• Deep Down South: Terriers – Let’s Hear It For The Boys (Album Premiere)

    March 23, 2015 - By 

    In a special two-part edition of Deep Down South this week, we kick off by exclusively premiering the brand-new record from Cork post-hardcore hunks Terriers, ahead of its release on April 4th at the Cork Community Print Shop, with Hope is Noise and Chameleon Fields in support. Since coming together in 2011, the four-piece have slowly become one of the fixtures of Cork’s gigging picture, marrying post-hardcore heaviosity and classic-rock accessibility with bro-dude humour and a sunny, indie-friendly disposition. Debut EP Girl, I’m Gon’ Do Right By You, released in 2012, showcases this blend at its infancy, boasting mathy instrumental…

  • TTA Session #007: Ciaran Lavery

    March 22, 2015 - By 

    We’ve said it a few times before but some things just need repeating: Ciaran Lavery is easily one of the most naturally gifted Irish singer-songwriters of his or any other generation. With an extraordinary voice schooled in heartache and experience, Lavery’s restrained yet fevered acoustic tales harbour some truly wonderful turns of phrase and gently-strummed songwriting brilliance. Filmed/edited by Colm Laverty, and featuring sound by Chris Ryan, we recently captured Lavery performing two of his very best songs – ‘Shame’ and ‘Left For America’ – early in the morning outside Belfast’s iconic Duke of York on Corporation Street. As well delivering two superb renditions of both songs, Lavery…

  • EP Premiere: R51 – Pillow Talk

    March 23, 2015 - By 

    Belfast-based quintet R51 have come on leaps and bounds over the last couple of years. Having cultivated a perfectly pulverizing live show and an effects-laden, shoegaze-tinged noise-pop craft that continues to surprise and intrigue, the Melyssa Shannon-fronted quartet will launch their debut EP, Pillow Talk, at Belfast’s Bar Sub on Wednesday night (April 25). In his review of the EP for the Thin Air, Will Murphy said, “Each one of the songs has something to recommend, be it the Sigur Ros vibe permeating throughout the EP closer, ‘Seaweed’, the spaced out verses on ‘I Hate That Too’ or the monstrously huge chorus on ‘Pillow…

  • Kindred: Ital w/ Matt Burns (Twitch) @ Menagerie, Belfast

    March 21, 2015 - By 

    Tonight, as we approach the beginning of the weekend with all the vigour one can muster from a Monday through Friday work-a-day existence, the only logical decision is to go big or go home, right? Choosing the former, the ‘go big option’, with total and firm disregard for the inevitable suffering to be endured post-partying, our sights are set firmly on The Menagerie, Belfast, so that we may dance, groove and lap up some of the finest house and techno courtesy of Brooklyn-based producer and electronica explorer, Ital, AKA Daniel Martin-McCormick. Kicking off ever so slightly later than planned, we…

  • Cobain: Montage of Heck

    March 22, 2015 - By 

    In April of 1994, Kurt Cobain died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He left behind a wife, an infant daughter and a legacy as one of the last true rock gods. In the intervening 21 years, a messianic persona has been grafted onto this young man from Aberdeen, Washington. His face is plastered on t-shirts and posters the world over to the point where he has become an apolitical Che Guevara for angry misunderstood adolescents to identify with. There is a plethora of retrospective articles, unauthorized biographies and crackpot theories relating to the man, his music and…

  • Monday Mixtape: Cathy Pellow (Sargent House)

    March 23, 2015 - By 

    We’re very pleased to present this week’s Monday Mixtape, featuring none other than Sargent House founder and owner Cathy Pellow. A true champion of independent music and some of the very best artists around, Pellow’s mixtape features several unreleased tracks from the likes of R. Ariel, Mutoid Man, And So I Watch You From Afar and No Spill Blood, as well as released material from acts including Helms Alee and Wovenhand. And So I Watch You From Afar – Wasps (from Heirs, out on May 4) Blis. – Floating Somewhere High and Above (from Starting Fires In My Parents House) Empty Houses –…

  • Rave New World (20/3)

    March 20, 2015 - By 

    With Antoin Lindsay temporarily AWOL (he’s moving country, ok? Enough with those crazy thoughts about being on the run from loan sharks, etc.) Aidan Hanratty delivers this week’s Rave New World on his most capable lonesome. Electronic music is a thing, and a very good thing. Embrace it like a long-lost brother, you cold, inconsiderate swine. Only joking – you’re lovely. GIGS Mud: Bodytonic present Blawan & Sunil Sharpe at The Twisted Pepper Friday, March 20 Last year Sunil Sharpe went b2b with Ben UFO. Rather than Ben going harder, Sunil went deeper, showing the breadth of this local hero’s ability.…

  • Classic Album: Pink Floyd – Obscured by Clouds

    March 20, 2015 - By 

    In the wake of the solar eclipse that has captured people’s imaginations, and clogged up their social media feeds, Steven Rainey takes a bit of artistic licence and delves back into Pink Floyd’s history to rediscover an album that finds them revelling in the darkness caused by the blotting out of the sun.Technically, Obscured by Clouds is a soundtrack album for the French film La Vallee, a reasonably obscure oddity that finds a woman going on a voyage of self-discovery in New Guinea. I haven’t seen it, and I’m betting you haven’t either (and if you have, fair play to you –…

  • Belfast Film Festival Programme Launch

    March 19, 2015 - By 

    Set to take place in venues across the city from April 16-26, the programme for the 15th Belfast Film Festival has been announced. As is very much its custom, the festival has an extraordinarily diverse line-up up its sleeve this year, with categories boasting categories including New Cinema, Altered States & Twisted Corners, Northern Irish Independents/Shorts, as well as Opening & Closing films I Am Belfast, Shooting For Socrates and The Survivalist. Check out the full programme and buy tickets at the Belfast Film Festival website here.

  • Watch: All Tvvins – Thank You

    March 19, 2015 - By 

    Having received its premiere on Zane Lowe’s Radio 1 programme last month, Dublin duo All Tvvins have unveiled the rather fabulous video for their triumphant debut single, ‘Thank You’. In January we summed up a live version of the track, released last year as “A charming and bewitching math-pop track released as a live video from the post-Adebisi supergroup. Whip-smart in the composition, and beautifully restrained in the delivery, it is a wonderful dichotomy of heart-warming melodies and existential uncertainty, sealed with searing, aching swell guitar.” The video for the single – a hyper-disco, ballerina-centric mini-masterpiece – was directed by Brendan…