• Video Premiere: Ordnance Survey – Moving Statues

    September 7, 2020 - By 

    Over two decades into producing music under various monikers, most notably Somadrone, Neil O’Connor is rightly regarded as a giant in Irish electronic music. Last year, in the guise of Ordnance Survey, he revealed yet another string to his bow. Accompanied by the likes of Sean McErlaine, Linda Buckley, and Tortoise’s John McEntire, Relative Phase was a delicately emphatic release that wielded nuance and restraint. Next month, O’Connor will unveil its follow-up. Backed by an array of musicians from traditional and contemporary music, Ampere is set for release on October 1st. Lead single ‘Moving Statues’ is a sublime snapshot of what to expect. Featuring Dónal Lunny…

  • Video Premiere: Gnarkats – Volume Up

    September 7, 2020 - By 

    Four days after lockdown hit way back in March, Belfast alt-rock threesome Gnarkats unveiled one of their strongest efforts to date, ‘Dreamers‘. Last week, the band went one further with the fuzzed-out indie-pop idealism of ‘Volume Up’. Today, we’re pleased to present a first look at the single’s homemade visuals. Featuring footage of the band zig-zagging across London on a pilgrimage to see The Strokes at All Points East last year, it distils the forward-moving spirit of both the song and Gnarkats as one of Northern Ireland’s most forward-moving alternative acts. Revisit our Track Record with the band here. Photo by Niall Fegan

  • Video Premiere: Meljoann – Business Card

    August 18, 2020 - By 

    Hands down one of the country’s most idiosyncratic solo artists, Meljoann is a musical mind positively resistant to second-guessing. Taken from her forthcoming “anti-capitalised themed” album HR, recently singles ‘Company Retreat’ and ‘O Supervisor’ presented an artist whose sonic vision is matched by a perfectly unpigeonholeable visual body of work. New single ‘Business Card’ goes one further. Accompanied by easily one of our favourite Irish videos of the year thus far, it’s a deft and masterfully disorientating effort from an artist very much on the rise.

  • Premiere: Fixity – FIXITY 6

    August 14, 2020 - By 

    The music of Fixity, aka Irish multi-instrumentalist Dan Walsh, has always been perfectly thicket-like – a dense, sprawling mesh in which to get lost, happily stuck even. Since mid-2016, it’s been a conduit for all kinds of probing, forward-moving forays into God-knows-where. Spanning live EPs and first-rate LPs including last year’s No Man Can Tell – a release TTA’s Ryan O’Neill called “a brilliantly loose, shapeshifting record that is quite difficult to compare to anything else” – Walsh and co-conspirators including tenor saxophonist Emil Nerstrand have consistently delivered carefully-crafted, often masterfully mind-melting music. New release FIXITY 6 doesn’t deviate from this tried-and-test…

  • Video Premiere: Feather Beds – Fragile

    August 5, 2020 - By 

    Masterfully blurring the lines between dream-pop, shoegaze, electronica, ambient, and experimentalism, London-based Dublin artist Michael Orange aka Feather Beds is easily one of the island’s most idiosyncratic musical minds. Premiered this morning on Mary Anne Hobbs’ BBC 6 Music show, his new single ‘Fragile’ is a first-rate first taste for newcomers. Doubling up as the lead single from his forthcoming EP, Fragile/Temper, it marries carefully-crafted soundscapes with a rush of 8bit blips to create something that, despite nodding to the likes of Ariel Pink and The Cure, is unmistakably his. Just as inviting is Orange’s homespun visuals for the single, which you can…

  • Premiere: Dutch Schultz – Start Me

    July 30, 2020 - By 

    In March 2016, we hosted a show that would double up as the last we’d heard from Belfast alt-rock quartet Dutch Schultz in over four years. Blessedly, out of the blue, last month came a signal. Via trouncing new single, ‘Brutus’, the Willy Mundell-fronted foursome were back just when we needed them the most. Ahead of release tomorrow, we’re pleased to present the first look and listen to its follow-up, ‘Start Me’. The second single to be taken from the band’s forthcoming, Russ Russell-produced album, Friends Like Brutus, it’s a typically earworming effort tackling, in their worlds, “consumerism amid the pressures of…

  • Premiere: nimf – Cloudy Dreams

    July 30, 2020 - By 

    Hailing from Arklow in Co. Wicklow, the self-proclaimed “sugar-pop” performance of Aoibhin Redmond aka nimf filters vocals and theremin via a prismatic, deftly-produced sensibility. Having shined, live, at Whelan’s Ones To Watch, as well as the likes of Arcadian Field Festival, The Button Factory and BIMM Midnight Hour in Whelans, her craft is an open invitation to escape everyday waking life and to yield to the more phantasmal side of one’s mind. With nods to artists including Yaeji, Kero Kero Bonito, and CHAI, her sound feels just as comparable to the likes of Tune-Yards and Micachu & The Shapes. It’s…

  • Video Premiere: Proper Micro NV – So Much To Give & Live For

    July 21, 2020 - By 

    Back in May, Limerick experimental electronic artist Rory Hall aka Proper Micro NV delivered hands down one of his strongest efforts to date. Taken from his forthcoming new album – a released in which Hall says he has set to  “push the boundaries a little bit” – ‘So Much To Give & Live For’ was warped and propulsive in all the right places. Today, we’re pleased to present a first look at the track’s accompanying seven-minute-long video. Speaking about the video, Hall said, “When considering the visual aspect of this new collection of tracks, I definitely wanted to go a little bit…

  • Premiere: Charles Hurts – Living Under Lockdown

    June 26, 2020 - By 

    Though there have been many reunions and recommencements in Irish music since we launched back in May 2013, none have demanded our attention more than the long-awaited return of Charles Hurts. A solo moniker of Belfast musician Philip Quinn aka Gross Net, who is also a one-third of Grave Goods and guitarist with the currently inactive Girls Names, ‘Living Under Lockdown’ arrives eight years on from his last Charles Hurts release (Blue Valentine, a stellar split with Hello Translinks? on CF/Recs). Taken from forthcoming three-track EP Squashed, which is released on July 3, it’s a typically phantasmal effort from Quinn, and a wonderfully balmy rumination…

  • Premiere: Waldorf & Cannon – Dear Richard

    June 19, 2020 - By 

    Many Irish acts have kept remarkably busy in the age of lockdown, not least Derry/Donegal twosome Waldorf & Cannon. Hands down one of the North West’s finest fuzzed-up, no-nonsense alt-rock propositions, today the band release The Lockdown Special, a self-produced, six-track release bringing together live versions of tracks including ‘Syntax Error’ with material including new single ‘Dear Richard’. Doubling up as one of the duo’s strongest single efforts to date, its video – which we’re pleased to premiere below – was shot entirely in lockdown. As DIY goes, Waldorf & Cannon make it their mission statement. Have a first look at the video, and…