• Watch: Aoife Nessa Frances – Blow Up

    October 22, 2019 - By 

    Co-produced by Cian Nugent, ‘Blow Up’ by Dublin-based artist Aoife Nessa Frances stems from a sonic netherworld inhabited, at different points, by the likes of Nico, Broadcast and Pentangle. Blurring the lines between folk, psychedelia and otherworldly pop, it’s a wonderfully-crafted paean, redolent of bygone times, all while occupying its very own woozy, yet supremely lucid territory. Marrying mellotron, strings and more, the song – which is accompanied by some sublime visuals courtesy of her sister, Anna McCarthy – is taken from Frances’ forthcoming debut album, Land of No Junction. It’s released via Basin Rock on January 17th. Borrowing its title from the…

  • Win Tickets to Swordfishtrombones Revisited @ National Concert Hall

    October 21, 2019 - By 

    On Tuesday, October 29th, Dublin’s National Concert Hall will play true to a special one-off event commemorating Tom Waits’ seminal seventh studio album, Swordfishtrombones. Featuring a veritable dream team of musicians in Nadine Shah, Soap&Skin, Lisa O’Neill, Dorian Wood and Matthew E. White, British instrumentalist David Coulter will oversee Swordfishtrombones Revisited on the night. With a six-piece band in tow, Coulter & co. will reinterpret tracks including ‘6 Shells From a Thirty-Ought-Six’ and ‘In The Neighborhood’ from the critically-acclaimed 1983 album. We’re teaming up with NCH to give away a pair of tickets to the show. To enter, simply Like…

  • Output Belfast Set For 2020 Return

    October 22, 2019 - By 

    Details of the return of Output Belfast next year have been announced. Ireland’s largest one-day music conference and showcasing event five years running will return to various venues across Belfast on Thursday, February 13th. As ever, as well as various talks and panels in the morning and afternoon, this year’s outing will also feature a music trail-like evening of concerts around the city’s Cathedral Quarter. Line-ups and schedule will be announced in due course. A new addition to next year’s outing is a brand new showcase stage, which is “devoted to new emerging talent that otherwise might be overlooked by…

  • A Litany of Failures Announce Volume III and Fundraising Gig

    October 21, 2019 - By 

    After triumphant failures in 2018 and 2016, A Litany Of Failures – an independent, cross-border compilation series featuring the best in alternative Irish music – is back.  Ahead of another double-vinyl release in July 2020, A Litany Of Failures is curating a series of fundraiser gigs around Ireland. These will feature the curdled cream of the indie scene, with the first gig taking place on Friday 25th October in JaJa Studios in Stoneybatter, Dublin 7.  A BYOB show, music on the night comes from Belfast indie psych quartet Junk Drawer – check out their NI Music Prize-nominated single ‘Year of the Sofa‘ – the Paddy Hanna fronted…

  • Big Thief – Two Hands

    October 21, 2019 - By 

    Two hands is the second album from Big Thief this year, following the sublime U.F.O.F. back in May. Despite such a brief interval between both albums, these “twins” reside in polar geographies; the former fixating on voyeuristic distance and disconnection, while the latter roots itself in a close and uncomplicated familial structure. There’s a desire for domesticity in Two Hands, which manifests in multiple ways, but is accentuated in the way the album was recorded almost entirely live, save a few overdubs. Bringing this raw, marked sound together with multi-faceted lyrics to explore internal uncertainties and societal grievances, Big Thief harness intimate…

  • Hyperobjects @ Catalyst Arts

    October 31, 2019 - By 

    Catalyst Arts Gallery’s latest exhibition, Hyperobjects, runs from Thursday, November 7 until December 5, with its opening night featuring a sonic performance from Jez Riley French with his piece, island | fjórar (dissolve). French uses uses intuitive composition, field recording, improvisation & photography to explore emotive responses to places and situations, with an interest in largely unnoticed, unreachable sounds. He has recorded resonances of architectural spaces and structures, the sounds of insects feeding, and recently spent time recording the sound of glaciers melting in Iceland. His work has been exhibited in the Tate Modern & Britain, Iceland’s Harpa & Mengi, The Whitworth, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, and…

  • Stream: DANI – The Mother Within (Acoustic)

    October 18, 2019 - By 

    Hailing from the Armagh Monaghan border, the wonderfully-woven folk craft of DANI is inspired by the Irish traditional melodies she was raised with. Delving into the celtic mythic imagination, it’s music that saw the artist selected as the Artist in Residence at Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival earlier this year, supporting the likes of Rufus Wainwright, The Eskies and Joshua Burnside. Today, the Belfast-based musician releases an acoustic version of her most emphatic single to date, ‘The Mother Within’. While the original is a first-rate collaboration with Indonesian percussionists KunoKini, this new, stripped-back version reveals new layers of melodic and emotive flair. DANI…