• Watch: Evvol – Comfort Fit

    January 18, 2017 - By 

    The steady evolution of Berlin-based Irish/Australian duo Evvol has been a joy to behold. Having dropped their debut EP under their previous moniker Kool Thing back in early 2012, singer Julie Chance and Australian multi-instrumentalist Jane Arnison have unravelled a darkwave-pop aesthetic that manages to marry nuance with real connotation. Where last year’s ‘Physical L.U.V‘ was “a truth-telling story about motivations and expectations”, new single ‘Comfort Fit’ is a release that confronts how we understand and embody comfort. Shot on DV cam, the video for the new single was inspired by fashion photographer Steven Meisel’s notoriously uncomfortable and subsequently banned Calvin Klein ad campaign from 1995. Shot…

  • Jackie

    January 18, 2017 - By 

    Translating the life of a famous figure to film is notoriously hard to pull off. For every biopic like Capote there’s an Iron Lady; for every Milk, The Doors. Even without the prospect of a leather-clad Val Kilmer to sink a film’s prospects, biopics can all too readily fall foul of audiences: the shopworn rags-to-riches (or maybe rags-to-riches-to-drugs) tropes of the likes of Walk the Line have been ferociously mocked in parodies such as Walk Hard. Kudos to director Pablo Larraín, then, for attempting two biopics in two years. From Larraín, who directed last year’s much admired biopic Neruda (dealing…

  • Album Premiere: Waldorf & Cannon – Old Dogs New Tricks

    January 18, 2017 - By 

    An alternative multi-instrumentalist duo from Derry and Donegal, Waldorf & Cannon make a little go a very long way.  With both members on vocal duties, Philip Wallace AKA Walford playing a Farmer Footdrum kit (check it out, it’s pretty awesome), guitar and harmonica, and Oisin Cannon on bass, their craft – influenced by the likes of Pixies, Devo, Link Wray and Beck – is testament to the fact that the song, no matter how it’s written, wrangled or performed, reigns supreme. A consistently intriguing release from one of the country’s most idiosyncratic alternative propositions have a first listen to their debut album, Old…

  • Album Premiere: Exploding Eyes – Exploding Eyes

    January 18, 2017 - By 

    In his review of this, the Dublin progressive garage-rock trio’s self-titled debut album, TTA’s Trev Moran said Exploding Eyes “greets you with a welcoming invitation to something a little less serious and a lot more fun.” Sure enough, the ten-track release is something of a feature-length celebration of cutting loose without overthinking the dynamism that makes their craft so instantly gratifying. Having formed just over a year ago, the band – comprised of members of The Things, Cheap Freaks, Humanzi and The Mighty Stef – bursts forth from a lineage spearheaded by masters Blue Cheer, Mountain and Cream on the likes of…

  • EP Premiere: NERVVS – A Mixtape of Love Vol. One

    January 18, 2017 - By 

    Dublin’s finest self-proclaimed “sick-wave” (noise rock, to you and I) duo NERVVS caught our attention back in 2015 with their debut EP, Death House. In the two years since, the pair have been active on the scene in Dublin, sharing scenes with some TTA favourites including That Snaake and Naoise Roo. Produced by Chris Barry, who has worked with Myles Manley and Cat Palace, their forthcoming EP A Mixtape of Love Vol. One is – to get a little alliterative – a fervent, five-track slab of first-rate, fucked-off fury conjuring the likes of Nomeansno, Bleach-era Nirvana, Fugazi, Butthole Surfers, early Flipper and Sebadoh at their…

  • Premiere: Deadman’s Ghost – Antidote

    January 17, 2017 - By 

    Shot at various scenic locations in Northern Ireland including the Belfast hills, Lough Shannagh in the Mournes and Gobbins Path, the video for ‘Antidote’ by Belfast musician, producer and DJ Jason Mills AKA Deadman’s Ghost is a fitting accompaniment to a song that grasps forth in attempt to move on from old habits, thoughts and attachment. A highlight from Deadman Ghost’s third album Hypocritical Oath, which is out now via Ephem Aural, you can have a first look at Mills and Ben Jones’ video for the single below.

  • 17 For ’17: Woven Skull

    January 17, 2017 - By 

    Including Woven Skull in our 17 for ’17 list feels like a little bit of a cheat, seeing as they have been producing music together since 2008. The trio have been lurking quietly in rural Leitrim, making music that is as rugged, gnarled and atmospherically captivating as the landscape they operate within. Utilising raw experimental sounds and field recordings from woods, hills and abandoned houses as textural enhancers has given Woven Skull’s output to date a depth of space and size that is exhilaratingly tense. While most of their releases up to this point have been collections of assembled field…

  • Glen Hansard @ Seamus Heaney HomePlace, Bellaghy

    January 17, 2017 - By 

    “Imagining a hero On some muddy compound, His gift like a slingstone Whirled for the desperate.” Seamus Heaney – Exposure Having spent the last while in the eye of the Apollo House maelstrom and the ensuing bureaucracy that continues to surround it, the unassuming presence of Glen Hansard in Seamus Heaney HomePlace this evening is – before he even plays a note – testament to the character of a man and artist who doesn’t perceive a hierarchy between musician and listener; celebrity and fan; government and citizen. In much the same way one of his most potent influences in Heaney never entertained the…

  • La La Land

    January 17, 2017 - By 

    After assaulting our senses with 2014’s furiously frenetic Whiplash, Damien Chazelle sets his sights on our hearts in his new film, the romantic musical, La La Land. It seems the young director’s ambitions know no bounds as he transports audiences back to the era of Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in this throwback to Hollywood’s golden age. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone star as Sebastian, a talented, but temperamental pianist who dreams of owning his own jazz club, and Mia, an aspiring actress stuck on the never-ending audition carousel in LA. When this pair of down at heel…

  • Manchester By The Sea

    January 17, 2017 - By 

    Kenneth Lonergan makes films about the things that don’t go away. In 2000’s You Can Count On Me, the sudden orphaning of young siblings helps fashion an unsolvable divide between the two in adult life, while in Margaret, which lingered undistributed for years while director and studio fought over the final cut, witnessing a fatal accident sends Anna Paquin’s carefree teenage life spiralling in new, frustrating directions. His third feature as writer-director, Manchester by the Sea, part of Amazon Studios’ effort to chase indie respectability, is Lonergan’s most refined work yet, a restrained but movingly complex portrait of tragedy’s never-ending…