• Sheer Mag – III

    March 28, 2016 - By 

    Sheer Mag are essentially the Jackson Lo-Five; that’s not meant as a term of derision, rather one of the endearment. They’ve taken the best parts of the Jackson Five, which would be Michael’s vocal melodies, wrapped it up with early 1970s classic rock and punk music and filtered it through early 1990s lo-fi recording a la Pavement or Beat Happening. While there’s no denying that it is a great deal of fun, the group’s previous singles are a testament to that fact, with their most recent 7 Inch release, III, it’s becoming apparent that are signs of strain in their…

  • 10 Cloverfield Lane

    March 25, 2016 - By 

    Cloverfield’s monster, descended from the Japanese kaiju tradition, belonged to the skyline. 10 Cloverfield Lane, the accidental spiritual cousin/franchise cash-in to Matt Reeves and J. J. Abrams’ found footage original, takes us into the dirt. Several feet below Louisiana farmland surface, to be exact, to an air-tight doomsday bunker built and manned by an unstable conspiracy theorist named Howard (John Goodman) who, convinced the Ruskies or Martians or mutant space worms were coming, poured all his time into a cosy subterranean homestead. Unlike the rest of us sheeple, he alone would be prepared for when shit went down. It’s unnervingly domestic, feminine even,…

  • Not Just Feeding a Scene: An Interview with Chad Ubovich of Meatbodies

    March 25, 2016 - By 

    Fronted by Chad Ubovich who has worked with the likes of Ty Segall, John Dwyer and Mikal Cronin, Meatbodies are embedded in California’s idiosyncratic garage rock revival.  Much like the bands connected to the aforementioned names – and they are plentiful – Meatbodies blend pop influences with heavier elements such as noise rock, metal and psych. This is evidenced in the other bands Chad Ubovic has worked with, from the sunny disposition of Mikal Cronin’s band mixed with the dark, dense sounds of Ty Segall’s, Fuzz, which is heavily indebted to Black Sabbath. Meatbodies rest somewhere between these two bands, exhibiting a…

  • Stream: Participant – Leave Me Here

    March 25, 2016 - By 

    Last October we were very impressed by ‘A Change’ by Dublin-based musician Stephen Tiernan AKA Participant. Smitten by the track’s “curious, otherworld charm”, our verdict could well be – and is, in fact – equally applicable to his new single, ‘Leave Me Here’, a wonderfully nuanced effort traversing more brooding, inward-looking territory for the artist. An sublime outtake from his November, 2015 EP Content, Tiernan said, “[Its] lyrical ideas had served as the blueprint for Content for a long time. A fear of progress and happiness, the idea that you might need to struggle as an artist. I shouldn’t have been surprised when…

  • Album stream: exmagician – Scan The Blue

    March 25, 2016 - By 

    Having delivered a blinding set as part of our Output showcase with Nialler9 back in February, Belfast’s exmagician also featured as one of our 16 For ’16 acts back in early January. Re-launching from the embers of Cashier No. 9, Danny Todd, James Smith and co. fully  command in their psych-soaked, decidedly mesmerizing indie rock realm more than ever before, a fact perfectly illuminated on their debut album, Scan The Blue, which is released via Bella Union today. Buy it here and stream it in full via Spotify below.

  • Video Premiere: BAD BONES – LANG

    March 25, 2016 - By 

    In a short amount of time BAD BONES (Dublin-based producer Sal Stapelton) has carved out both a unique and mysterious sound and image. Her eerie, infectious beats and experimental-pop composition style have earned her comparisons to FKA Twigs, Arca, Maya Jane Coles and Robyn. At the same time her video work has cultivated a minimalist, yet enigmatic image. Her new single ‘LANG’ gives us a new glimpse into the dark and beautiful netherworld that Bad Bones seems to inhabit. The track takes its title and integral samples from David Lang’s piece ‘I Lie’ (written for the unforgettable opening Paolo Sorrentino’s…

  • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

    March 24, 2016 - By 

    Do you believe in Superman? Judging by Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Zack Snyder doesn’t. Indeed, the Man of Steel sequel/Batman reboot/shared-universe kickstarter (breathe!) doesn’t seem to have much faith in anyone or anything. It’s a superhero story with little story and even less heroism. We’re now two films deep with DC Comics and Warner Brothers’ marquee film franchise, and they’re still embarrassed by their frontman. Superman is such a phenomenally over-powered alien-god that his stories require an equally rich sense of humanity for his struggles to connect. How can Clark be good? Can he inspire Earthlings or is he doomed to endlessly save us from ourselves? How…

  • Stream: Ryan Vail – Mirrors

    March 25, 2016 - By 

    Having successfully completed a pledge campaign to ensure the release of his forthcoming debut album, For Every Silence, Derry musician Ryan Vail is streaming one of its highlights, ‘Mirrors’. An all-too-brief, electro-ambient effort recalling the Jon Hopkins at his most reticent, balmy beats and broad washes of synth entangle over the track’s three odd minutes, acting as a bed upon Vail’s spoken omnipresence firmly takes centre-stage. You can still pre-order For Every Silence via Vail’s pledge page here.

  • Label Mixtape: Fortuna POP!

    March 24, 2016 - By 

    Created in London in 1995 by Sean Price, or El Presidente as he prefers to be addressed, Fortuna POP! has for over twenty years been a steadfast bastion of everything lo-fi and fuzzy. The last few years have seen the label enter a veritable golden era. They’ve been responsible for Joanna Gruesome’s fuzz-pop debut LP Weird Sister, which won the Welsh Music Prize, the regional pop punk of Martha’s debut album Courting Strong, which was included in NPR Music’s 50 Favorite Albums of 2014, and records by a cornucopia of others ranging from Evans the Death to Pete Astor to…

  • Anomalisa

    March 23, 2016 - By 

    The line you’re going to read a lot about Anomalisa, Charlie Kaufman’s second film as writer-director, is ‘fake but real’. A stop-motion animation that’s nonetheless bursting with humanity. This is a fair assessment; like Kaufman’s work with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Synecdoche, New York, it’s a technically idiosyncratic look at very complicated emotional experiences, approached with curiousity and compassion. But this undersells just how stiflingly artificial the atmosphere of the film is; how deeply, deeply unreal the perspective of its protagonist feels. From the get-go, as the lonely customer service specialist Michael Stone drifts through the usual travel rituals – flight,…