• EP Premiere: Lasertom – Super Saor

    March 28, 2018 - By 

    One half of Choice Prize-winning Dublin duo Ships, Simon Cullen has made sublime electronic sounds under the Lasertom moniker for a number of years now. Having focused on the former project from the last couple of years, Cullen is back in solo mode via Super Saor, a brand new three-track EP, produced written and recorded this year. With all three tracks clocking in over 7 minutes ago, it’s a deceptively expansive, synth-drenched, earworm-heavy release brilliantly blurring the lines between electro, house and nu-disco. Featuring artwork by John Rooney, have a first listen to the EP in full below. Super Saor by Lasertom

  • Premiere: tethers – Television Dreams of Human Beings

    March 22, 2018 - By 

    Formed by friends, guitarist/vocalist Zach Trouton and bassist Dane Kemp, and later joined by drummer Alistair Brattle, tethers are a Northern Irish three-piece whose rock-pop sound bears the imprint of jazz and contemporary classical influence, as well as the lyrical influence of science fiction and folklore. Next month, the band will release their debut EP, Skinwalker, via their own imprint, Swallow Song records. According to the Lisburn-based threesome, they’re re-envisioning the term – which, in Navajo folklore, denotes a shape-shifting with that possesses the forms of animals – “as a future slang for artificially-enhanced humanoids”. Doubling up as both the release’s lead track and tethers’…

  • Premiere: Bosco Ramos – Mayflies

    March 19, 2018 - By 

    Belfast bass and drums punk rock duo Bosco Ramos made a sizable dent with the release of their fuzzed-out debut EP, Signs of Life, last year. Today, they’re back with their most emphatic single effort to date in the form of nuanced, unravelling alt rock blitz ‘Mayflies’. A song about “harnessing that thing which allows you to think for yourself and resist what you know to be wrong” it’s a typically groove-laden assault from Phil Brown (bass/vocals) and Callum McGeown (drums/vocals), rounded off with the pair’s progressively singular brand of melodic-yet-pummelling punk rock. In other words, we fucking love it. ‘Mayflies’ is…

  • Premiere: Agu – Ines

    March 6, 2018 - By 

    Originally from Poland, Agu is a Galway-based artist whose music embraces a variety of languages and musical influences. Premiered here, her new single ‘Ines’ is a wistful and nuanced confessional ode striking a midpoint between indie-folk, solo post-rock and ambient. Taken from her forthcoming new album – the Tony Higgins-produced follow-up 2015’s Ke Světlu (Towards the Light) – Agu has said of the single: “It reflects a period of my life that changed everything. It is about realising you are suffocating even though you don’t have to. All you need to do is to spread your wings and try to fly. Leave…

  • Premiere: The Shaker Hymn – Colour Of The Holy Sun

    March 5, 2018 - By 

    The follow-up to 2016’s gem-laced Do You Think You’re Clever?, Cork alt/psych-pop five-piece The Shaker Hymn will release one of the most anticipated Irish albums of 2018, Colour Of The Holy Sun, later this year Singer Caoilian Sherlock said of the album: “We don’t often write new songs out of an improv “jam” type of thing – but this started as a little two chords warm up at rehearsal a few months back. I went away and wrote a melody, and lyrically I was aiming for a joyous apocalypse kind of thing. A song to celebrate The Rapture heading our way.…

  • Premiere: Somadrone – Juniper & Lamplight

    March 1, 2018 - By 

    The second single from his forthcoming sixth studio album, Wellpark Avenue, Juniper & Lamplight by Neil O’Connor AKA Somadrone is a sublime, genre-warping reworking of Simon and Garfunkel’s 1969 song, ‘For Emily Where I May Find Her’. According to O’Connor, what began as a simple reworking, soon turned into a fully orchestrated soundscape where simple electronics weave to and fro. Referencing acts like Scott Walker and Air, harpsichords drive the instrumentation into a lush and psychedelic pool of sounds. Wellpark Avenue is out on April 10. Have a first look at the suitably cosmic visuals for the single below.

  • Premiere: Tracy Bruen – Fall Away

    February 8, 2018 - By 

    The name Tracy Bruen will be a familiar one to many who have spent some time in the heart of Galway. A singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, theatre director and actor, her music blurs the lines between folk, pop, prog and classical, as well as theatrical influences. A keen eye will also know her as the woman behind the Galway’s legendary Roisin Dubh Open Mic night. Set to embark on a national and European tour from tomorrow, Bruen is back with the video for recent single ‘Fall Away’, a highlight from her ten-track debut album, Mirror. Confronting “a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and speaks against…

  • Premiere: Alana Henderson – Let This Remain (Live at the Telegraph Building)

    January 25, 2018 - By 

    Released in November last year, ‘Let This Remain’ by Alana Henderson perfectly distils the Belfast-based cellist and singer-songwriter’s carefully-composed, wonderfully idiosyncratic craft. Revealing the nuance and intimate nature of the song is a new video courtesy of Belfast photographer and filmmaker Joe Laverty. Directed and edited by Laverty – with additional camera work from Jude McCaffrey and Sharon Whittaker, and colour grading from Malachy Campbell – the video features Henderson performing the song with accompaniment from Pleasure Beach’s Alan Haslam at the Belfast Telegraph building, a stark, towering space that has since been reawakened as a venue. Unsurprisingly, the performance is nothing short of utterly…

  • Premiere: Warriors Of The Dystotheque – Hashtag feat. Tony Jarvis & Si Hayden

    January 22, 2018 - By 

    Warriors Of The Dystotheque are a trio of sound engineers, musicians, producers and DJs based in Derry, Coventry and New York respectively. Infusing dub electronics, jazz, psyche and garage, they are about to release their new album Madness in the Method. The group have been a quiet presence in the scene they find themselves in for years, having played DJ sets and touring gigs among the likes of Orbital, The Prodigy, The Happy Mondays, Pop Will Eat Itself, Saint Etienne and DJ Food. On this album then, they seem to be taking elements and stylistic flourishes from all of those contemporaries and…

  • Album Premiere: Laurie Shaw – Weird Weekends

    January 18, 2018 - By 

    Based in Cork, 23-year-old Wirral artist Laurie Shaw has self-released approximately 75 albums – as well as one record each on UK imprint Sunstone Records and Dublin’s Little L – over the last few years, steadily establishing himself as a prodigious artist with a strong DIY ethic. Tomorrow he releases his latest full-length, Weird Weekends. A self-proclaimed “nostalgic trip back to teenage-hood, a love letter to the small town of Kenmare where all these narratives originate from”, it’s a brilliantly-realised effort that veers between Bill Ryder Jones-conjuring indie (‘Shatterproof’), inward-looking ballads and laments (‘Skipped Period Blues’, ‘Pink Lightbulb’), as well as straight-up riff-slinging guitar rock. Conjuring…