• Video Premiere: Joni – 292

    March 24, 2017 - By 

    Having wowed us back in 2015 with her thrilling debut ‘Running’, Wicklow vocalist Joni has made a long awaited return with ‘292’. Like on ‘Running’, breezy, organic atmospheres once again course through the track’s hard-hitting garage and R&B foundations. There is a distinct sense of the urban permeating its four minute runtime, distorted by a mesmeric haze of coloured smoke and late night fog. Joni’s lyrics, carried by her soulful and mesmeric voice, are an ode to a particular house that witnessed many an aftersession. Combed with resignation of a long gone romance, the track was written, as Joni puts it ““following…

  • The xx, A Tribe Called Quest, Interpol and More Set For Electric Picnic

    March 23, 2017 - By 

    Set to return to Stradbally Estate in Co. Laois across September 1-3, the first names set to play this year’s Electric Picnic have been announced. Including headliners The xx, A Tribe Called Quest and Duran Duran, Chaka Khan, Interpol (pictured), Run The Jewels, Father John Misty, Parquet Courts, Pond and Car Seat Headrest were all amongst the announced acts. With more names set to be revealed, check out the full first line-up below.

  • Percolator – Sestra

    March 23, 2017 - By 

    Krautrock/shoegaze-loving cosmic voyagers Percolator release their long-awaited debut album Sestra on Penske Recordings on April 14. Taking cues from My Bloody Valentine, Stereolab, with hints of progressive rock and the late ’80s indie label scene to boot. Their textures and atmospheres are well ahead of most contemporaries. The trio were formed in 2009 by former members of Dae Kim, with the current lineup existing since 2012 and comprising singer/guitarist Ian Chestnutt, drummer & singer Eleanor Myler & producer John ‘Spud’ Murphy on bass – founder of Guerrilla Studios in Dublin, where the album was recorded. They’ve put out a steady string of releases, available on Bandcamp. <a href=”http://percolator.bandcamp.com/album/sestra”>Sestra…

  • Anohni – Paradise EP

    March 23, 2017 - By 

    Anohni is not afraid to be political. This was obvious with her previous release, 2016’s critically acclaimed Hopelessness, where songs like ‘Violent Men’ and ‘Crisis’ were an angry manifestation of a frustration at the state of modern society. While similar thematically, Paradise is a more despondent reflection, slowly building with the quiet and human admission that  “in my dreams, you don’t love me” (‘In My Dreams’). This refrain sets a scene for the emotions of the six-track EP. Paradise, Anohni’s sophomore release (outside of those albums she released as part of Antony and the Johnsons) shares the same anger, and…

  • Video Premiere: THUMPER – The Loser

    March 24, 2017 - By 

    Set to play their first ever all-ages gig at BIMM Institute’s showcase at Workman’s Club on April 1, Dublin quartet THUMPER unveiled their fuzzed-out latest single, ‘The Loser’, at the start of the month. Arguably the foursome’s finest effort to date, it’s a starry-eyed burst of noise-pop harking back to Blur’s more riotous earlier efforts, filtered through the the Dublin band’s own brand of bubblegum scuzz. The first single to be taken from the band’s upcoming POP! GOES THE WEASEL EP, have a first look at Alan McCarthy’s tripped out visuals for the track below.

  • Paddy Mulcahy – The Words She Said

    March 22, 2017 - By 

    The finest ambient music often finds the artist mining the barriers and plundering the gaps between analogue and digital. Julianna Barwick uses layers and loops to convert her own voice into a universe of sound. Ian William Craig feeds his operatic tones through layers of fuzz to create something quite brilliant and utterly unique. William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops chart the sound of old, decaying tapes, meant to be digitised – quite literally – falling apart as he lets them play out on rotation. The new record from Limerick’s Paddy Mulcahy has something of this feel to it. Mulcahy explores (in…

  • Beauty and the Beast

    March 21, 2017 - By 

    One of the reasons fairy tales work is that they are so obviously not real. Their fantastical, exaggerated qualities help make the horror, weirdness and romantic impossibilities easier to process. And while it wasn’t exactly frightening, Disney’s iconic animated musical Beauty and the Beast, part of the late-80s/early 90s “Disney Renaissance”, had an understanding of how to build Gothic contrast, moreso than even the 18th-century French original, in which the Beast is not Beauty’s jailor but her doting servant. There was a strangeness to Beauty and the Beast‘s obviously warped story; not just the Stockholm Syndrome infatuation, or the intense…