• Video Premiere: Chirps – Pink Noise

    August 21, 2017 - By 

    It’s been seven years since their debut album, Future Static Prologue, but Ballina-formed, Dublin-based shoegazey alt. rockers Chirps are finally gearing to follow it up with a second LP, from which we’re delighted to premiere first single ‘Pink Noise’. Featuring members of esteemed noisemakers like Hands Up Who Wants To Die, Wild Rocket, Crowhammer and Oilbag, their new album has been in the works over the last few years, gradually recorded by John ‘Spud’ Murphy – who’s also behind many of the finest independent Irish releases in recent years. A definite progression from previous work, Chirps have clocked up an astounding number of nods toward underground subgenres – most evidently shoegaze,…

  • Album Stream: Ger Fox Sailing – Ger Fox Sailing

    August 21, 2017 - By 

    Released today, the self-titled, self-produced debut album from Wexford quartet Ger Fox Sailing is a richly-woven, nicely eclectic collection of songs from a band who have just set out their stall and then some. From the contemplative precision of ‘Nowhere Without You’ and the poppier tangents of ‘What It Is’ to blistering closer ‘Best Friend’ via a stream of scuzz-laden, occasionally prog-leaning rock, reverberations from the likes of Longpigs, Incubus, Queens of the Stone Age, Grandaddy and, in parts, Northern Irish alt-rock band Pocket Promise (though we suspect the latter is something of a total coincidence) coalesce with the band’s own…

  • The Districts – Popular Manipulations

    August 21, 2017 - By 

    Since their self-released debut made a critical splash and got the then high-school band signed to Fat Possum, The Districts have seemed to belong to a different age: the Pennsylvania group’s penchant for plaid shirts and moody guitar theatrics evoked the likes of Pearl Jam and even Crazy Horse, while singer Rob Grote’s vocals recalled the early 2000s indie of Wolf Parade, Arcade Fire and My Morning Jacket. A Flourish And A Spoil, their sophomore effort, was a minor triumph which found Grote singing tales of small town heartbreak over garagy riffs that The Replacements would be proud of. Popular…

  • We’re New Here: An Interview with Last Days Of Elvis

    August 21, 2017 - By 

    Anxious and introspective on record, Berlin-based Last Days of Elvis are anything but when interviewed. On first impressions, their debut Must Be A Mistake draws stylistic comparisons to The National and Nick Cave but underneath lies diligently crafted expressions of fragility and angst. Ahead of their upcoming UK and Ireland tour, our Dominic Edge discuss life in Berlin, toilet ambience and recording at Funkhaus Studios with vocalist, guitarist and stew-enthusiast Andrew Stark. Tell us more about your name – is it in admiration to the King, or am I wide of the mark? To be honest, I think we just really…

  • And So I Watch You From Afar Announce Fifth Studio Album, Release New Track

    August 21, 2017 - By 

    Having revealed details of a December Irish tour just last week, North Coast instrumental rock maestros And So I Watch You From Afar have announced details of their forthcoming fifth studio album. Set for release via Sargent House on October 20, The Endless Shimmering was recorded at Machines with Magnets, a professional recording studio, art gallery, experimental music venue in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Essentially held captive in the studio due to a snowstorm, the band used the incarceration to their advantage. Rory Friers from the band said, “We tracked, ate, washed and slept at the studio, and 9 days later we had recorded…

  • Exhibition: Signs and Ciphers @ Golden Thread

    August 29, 2017 - By 

    Described as less of a retrospective into his work and more of an investigation into certain prevailing themes and characteristics, Signs and Ciphers is a new dual location exhibition and features the work of Northern Irish artist Alistair Wilson. The first two parts to this four-part exhibition are on show in Belfast’s Golden Thread Gallery and features newer work from Wilson. The remaining two parts open later this year in Portadown’s Millennium Court Arts Centre, and feature older works stretching back to the 1970’s. Wilson, who represented Northern Ireland at the 2005 Venice Biennale, is an investigative artist, exploring the materials he surrounds himself with,…

  • Exhibition: Observations @ Belfast Exposed

    August 31, 2017 - By 

    Celestograph by August Strindberg, 1894. Image kindly provided by the National Library of Sweden Outside of his native Sweden August Strindberg is predominantly known as a playwright and a poet, such was the high regard his was held in within these disciplines. Strindberg was in fact a polymath who explored painting (he was friends with Edvard Munch and Paul Gauguin) and the photographic arts. It is the latter, and specifically his late 19th Century experiments in capturing he might sky, that severs as the departure point for Observations, the current show in Belfast Exposed. For his ‘Celestographs’, Strindberg placed sensitised plates…

  • Exhibition: Collected Shadows @ Void

    August 25, 2017 - By 

    Established twenty-five years ago, the original brief for the Archive of Modern Conflict was to collect and preserve materials relating to the First and Second World War – this saw the AMC primarily archive photographs but also manuscripts and materials. Over the course of the next quarter century this initial premise was expanded on and the AMC is now best viewed as an archive of the world, amassing photographs from multiple centuries on a wide variety of themes and topics. In conjunction with the Southbank Centre’s Hayward Touring, an initiative which organises touring exhibitions through the UK and NI, the AMC…

  • Exhibition: Concerning the Other @ Olivier Cornet

    September 8, 2017 - By 

    Opening this Sunday in the Olivier Cornet Gallery, on Dublin’s Great Denmark Street, is a new group exhibition titled Concerning the Other. The show has been curated by Olivier Cornet, Claire Halpin and Eoin Mac Lochlainn; and sees the artists involved respond to the themes of diversity and concern, in terms of refugees and minorities from areas of conflict. Recent and on-going struggles make this a vital discourse that requires a collective response, and this approach is echoed in the work created. Instead of submitting individual pieces the ten artists collaborated on works together, with each adding a layer upon the previous’ work. By…