• Playlist: 15 Irish Acts at SXSW 2016

    March 9, 2016 - By 

    As positively hectic as any festival on the face of the globe, SXSW has long been established as a veritable cornucopia of film, music and interactive media from far and very wide. And with festivals of much smaller scale: where the excess of choice becomes something of a burden, planning ahead and knocking up a makeshift “must-see” guide is next to obligatory to ensure FOMO doesn’t become an all-consuming spectre during your festival stay. Just as important is getting some essential listening in before heading off in said sensory abyss. So if you’re SXSW-bound this year and want to check out some…

  • Watch: Jealous of the Birds – Goji Berry Sunset

    March 9, 2016 - By 

    In the seventh issue of our magazine back in May last year, TTA’s Stevie Lennox said of ‘Goji Berry Sunset’ by fast-rising Armagh singer-songwriter Naomi Hamilton AKA Jealous of the Birds: “The whimsy of its whistled intro might have you believe that you’re in for another young-girl-sings-naivete-strewn-intimate-acoustic-indie-folk; and perhaps on surface level it could be taken this way, but further listens reveal a deeper thread of melancholy.” Going on to extol the then huge promise of Hamilton, the piece offered a snapshot of an artist who has covered some remarkable ground in the time since. With her debut album, Parma Violets, set for…

  • Jessica Hopper Keynote @ Women’s Work

    March 9, 2016 - By 

    As part of Women’s Work NI, a week long festival based around International Women’s Day and highlighting the valuable work women contribute to the music industry, current editorial director of MTV Jessica Hopper gave a rousing keynote speech to a crowded Oh Yeah! Centre. The crux of the legendary journalist/editor’s speech was that the so far rather circuitous conversation around women in the industry had only gained momentum recently: we are finally being heard. She outlined how how she got started (a punk fanzine inspired by Babes In Toyland), which brought her neatly to her other point: why is ‘fangirl’…

  • Emmy The Great – Second Love

    March 9, 2016 - By 

    Second Love, the new LP by Emmy The Great and her first in five years, is secure enough to know exactly what it wants to be. The title, which by design immediately evokes her 2009 debut First Love, implies this continuation and growth that runs deep at the core of the album. Musically, ETG begins moving away from the acoustic folk styling which characterised her earlier releases in exchange for a more minimalist electronica. While the record as a whole is a very mixed bag, what shines throughout are the lyrics, which still retain the incisive power of her debut…

  • Big Ups – Before A Million Universes

    March 11, 2016 - By 

    Of all the notions one can fling at post-hardcore, the much maligned and misattributed genre, it does have one undeniable strength: tension. The key songs in the genre’s oeuvre are not built around a typical rock structure of verse-chorus-verse, but rather on a more fluid, almost progressive structure that emphasizes the disquiet over all else. It’s best envisioned like a constantly tightening torture rack, constantly ratcheting the tension, keeping the listener in this state of unease and the brink of real discomfort before discharging in the most cathartic manner possible. It’s one of punk’s hydra heads taken to its logical…

  • Watch: DIE HEXEN – Siamese

    March 9, 2016 - By 

    Every once in a while a homegrown act will crop up, catch you completely off guard with and make you wonder, fist-clenched and all but tormented for eternity, just h0w they managed to pass you by up until that shameful moment of latter-day discovery. The latest to befall us comes in the form of Belfast dark ambient chanteuse DIE HEXEN, whose latest single ‘Siamese’ is a phantasmal brew of gothic influence and image, conjuring everyone from Grouper and Chelsea Wolfe to Gary Numan and Siouxsie at her most ensorcelling. A “ceremonial magic audio-visual created in response to a visually powerful mutual lucid and reoccurring dream…

  • Watch: Orchid Collective – Lay As Stone

    March 8, 2016 - By 

    When we shared the track two weeks ago we said ‘Lay As Stone’ by Dublin quartet Orchid Collective was “unwinding alt-folk meditation on weariness and reprieve that sees wonderfully-woven harmonies come to the fore across the track’s nigh on four minutes”. Having zig-zagged around the country playing shows in the time since, the band have released a video for the single directed by Cill Farrell, the moral of which we’ve deduced is: it’s often – if not always – advisable to drink a few glasses of milk before going on the rip. Orchid Collective launch ‘Lay As Stone’ at Dublin’s…

  • Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival 2016

    March 8, 2016 - By 

    Set to return to Belfast for its grand 17th outing from April 28-May 8, this year’s Cathedral Quarter Art Festival is set to be yet another mouth-wateringly, curiousity-satingly sublime 11 days and nights of music and culture. Ranging from the likes of legendary reggae producer Lee “Scratch” Perry (pictured), The Zombies and Arab Strap’s Aidan Moffatt to David Holmes, John Cooper Clarke and Grandmaster Flash, this year’s line-up (in full below) is, for our money, the strongest CQAF outing to date. Go here to buy tickets.

  • Irish Tour: Wolf Alice & Spies

    March 8, 2016 - By 

    Having released their Mercury Prize-nominated debut My Love Is Cool last year, London alt-rock quartet Wolf Alice stopped at Dublin’s Olympia Theatre & Belfast’s Mandela Hall at the weekend. Support came from Spies. Photos by Aaron Corr & Alan Maguire. Olympia Theatre, Dublin by Aaron Corr Mandela Hall, Belfast by Alan Maguire

  • Album Stream: J Cowhie – Veil

    March 8, 2016 - By 

    Early days though it is, after just a handful of listens Veil by J Cowhie is right up there with our favourite Irish albums of the year so far. Formerly known as GOODTIME/Goodtime John, the Malmö-based, Dublin “alternative electronic experimental folk” singer-songwriter very much trades in the currency of the mystery of memory, the throes of time and the curious laws of belonging, his hushed tales – each as slow-burning, incisive and revelatory as the next – framed in a phantasmal hue of sublime, ruminating ambience. An album about loss, change and the “responsibilities that come to us all in our lives whether we…