tickets to SOAK’s Belfast show at the Empire on June 10 here.

  • Premiere: Robocobra Quartet – Wicker Bar

    April 14, 2015 - By 

    Set for release on April 21, Bomber by Belfast’s Robocobra Quartet captures a band whose brilliantly burgeoning sound gets more engrossing and self-assured with each release. Following on the heels of agog lead single ”80-88′, the brief but burrowing ‘Wicker Bar’ is a more inward-looking, abstracted affair, the band’s drummer/vocalist Chris Ryan meditating on backwashed thoughts and distant scenes, relaying beat-inflected stylings over dancing sax and a floating, spectral vocal ensemble courtesy of Patrick Gardiner. Sub-titled “four songs about three people, two novels, a failed assassination attempt and a volunteer-run community arts space” the EP was recorded by Ryan at Belfast’s Start Together…

  • Watch: The Wood Burning Savages – Lather, Rinse, Repeat

    April 7, 2015 - By 

    Derry alt-rock quartet The Wood Burning Savages aren’t exactly ones to slack with their music videos. Take the engaging, narrative-driven visual accompaniments to previous singles ‘Boom’ and ‘America’ – two strong, wonderfully considered videos that really manage to drive Paul Connolly’s words home. Directed by Cillian Farrell and Sonni Ross , the band have just went one better with the video for new single ‘Lather, Rinse, Repeat’, an instantly captivating accompaniment to a track bursting with upbeat gusto and eager flair. Check that out below.

  • Watch: White Sage – Parnell Street June 1955

    April 7, 2015 - By 

    When he’s not busy running Dublin’s newest record shop, Little Gem Records or performing as part of both I Heart The Monster Hero and GODHATESDISCO, Andy Walsh has been concocting his own inimitable, solo sonic wizardry as White Sage. The first manifestation of that is the perfectly phantasmal Way Beyond our Means, a Kraut-echoing, decidedly experimental quartet of tracks, including lead single ‘Parnell Street June 1955’. Evoking the likes of Neu! and Fujiya and Miyagi, the track swaggers forth with its chugging groove, broad synth shapes and twinkling notes marrying in a swirl of blissed-out haze. Watch the simple yet very…

  • Watch: Swimmers – Lose Myself

    April 7, 2015 - By 

    Dublin’s Niall Jackson is as chameleonic and active a musician that you’re ever liable to meet. A member of the likes of Bouts – not to mention the man behind recent homeless charity supergroup Christmas Hearts – Jackson also fronts three-piece Swimmers, who launch their new EP, The Burning Circus, upstairs in Whelan’s on Saturday, April 25. The lead single from that is ‘Lose Myself’, a drifting, nostalgia-laced ode to personal freedom and wanderlust of the soul, recorded by Justin Commins of Kill Krinkle Club. Go here for the EP launch’s Facebook event page and stream the single below.

  • Stream: Fabric – Jungle

    April 7, 2015 - By 

    Of the increasing number of new bands to emerge in Derry over the last while, Fabric are easily one of the more curious propositions. Having formed in the summer of last year, Ruairi Coyle (drums) and Lorcan Hamilton (bass/vox) are, according to their Facebook bio, “striving to invent a new sound by exploring many different genres/artists and musical styles.” You might as well aim high, right? Accompanied with wonderfully bombastic b-side ‘Ascot Blondes’, the duo’s debut single, ‘Jungle’ is certainly hard to pin down. At a push, we’d be inclined to say it sounds a bit like Death From Above 1979 jamming Joy Division (or…