In the latest installment of 16 For ’16 – a feature in which we preview sixteen of our favourite Irish acts that we’re certain will do great things in 2016 – Stevie Lennox introduces Belfast duo Apartments.
Photo by Liam Kielt
Fast-becoming the strongest single noun pluralisation-monikered emotional hardcore band on the island, Apartments released their 6-track official debut EP, Rush, in October, following a promising 2014 demo. Their sound is rooted in the kind of math-rock-tinged American Midwestern sound that’s been gestating in Ireland for the last couple of years, channelling, loosely, American Football, Cap’n Jazz and a ferocious sense of regret present in all the spaces between.
The duo supplement their lack of bass or vocal finetuning with enough raw power to pack an equivalent punch to the heart. Like any great punk band, though, they’re best experienced live, where their chaotic sincerity best thrives, like a tanker of atomic waste speeding perilously up a narrow, precarious mountain pass, that always threatens to destroy nigh on everything in the vicinity, but just about manages to stay on-track, every time.
Apartments are soon to release a video for Rush’s second single, ‘I Don’t Do On The Spot’, filmed by Axis Of’s Niall Lawler and Belfast rapper BeeMickSee, followed up by a UK tour in early summer. This coincides with recording sessions for a new EP with Bob Cooper, the current Albini of UK D.I.Y. punk, who has mixed the likes of their more radio-friendly Irish bedfellows in The Winter Passing, as well as Hawk Eyes and Self Defence Family, so they’re certainly starting as they mean to go on. Stevie Lennox
