• Stream: Ed Zealous – Diamonds For Eyes

    January 20, 2014 - By 

    Belfast-based quartet Ed Zealous have released ‘Diamonds The Eyes’, the latest single to be taken from their forthcoming debut album, Wired. A typically starry-eyed slice of dancefloor-flooding electro-pop, the three-and-a-half minute track comes after the release of the singles ‘Medicines’, ‘Thanks A Million’ and ‘Telepaths’. Check out our exclusive track-by-track preview of Wired here. Wired will be officially launched at Belfast’s Limelight 2 on Thursday, February 20. Go here for the show’s Facebook event page and win tickets to the show here. Stream ‘Diamonds For Eyes’ via Bandcamp below.

  • Gig of the Week: Daniel Avery, Replete & Chris Hanna @ Aether & Echo

    January 20, 2014 - By 

    Set to take place at the new-fangled Aether and Echo in Belfast, our Gig of the Week this week is a bill topped by electronic artist Daniel Avery, a man responsible for one of the genre’s finest albums of last year, Drone Logic. Supporting Avery on the night is Champion Sound-signed, Kilkenny artist Peter Lawlor AKA Replete and Belfast-based producer and DJ Chris Hanna. Tickets cost £10 and are available at the door. Go here for the show’s Facebook event page.

  • Interview: Tera Melos

    January 19, 2014 - By 

    There are few bands who can write a song that is equally melodic, complex, and crushingly heavy in quite the way that Tera Melos do. Even in their earlier, scuzzier part of their career – when the three-piece’s songs really just sounded like a patchwork of fairly disparate ideas and virtuoso instrumentalism – their first, self-titled release was a group of nine songs, ‘Melody 1’ to ‘Melody 8’. The band have always shirked the “math-rock” genre that is often applied to them, and as their sound has developed it becomes easier to see why. Their sound has followed a very…

  • Lee Bannon – Alternate/Endings

    January 16, 2014 - By 

    Remember that excited, lose-yourself-in-something-primal feeling you had when music shook you so hard that you laughed but also cried at the same time? Well, let that explosive catharsis elude you no more, for 2014 has kicked off with Lee Bannon’s debut LP, a record fastened upon a foundation of shock, awe and a solid history of open-minded, experimental production. Having secured his reputation and cut his teeth producing hip hop that’s more avant-garde than balls-to-the-wall, Bannon continues to explore the junglist sensibilities he began to display in 2013 with his latest LP, Alternate/Endings. Bearing in mind that hip hop and…

  • Belfast Film Festival: Dawn of the Dead

    January 16, 2014 - By 

    Following the sold out success of the Suspria live soundtrack in August, George Romero’s 1978 cult classic Dawn Of The Dead will undergo a live scoring by  Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin line-up on Saturday, April 5 as part of Belfast Film Festival 2014. According to the Waterfront’s official website, “The group produced a full score to the film and will treat Belfast audiences to thudding beats, wordless synthesized vocals, power chords and one of the most influential apocalyptic soundtracks ever produced.” A bona fide zombie classic, Dawn of the Dead (also known internationally as Zombi) was selected as one of The 500 Greatest…

  • Spaceman: A Harry Nilsson Tribute Playlist

    January 15, 2014 - By 

    Twenty years ago today – in January 15, 1994 – the towering, thoroughly one-of-a-kind musical genius of one Harry Nilsson fizzled out for good in a home in Agoura Hills, California. At the age of just 52 years old, the New York singer-songwriter bid farewell to a plain that he documented and distilled so incisively and astutely not only via his extremely eclectic original compositions but also in his various collaborations and innumerable reworkings of music written by peers and legends alike. Perhaps most famous for a song that he did not write – the timeless ‘Everybody’s Talkin’ from Midnight Cowboy…

  • Label Mixtape: Bella Union

    January 24, 2014 - By 

    In the second installment of Label Mixtape, we take a look at one of the UK’s finest ever independent record labels, Bella Union. Initiated in 1997 by Cocteau Twins‘ founder/lead guitarist Robin Guthrie and the band’s bassist Simon Raymonde, the label has went on to put out records – many of them debut releases – by some of the greatest songwriting voices of the last twenty years. With a implicit penchant for artists masterfully meddling in the realms of indie rock, alt-folk and dream-pop, the label won the 2010 Independent Record Company of the Year – an accolade very much coinciding with releases…

  • Watch: Versives – Just Once

    January 15, 2014 - By 

    Having impressed us with their Harpoon EP early last year  – and the top-drawer ‘Two Enemies‘ before that – Cork electronic duo Versives will release their eagerly-anticipated debut album, Prussian Blushes, via Blind Faith Digital in February. This fact has afforded us an opportunity to revisit the pair’s latest single, the majestic yet minimal three-and-a-half minute track ‘Just Once’. Recorded “during some cold and dark afternoons in a little cottage in the countryside” it really extols the virtues of Alan Matthews and Kevin J. Power’s hugging brand of restrained and evocative electronica. Check out the video for the song below and check…

  • Watch: Effy – Move

    January 15, 2014 - By 

    Kildare-derived, Dublin-based electronic two-piece Kieran Craddock and Peter Fleming AKA Effy have unveiled their latest single, ‘Move’, a nigh on seven-minute unravelling electronic odyssey. Speaking to us about the track, the duo said, “The track is actually a couple months old at this stage and as with all of our tracks it came about through messing about and shit in the studio.” “Our Disco’s Dead release [Forth/The Look] should be out real soon and we’ll be announcing details of our next EP shortly after, the pair continued. On top of that we’re trying to gig as much as possible”. Watch the video for…