• Stream: MELTS – Skyward

    March 30, 2018 - By 

    A new-fangled Dublin comprising ex-members of Ghost Estates, The Things, The Mighty Stef and The North Sea, MELTS are bassist Colm Giles, drummer Gary Earle, vocalist Eoin Kenny, guitarist Hugh O’Reily and Robbie Brady on organ, synth and theremin. Having recently announced that they’re set to appear at this year’s Castlepalooza, the five-piece have unveiled their debut single, ‘Skyward’. A Motorik-driven burst of nuanced, interlocking psych worship, the track was recorded at the Meadow in Co. Wicklow with Irish Duo the Deaf Brothers, who have worked with the likes of Mmoths, Cloud Castle Lake and Come On Live Long in the past. MELTS will release ‘Skyward’…

  • Lunch Machine – Alt Facts

    April 3, 2018 - By 

    Letterkenny garage indie rock trio Lunch Machine have just released their debut EP, the five track Alt Facts, produced by Fugue State & Tuath. The band is led by Jude Barriscale, whose laconic delivery recalls earlier (and best) Courtney Barnett, Barriscale’s knack for injecting personal, universal truths with a detached sincerity elevates what could be slack meanderings into idiosyncratically-woven pieces, that veer from frustration at rural isolation, political outrage and, in the evocatively smoky, poignant-in-the-AM closer ‘Obi Wan for the Road’, love and loss. Take, for example, the 7> minute highlight ‘Yellow Door’, which is, in her own words “about me being humbled by my past mistakes and about how…

  • Making It Rain: A Chat with O Emperor

    March 30, 2018 - By 

    The trajectory of O Emperor is rooted in familiar origins. They did what schoolmates do and formed a band. That band were picked up by Universal shortly after, landing them a #6 in the Irish album charts. They took their time and constructed a studio for the follow-up. here’s a point where the Radioheads & Beatles’ of this world effortlessly toe the line between artistic and commercial success, and its often the dependence and freedom of a studio itself to bring out the alchemy present in the band. Those moments where everything seems to magically synergise at once can’t be replicated…

  • Premiere: Elaine Malone – No Blood

    March 30, 2018 - By 

    Musically recalling some of Tim Buckley’s airy jazz inclinations, and the gently percussive Weltschmerz of Nick Drake, Elaine Malone‘s new single cranks tension between folk music as a vehicle for aural pleasure and folk music as a vessel for crushingly human storytelling. It’s fitting then, that this Good Friday marks the release of the vital ‘No Blood’. That ‘No Blood’ was written & recorded long before Wednesday’s Laganside Court verdict, and the fact its trenchancy of its sentiment is in no danger of fading any time in the near future is a testament to our need to collectively address & confront these issues that pervade every level…

  • Album Premiere: The 202s – From When The Future Was Yet To Hurt Us

    March 29, 2018 - By 

    Dublin’s The 202s will release their new album From When The Future Was Yet To Hurt Us tomorrow March 30 via Difference/Repetition. With a selection of brand new cuts, previously released singles and tracks from their superb 2017 EP, Up In Thin Air, this album feels like the culmination of two years worth of gradual graft from one of Ireland’s finest, most understated acts. Having reformed in 2016 after a lengthy spell away – real life stuff, “since we last made a record, The 202s have made five human beings!” – the trio have been steadily releasing tracks in anticipation of this album and now, as it lands,…

  • Track Record: Jack Rudden (Search Party Animal)

    March 29, 2018 - By 

    In this instalment of Track Record, we hang out with Jack Rudden from Search Party Animal while we he talks us through some of his favourite records, from Slint to Sufjan Stevens. Photos by Zoe Holman. Sufjan Stevens -Age of Adz This is a perfect album. You can disagree if you like, but that will not change the fact that this is a perfect album. I don’t know where to begin with this one really. I could talk about every track on this double LP for hours. There’s just so much to cover. The gorgeous lyrics, the seamless combination of baroque orchestration and synthesizers,…

  • Stream: Spies – Young Dad

    March 28, 2018 - By 

    Following a string of well-received releases via Trout Records since forming back in 2009, Dublin band Spies disappeared off the face of the earth back in 2016. Or so it seemed. Frontman Michael Broderick explains: “We felt in order to write something we were really proud of, we needed to distance ourselves from the outside pressures of being in a band. It’s easy to get distracted by all the things you think you should be doing and overlook that your primary objective should be to write great music”. Having re-emerged today with the inspired ‘Young Dad’ — arguably the five-piece’s strongest single effort to…

  • Ready Player One

    March 28, 2018 - By 

    After Steven Spielberg changed the movie world with Jaws in 1975, he bought a cavernous Beverley Hills home and filled it with arcade machines. Newly minted and paranoid, the director also installed an elaborate security system, and refused to accept deliveries at the door. Hollywood’s hottest director and his walled-off playpen. Ready Player One is a film built for Spielberg The Younger, from Spielberg The Elder, a cautionary celebration of pop culture toy islands, a messy, whizzing trip into the lens-flare fantasies of the geek id. In Ready Player One, ‘the OASIS’ is the biggest toy-box ever invented. A giant virtual reality and intensely lucrative…

  • A Wrinkle in Time

    March 28, 2018 - By 

    In ‘Anthem’ Leonard Cohen sang ‘there is a crack in everything/that’s how the light gets in.’ These lines have been adopted as an inspirational saying by many but they also reflect the idea that it is often the imperfections that make an object beautiful. Perhaps, the same can be said about the flaws in Disney’s latest big budget children’s film A Wrinkle in Time. Teenage Meg Murray (Storm Reid) is struggling following her scientist father’s disappearance four years earlier. Isolated and lonely, Meg’s grief has made as a social outcast who is out of sync with her peers and losing…

  • Watch: The Altered Hours – On My Tongue

    March 28, 2018 - By 

    Having zig-zagged around Europe over the last few weeks, Cork’s finest The Altered Hours will play three highly-anticipated shows in Dublin, Letterkenny and Belfast this weekend. Ahead of those, the five-piece have unveiled Breda Lynch’s visuals for new single ‘On My Tongue’, an incandescent peak from their excellent new EP, Over The Void. Striking yet another killer midpoint between garage, noise and mottled psych manoeuvres, the track is a rousing, nigh on lustful ode to cutting totally fucking loose. Those shows: Thursday, March 29: The Grand Social, Dublin Friday, March 30: Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny Saturday, March 31: The Menagerie, Belfast