• Stream: Oh Joy – Cab Sad

    May 17, 2018 - By 

    We have a lot of time for Dublin indie rock trio Oh Joy here at TTA. They mean it, man. They really mean it. Recorded by Liam Mulvaney at Bow Lane, the brisk, heat-stung ache of new single ‘Cab Sad’ captures that intent, psychic wanderlust and heartbreak across 141 all-too-short seconds. Taken from their forthcoming EP, Good Grief – which is released on June 8 – the song is, as you might gleam from even a cursory listen, “about falling in love and how it can make you feel like a pathetic mess”. Ollie Moyles, Oh Joy lead songwriter wrote the…

  • Stream: Girls Names – Karoline

    April 27, 2018 - By 

    Belfast’s Girls Names are sitting on one of the Irish albums of the year. Set for release on June 15 via Tough Love, Stains on Silence finds the three-piece at their most vital and experimental to date. Recorded in various locations including Belfast’s Start Together Studio with Ben McAuley, Cully’s home and the band’s practice space, spontaneous creation, cut-up techniques and self-editing took centre-stage for the first time. “We started tearing the material apart and rebuilding, re-editing and re-recording different parts in my home in early Autumn last year,” says frontman Cathal Cully. “When we got them to a place we were happier…

  • Stream: Any Anything – First Time

    April 13, 2018 - By 

    Galway’s Any Anything formed from out of a shared appreciation of pop music and hash. After the unfortunate disbanding of their former band Drown – who we were fans of – vocalist/guitarist Robert Dalton and drummer Chris Connors picked up the discarded post-punk and shoegaze remnents and sought to reassemble them with a newfound sheen. Spending the past several months recording with producer Owen Geaney, the resulting EP is one that oozes with a rediscovered confidence, as their debut single ‘First Time’ will attest to. With additional vocals and synths provided on the record by former Drown member Laura McGennis and with new recruits Morgan Doogue (Guitar)…

  • Stream: Deadman’s Ghost – Trip Switch Down

    April 11, 2018 - By 

    Belfast producer and musician Jason Mills aka Deadman’s Ghost has returned with ‘Trip Switch Down’, a track featured in the trailer for this year’s Belfast Film Festival. Also set to feature as the opening track of a new Deadman’s Ghost EP set for release later this year, the track – which unfurls from drifting ambient electronica to full-blown, wonderfully layered Technicolour -was engineered in collaboration with David Baxter, who programmed the beats and had a hand in the overall production. The guitars and ebow drones that colour the track were largely recorded by Simon Mateer at MFR Recordings. Belfast Film festival runs…

  • Stream: Meltybrains? – Horizon

    April 9, 2018 - By 

    Remember Dublin experimental maestros Meltybrains? Good – you should. Right up there with the country’s most singular sonic propositions, the five-piece have returned with their first new material in 18 months via ‘Horizon’. Unsurprisingly, it kicks several shades of ass. Starting on a slithering pattern evoking St. Vincent’s ‘Rattlesnake’, the track bursts into full-blown cosmic-tech-metal bombast in ways only Meltybrains? can conjure. And that’s just taking into consideration the first 30 seconds. It’s a first taste of what is set to be a busy return for the band. “We’ve been very busy recently, for the past year and a half we’ve been recording loads…

  • Stream: Lambing Season – Holywood and Girls

    April 6, 2018 - By 

    A self-proclaimed “journey from fear of the unknown, fear of change, fear of commitment to joyous absolution” ‘Holywood and Girls is the new single from Belfast band Lambing Season. Following on from the release of last December’s ‘Memory and the Flood’, the track – which was recorded by Ben McAuley at Belfast’s Start Together Studios and will feature on their forthcoming album The Quickening – unfurls from soothing, Quarterstick Records-esque jangle to reveal a band equally adept at emotionally-charged, harmony-driven pop-rock balladry and jagged alt-rock experimentalism. Nowadays, it’s tricky carving out a niche in this particularly sonic realm – for…

  • Stream: Dandy’s Loft – Human Dust

    March 23, 2018 - By 

    We have sang the praises of Belfast-based five-piece Dandy’s Loft for some time now. The band, who call Lurgan home, are set to release their highly-anticipated debut album in the coming months. New single and follow-up to January’s ‘Shadows In Motion‘ is the ‘Human Dust’, a self-proclaimed glimpse into the band’s less guitar-orientated material on the album and a real spectral feat. Via a mélange of strings, submerged vocals, synthesiser and some stellar production work, it single-handedly reveals Dandy’s Loft to be much more than any safe or straightforward genre attributed to them thus far. In short: this is vital, inspired and majestic stuff. Stream below.

  • Stream: Group Zero – Pursuit (Black Bones Dreams Mix)

    February 23, 2018 - By 

    A highlight from last year’s Structures and Light, ‘Pursuit’ by Belfast’s Cathal Cully AKA Group Zero has been reworked by production and DJ duo Black Bones. Extroverting the inward-looking subtlety of the original, the track has been re-woven as an early-morning dancefloor gem. Speaking of the track, Black Bones said, ““We wanted to lean the track more towards the club without losing it’s essence. Familiar noises mixed with an unfamiliar end. A sort of lost on the dance floor fog at 5am when you should have really gone home a long time ago. The joy of being there slightly mixed with…

  • Stream: Simon Herron – For a Minute

    February 15, 2018 - By 

    Hailing from Derry, alternative-folk singer-songwriter Simon Herron plays, in his own words, “quiet, creaky, melancholy songs. Mostly.” It’s a wonderfully terse, and therefore very apt description for an artist who clearly chooses his word carefully in song. Taken from his forthcoming EP Now I’ve Closed My Eyes, ‘For a Minute’ is a wonderfully-woven tale of fingerpicked guitar patterns, sparse percussion and Herron’s evocative lyricism. Speaking of the track, the Liverpool-based musician said, “’For A Minute’ is essentially a tribute to the life and work of my late Grandfather, the Irish poet and playwright, Francis Harvey. His work deals with both the people and…

  • Stream: Come On Live Long – Sum Of Its Parts (Rian Trench Remix)

    February 15, 2018 - By 

    Whether you look to his work as one-half of Solar Bears, his solo project Trenchurian, making up one quarter of Leo Drezden, or co-heading recording and production duo The Deaf Brothers with Robert Watson aka SCAN, Rian Trench is constantly finding new ways to demonstrate his remarkable versatility. Currently making his way through Mexico, the Wicklow producer and musician has recently released a suitably blissed-out re-imagining of ‘Sum of its Parts’ by Come On Live Long. Marrying flourishes of shapeshifting synth and a host of reposed beats, it’s a sublime effort that forges completely new from the original.