• Body/Head – The Switch

    July 24, 2018 - By 

    “Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting” – Brian Eno, Music For Airports linear notes If you’re a fan of mid 1990s, alternative rock bass players named Kim, then this year has been a real treat. Kim Deal released the wonderful All Nerve with The Breeders and now Kim Gordon, formerly of the parish Sonic Youth, has gifted us her latest broadcast: Body/Head’s The Switch. The group, completed by Bill Nace, are an experimental noise duo whose work is focused on…

  • Panic! At The Disco – Pray For the Wicked

    July 23, 2018 - By 

    Remember that ‘I Like Me’ song from the Simpsons episode with Hank Scorpio? Imagine if Frank Sinatra collaborated with the Chainsmokers to make a Broadway version of that song. Once you imagine that, you’ll have a bit of an idea as to the level of absurdity we’re dealing with here. Pray for the Wicked is the sixth studio album from Panic! At the Disco. Riddled with pop culture references and sabotaged by extraneous high notes, this effort – which comes 13 years after Bradon Urie and co’s breakthrough A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out –  is basically everything we’ve come…

  • Festival Mixtape: Arcadian Field

    July 25, 2018 - By 

    One of the most scenic, intimate music festivals in Ireland returns for its third year over the weekend of August 4 & 5, Arcadian Field. Taking place at Bellurgan Park at the foot of the Cooley Mountains just outside Dundalk – its manor house woven into the festival area – it’s a celebration of all that’s culturally rich in Irish music, art, spoken word, poetry, theatre, comedy, workshops & in nature – with a Burning Man-esque fire ritual on the final night, as well as candlelit drawing room performances and nature walks. There are several new programming additions on offer this year. As well as…

  • Premiere: Eoin Dolan – Superior Fiction

    July 23, 2018 - By 

    The title cut from an EP that he will release at the end of August, ‘Superior Fiction’ is a self-proclaimed ode to truth” that finds Galway songsmith Eoin Dolan in particularly inspired form. Equally parts breezy and incisive, its forward-moving surf-pop sway melds woozy keyboard lines with a harmonic and lyrical sensibility that continue to make his lo-fi, sci-fi-tinted craft a joy to behold. Featuring Conor Deasy on guitar/backing vocals, James Casserly on drums and Adam Sheeran on bass, Superior Fiction was self-recorded, mastered by Fergal Davis and will be released in association with Citog Records. Have a first listen to its title track below.

  • Premiere: Girlfriend – Spitkissing/Small Smile Grow

    July 21, 2018 - By 

    Boasting one of the most compelling live shows around, Dublin alternative quartet Lahela Jones, Lisa Rogers, Hana Lamari and Sophie Dunne aka Girlfriend have gone from strength to strength over the last couple of years. New recorded material has been in the pipeline for some time, but some things are worth the wait. The follow-up to 2016’s 3AM Rituals, the foursome’s new double-single ‘Spitkissing/Small Smile Grow’ captures the heart, craft and intensity that is setting them apart in five blitzing minutes. While the former track is a harmony-driven, masterfully lo-fi paean to the private codes of intimacy, the latter effort is a fierce, fist-clenched…

  • Album Premiere: Elephant – 88

    July 20, 2018 - By 

    We’re pleased to present a first listen to 88, the second album from Dundalk artist and multi-instrumentalist Shane Clarke aka Elephant. Released today, both digitally and on 12″ vinyl via Pizza Pizza Records, Clarke has called the album “a soundtrack to my childhood and young adult life.” From the gossamer folk-pop spell of opener ‘Summer’ to the album’s glitchy closer ‘All These Dragons’, Clarke brilliantly filters bygone times, Proustian moments and lucid epiphanies of the past through a lens that always see melody and – the album’s crowning achievement – his vocals take centre-stage. Speaking about the release – which is dedicated to the…

  • 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…