• 19 for ’19: Strange New Places

    February 18, 2019 - By 

    We continue 19 for ‘19 – our feature looking at nineteen Irish acts that we’re convinced are going places in 2019 – with fast-rising Belfast queerpunk five-piece Strange New Places. Photo by Niall Fegan One of several fast-rising Northern Irish acts that have been propelled by the Scratch My Progress initiative at Belfast’s Oh Yeah Music Centre, Strange New Places spent 2018 steadily emerging as one of the country’s most promising bands. On full display at Outburst’s Youth Take Over Day, Atlantic Sessions, Women’s Work festival and elsewhere throughout the year was the band’s equal parts forward-pushing and ear-worming brand of queerpunk. Striking strong…

  • Watch: Rachael Boyd – Blind Spot

    February 18, 2019 - By 

    Having released a string of shorter releases over the years – as well as been the violinist with Irish artists including Joshua Burnside, Ciaran Lavery, Malojian and Overhead the Albatross – Rachael Boyd’s eclectic and intricately-woven craft is laid bare on her debut, Weave. Across twelve tracks, the album (which is set for release this Wednesday) is the pure-cut distillation of the Dublin-based Belfast artist’s singular craft. Having already received support from BBC Radio 1, Clash, TheLineOfBestFit and elsewhere, lead single ‘Blind Spot’ is a masterfully bewitching case in point. Check out its lyric video below.

  • First Acts Announced for Knockanstockan

    February 18, 2019 - By 

    Knockanstockan have revealed the first acts set to play this year’s festival. With many more yet to be announced, TTA favourites Just Mustard, Bicurious, Punk Podge & The Technohippies, Hot Cops, Lemoncello, Joshua Burnside, Cherym, Bouts, The Pale, Kitt Philippa, Powpig, Shookrah, Luka Palm, THUMPER, Silverbacks, Farah Elle, Junior Brother and The Scratch are among those announced. Check out the (very nice) line-up announcement below. Returning to Blessington Lake in Co. Wicklow across July 19-21, tickets for the festival can be bought here.

  • Cosey Fanni Tutti – TUTTI

    February 17, 2019 - By 

      Cosey Fanni Tutti’s latest LP, her first solo work since 1982’s Time to Tell, has been described by the artist as an attempt to express “the totality of [her] being”; the music here, Tutti explains, interprets “shifting perceptions of how [past and present] inform one another” – an extension of other recent projects concerned with documenting her history as an artist and provocateur. The record follows an acclaimed memoir (2017’s ART SEX MUSIC), a gallery retrospective focused on the work of her 1970s performance art ensemble COUM Transmissions, and an autobiographical audio-visual installation entitled Harmonic Coumaction scored by an embryonic version…

  • The Kid Who Would Be King

    February 15, 2019 - By 

    The Kid Who Would Be King is an old-fashioned film, and I don’t think Joe Cornish would mind it being called that. After some years spent contributing to studio scripts, the English writer-director follows up 2011’s Attack The Block with another tale of hearty contemporary misfits banding together to take on a deadly genre threat. The film is fuelled by issues of story-telling inheritance, drawing on Arthurian, fairy tale structures for a funny, down to Earth, quite moving tale of a young boy trying to figure out who he is. Alex (Louis Ashbourne Serkis) is a twelve year-old struggling with a…

  • EP Premiere: May Rosa – Waxwork Sweetheart

    February 14, 2019 - By 

    Having confidently marked her arrival with debut single ‘Dancing in the Debris’ back in 2017, Belfast artist May Rosa establishes her as a fully-formed alt-pop contender on Waxwork Sweetheart. Across four tracks – from slow-burning lead single ‘All The Ways’ to the release’s Julee Cruise-summoning title track, it sees the London-based chanteuse’s finely-woven and phantasmal craft refined to seventeen all-too-fleeting minutes. Have a first listen to the EP – and a first look at the video for ‘All The Ways’ – below.

  • Watch: Post Punk Podge & The Technohippies – Full-Time Mad Bastard

    February 15, 2019 - By 

    Sure he only put out one of our Irish tracks of the year in ‘Never Coming Back’ at the tail end of 2018, but Post Punk Podge & The Technohippies‘ second EP, Post Millennium Tension, is with us, and so too is the video for lead single ‘Full Time Mad Bastard’.  Generally speaking, he’s one of the best at chronicling & satirising every social issue imposed by the elder half upon the younger half of the island’s consciousness. He’s is back with a hot new visage for the year, with an album in the works, he was one of our 19 for ’19 acts for good reason. …

  • Premiere: Maya Goldblum – Light Me Up

    February 15, 2019 - By 

    Content Note: Depression & suicide One of the growing number of Derry-based acts currently blurring genre lines and eschewing conventions, Idaho-born singer & guitarist Maya Goldblum – or Queen Bonobo in a full band setting – is set to release her debut album, Light Shadow Boom Boom, in May. Ahead of that, we’re premiering lead single ‘Light Me Up’, a buoyant slice of soulful jazz whose winsome face belies a diaristic portrayal of depression, as Goldblum brings gravitas and candour to a style of music currently underrepresented – at least in an artistic sense – in Northern Ireland. Maya had a chat with us about its subject matter: “Light Me Up stemmed from feeling constrained in…