• Stream: Zeropunkt – Bitch Nails

    Long one of our favourites in the (admittedly bereft) Irish free psychedelic improvised scene, Dublin-based outfit ¡NO! have announced a name change to the substantially more Googlable Zeropunkt, and with it have issued standalone single, ‘Bitch Nails’, available as a free download. On the name change, the band are self-awarely oblique: “The 0ught of N0ught is the point of zer0. NO. N. 0. The zer0 Number. The p0iNt. Zeropunkt.” Following a quiet 2018 for the generally prolific – 10 albums since 2014 – outfit, this single comes with the announcement of two forthcoming LPs, Clap Your Hands Say No and Open War, as well as the announcement of…

  • Somadrone – Wellpark Avenue

    Dublin producer Neil O’Connor AKA Somadrone has announced details of his forthcoming sixth studio album. The full-length follow-up to 2015’s stellar Oracle, Wellpark Avenue will be released on February 1. According to O’Connor, the album will mark a departure from previous outings. With “dystopia, LSD, Timothy Leary and TV music of the 1970s” all contributing to the sound of the album – elements of which have permeated his work over his two decades of activity – it will forsake drum machines and heavy synth usage in favour of a return to traditional song and instruments akin to his 2010 album Depth of Field. O’Connor has also said…

  • Preview & Festival Mixtape: Le Guess Who? 2017

    Laying comfortably in the shadow of Amsterdam is the chilled-out university town of Utrecht, where the red light district is gladly a distant memory, and typically Dutch architecture and culture are in great supply. While this particularly from of citywide festival can be tough to pull off, Le Guess Who? has developed and diversified every year, offering something for everyone. A holiday-planner’s dream, it boasts the artistic ambition with none of the associated pretentiousness. Many of the performances take place in the impressive TivoliVredenburg or multitude of other venues within walking distance. Most music starts after 5pm, offering the chance to visit the Rietveld Schröder House, tour the…

  • The Bonk – The Bonk Seems To Be A Verb

    Having released a string of stellar singles over the last two years, Dublin & Cork-based experimental, orchestral, psychedelic garage rock project The Bonk released their debut LP, The Bonk Seems To Be A Verb, on October 6. Recorded over the last few years while the outfit have been together, it’s released on cassette through Drogheda arts & culture collective Thirty Three – 45. Although the project is based around the compositions of frontman Phil Christie – of O Emperor, the substantial cast of musicians credited on the album includes some of the island’s most respected artists & virtuosi: Phil O’ Gorman – Guitar Brendan Fennessy – Drums Jim…

  • Video Premiere: Tuath – Cuz Why!?

    Arguably the northern province’s foremost purveyors of hepped-up-on-goofballs psychedelia, the bilingual Tuath, have a new single, ‘Cuz Why?!’ and we’re delighted to premiere it here. As opposed to the usual shoegaze & trip-hop-laced excursions the band are used to – watch the video for their last single, ‘Youth‘ – filtered through frontman Robert Mulhern’s psychedelic lens, this song adds post-punk to their considerable palette. Mulhern has drawn a consistent thematic throughline through Tuath, of the questioning of accepted ideals & organised ideology. They continue to effuse their worldview with a half-maniacal cackle, half-nihilistic-shrug, helped along by its kitchen sink absurdist imagery. He says of the…

  • Wild Rocket – Dissociation Mechanics

    Eclectic Dublin psychedelic groove-laden space rock outfit Wild Rocket have announced their second album is called Dissociation Mechanics. The five-track album will be released through Irish DIY record label & distro Art For Blind. In the meantime, check out their 2014 debut album, Geomagnetic Hallucinations: Geomagnetic Hallucinations by WILD ROCKET

  • Cheatahs – Mythologies

    Mythologies is an appropriate name, with the London-formed Americo-Germanic-Canadian quartet Cheatahs once more harking back to subgenre worship of their indie rock, psych, Krautrock and, most prominently, shoegaze forefathers. Not even two years removed from the last record, things are getting more ethereal, with the emphasis on the psych and Krautrock, drastically reducing their tendency towards the more straightforward rockers. Mythologies’ level of gratification, as opposed to the instantaneity of their eponymous 2014 debut, comes in – appropriately enough – gushing waves. A lush production with a greater grasp on dynamics, it’s a record as much about textures as songs, even moreso than…