• Premiere: Joshua Burnside – REarranged (Lyrics Video)

    July 23, 2018 - By 

    Last month, Belfast-based singer-songwriter Joshua Burnside released one of the Irish EPs of the year thus far, the understated and masterfully candid All Round The Light Said. ‘REarranged’ was a highlight from the release, and now the track has a brand new lyric video courtesy of Blue Americans‘ Kris Platt. A bold visual accompaniment featuring the uncanny transposition of archive footage, it reframes Burnside’s words, which mine memory backwashed thoughts like very few others can. Have an exclusive first look below.  

  • The Devil’s Doorway

    July 20, 2018 - By 

    A pregnant woman in chains; the off-screen wailing of child spirits; close-ups of the Virgin Mary with lines of blood down her cheeks, weeping at the sights she sees. The Devil’s Doorway, a Northern Irish horror which last week screened in the Galway Film Fleadh, and received American release through IFC Midnight, is an efficient frightener with local colour and a dense, tight atmosphere of suffering, penance and punishment. You might call it Catholic guilt. The debut film from Belfast writer and director Aislinn Clarke, who lectures in Creative Writing at Queen’s University, and the first NI Screen-backed feature from…

  • Skyscraper

    July 19, 2018 - By 

    The studio summer blockbuster, a reliable genre of more!, seems the perfect fit for the bulking, hulking anatomy of Dwayne Johnson. In everything he does, The Rock operates in Trumpian economies of size: the largest pecs, the highest reps, the most humility. His last studio film, Rampage, released only three months ago, saw him partner with a gargantuan gorilla to fight Boulevard-sized beasties. Johnson’s latest, Skyscraper, casts him as a security expert forced to save his family from not just a burning building, but a building that happens to be the tallest one in the world. Yuuge. The architectural ambition…

  • Premiere: A Ritual Sea – Seasons (Like You)

    July 19, 2018 - By 

    Set to be launched at Dublin’s Drop Dead Twice on August 9, ‘Seasons (Just Like You)’ finds A Ritual Sea mining pure inspiration from dream-pop, shoegaze and indie textures. The second single to be taken from the Dublin band’s forthcoming debut album – which is expected to arrive in early 2019 – the song explores the themes of fear, paranoia and falling in love, asking, as the band puts it, |if we ever really fully know another person; navigating the slow unveiling of our true personalities – changeable, unpredictable, and ever-shifting.” Filmed by Fabian Chombart in Lioux, a region in the South…

  • BICEP Announce Belfast and Dublin Dates

    July 18, 2018 - By 

    As part of a string of EU and UK dates, London-based Belfast electronic duo Matt McBriar and Andy Ferguson aka BICEP will make appearances in Belfast and Dublin in November. As well as stopping out Belfast’s The Telegraph Building alongside Voiski (Live), Hammer and Schmutz on Saturday, November 3, the pair will play their biggest Dublin show to date at the Olympia on Friday, November 2. Tickets for the shows go on sale this Friday at 10am, priced at £27.50 and €31.40 respectively.

  • Laurel Halo – Raw Silk Uncut Wood

    July 18, 2018 - By 

    Somewhere in Apple Music headquarters, an employee, perhaps under the instruction of watchful label publicists, or not, input “techno” as the genre tag for Laurel Halo’s latest project, Raw Silk Uncut Wood. The Berlin-based experimental producer has spent the past eight years pivoting from frenetic, full-bodied techno and unconventional club electronics to dense, sentient ambient-pop, and back. Admittedly then, it is difficult to keep track. Her breakout album, Quarantine, released in 2012, was disembodied pop simmering beneath an off-kilter electronic surface—spearheaded by her drifting voice. It was, above all else, her ability to synthesise anxiety into quivering, twitching soundscapes that gave…

  • Chvrches Set For Irish Shows

    July 17, 2018 - By 

    As part of a UK and Irish tour to kick off the year, it’s been announced that Chvrches will play two Irish shows in February. The Scottish synth-pop trio – who have just released their acclaimed third studio album Love Is Dead – will play Belfast’s Ulster Hall on February 19 and Dublin’s Olympia Theatre on February 21. Tickets go on sale this Friday at 9am from Ticketmaster.

  • Various Artists – A Litany of Failures Vol. II

    July 17, 2018 - By 

    To be a contemporary “independent” band in Ireland isn’t merely a genre categorisation, but a complex creative actuality. There’s often a socio-economic subtext to the term, as happens when a multitude of younger or less experienced creatives don’t have the resources to view music as a full-time pursuit just yet. They must therefore look elsewhere to meet the frequently unforeseen costs that stack up when making music – gear upkeep, travel, recording/rehearsal space fees, etc. This can lead to an absence of parity at the level of industry power relations. Simply look at the cultural-economic logic followed by certain festivals…

  • Premiere: CATALAN! – Espionage

    July 16, 2018 - By 

    Despite having played only a handful of dates since emerging in July last year, Ewen Friers’ self-coined insurgency rock project CATALAN! has made a considerable dent on the Northern Irish music scene over the last few months. His latest effort, ‘Espionage’ has felt like bona fide single material since we first caught wind of it at a show in Belfast back in October. In characteristic Friers fashion, it commingles wide-eyed hope with full-blown melodies, and fuzzed-out bombast with lyrics that bring defiant people in foreign lands vividly to life. Curated by Friers, CATALAN! play the downright unmissable Coaster in Portrush this Friday…