Recorded, mixed and mastered by Lee McMahon, Belfast-based punk quartet Safe Ships have released a brand new track, the ever-so-slightly self-referential ‘Safest of Ships’. The song is the b-side to the band’s forthcoming new single ‘Fighting Fit’, which will be launched on Wednesday, October 2 at Belfast’s Voodoo. Support on the night comes from Past Victories, Bellos and Tied To Machines. Go here for more info. Stream the rollicking ‘Safest of Ships’ via Bandcamp below.
Set for release on September 7 for Cassette Store Day, Dublin noise-pop band September Girls are streaming their new single ‘Ships’. The band’s hand-crafted cassette will be available to buy from the Haus of PINS website for £5 from the date of release. September Girls play Distillation 04 at Belfast’s Oh Yeah Centre on Friday, September 20 alongside Sea Pinks and Affleck. Stream ‘Ships’ via Soundcloud below.
In days of old when gamers were bold and self-replenishing health bars weren’t invented, videogames were hard. Rock hard. Titles such as Super Star Wars, Castlevania and Ghosts ‘n Goblins made no concessions to ninnyish players reliant upon bountiful 1ups, mid-level game saves and unlimited continues. This was in part due to the influence of those Japanese fans who preferred their games to be from the more punishing end of the difficulty scale. Further, the limited memory of consoles meant that if you died you were whooshed back to the beginning of a given level. Precision timing was required to avoid spiked ceilings and bottomless…
Co. Wicklow post-rock band God Is An Astronaut are streaming their sixth studio album, Origins, via Bandcamp. Their first album as a five-piece the album “cements their place as one of the world’s most intense, musically – and visually – inventive post rock bands”. It also sees the Torsten Kinsella-fronted band’s return to Rocket Girl Records, who released their debut album back in 2005. Check out the band’s new video for ‘Reverse World’ and stream/buy Origins below.
This makes absolutely no sense to me. I have no idea why a label would release an album like Superchunk‘s I Hate Music at the tail end of the Summer. This is a record that was perfectly designed for golden hour driving sessions and mid-day drinks in the park. It’s an album that brings a near-insurmountable level of joy and energy with every song. It’s hard not to listen to this sweet little treat of a record without having a stupidly big, ear to ear grin plastered to your face. What’s even more impressive about this whole situation is that…
Our intrepid photographer Liam Kielt was in attendance at their third installment of Distillation at Belfast’s Oh Yeah Centre. Headlined by Hornets, the showcase also featured suitably blinding sets from Belfast-based three-piece PigsAsPeople and Dublin band No Spill Blood. The fourth edition of Distillation on Friday, September 20 will be a Culture Night special, featuring Sea Pinks, September Girls and Affleck. Go here for more information. Check out Mr Kielt’s from the third night below!
Taken from their incredible new album Don’t Try, Derry quartet Jetplane Landing have released the video to their new single, ‘My Radio Heart’. According to a blurb written to accomany the video: “reflecting on the life-affirming nature of music and its power to change our lives; from Jerry Lee-Lewis to Ian McKaye; Jetplane loves artists that inform the world in which we live and kick all our asses. “My Radio Heart” is about a love for music that never dies.” The video itself – directed by Jack Wilkinson and edited by Michael Barwise – was shot over a two day…
Galway native Olan Stephens AKA The Bedroom has unveiled the video to his new song, ‘The Big Up’. The latest audiovisual offering from the ex-Eatenbybears member The Bedroom produces, according to Stephens, “a distinct blend of experimental pop with an emphasis on bass and beat heavy hip-hop production.” Sounds about right to us. ‘The Big Up’ is Stephen’s second solo single, the wonderfully idiosyncratic video for which was directed/produced by the 21-year-old himself and filmed by Richard L Butler. Watch the video below.
“Nothing like this sound I make that only lasts the season and is only heard by bedroom kids who buy it for that reason.” Matt Berninger probably wasn’t singing specifically about chillwave on the National’s ‘Lit Up’, but he might as well have been. Like anything sporting the “nü-” prefix or the NME’s current, desperate hawking of “psych”, chillwave was one of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-em musical trends that sounded great on first exposure but rapidly vanished like the one-trick ponies they so obviously were. With its easy-to-digest blend of muffled vocal harmonies, shoegaze fuzz and blissed-out Balearic beats it’s not hard…
The story is a sad one, told many times, the story of their life and trying times. As much as the musical climate of the times, REM are a product of geography, rooted in the landscape and traditions of the American South. In the same way that The Clash will always be intrinsically linked to London, The Doors to Los Angeles, or Joy Division to Manchester, REM could only have crawled from the South. Athens, Georgia is a college town. People come and go, some stay, some don’t. So it was back in 1980 when the four men that made…