• RTÉ Choice Music Prize Shortlist Revealed

    January 10, 2018 - By 

    RTÉ Choice Music Prize has announced its ten-album shortlist for 2017. The prize selects the best Irish album of the previous calendar year. The shortlist is as follows: Come On Live Long – In The Still Marlene Enright – Placemats and Second Cuts Fangclub – Fangclub Lankum – Beneath The Earth and the Sky James Vincent McMorrow – True Care New Jackson – From Night To Night Otherkin – OK Fionn Regan – The Meetings of the Waters Ships – Precession Talos – Wild Alee The winner will be chosen during a live event, which will be held at Vicar Street in…

  • Car Seat Headrest set for Olympia Theatre

    January 9, 2018 - By 

    Less than a year on from playing the Academy, Will Toledo’s Car Seat Headrest have been announced to play a show at Dublin’s Olympia Theatre on Wednesday, May 16. The news coincides with the announcement that Toledo will release a re-imagined version of his 2011 album Twin Fantasy, on February 16 via Matador. Watch the brand new video for ‘Nervous Young Inhumans’ below. Tickets for the Olympia show are priced at €23.90 and go on sale on Friday, January 12.

  • Rescheduled Breeders Date Announced

    January 9, 2018 - By 

    Thanks to Hurricane Ophelia’s handiwork back in October, The Breeders had to cancel their highly-anticipated return to Dublin at Vicar Street. A rescheduled date was promised and here we are: unless another act of God prevents it (touch wood) the band will play Vicar Street on Sunday, May 27. Tickets go on sale on Thursday, January 18. Back in November, Kim Deal reveal to Marc Maron that a new album will be released in 2018. Check out the full WTF podcast right here.

  • Line-Up Announced For Output Showcase

    January 9, 2018 - By 

    Returning to Belfast on February 8, the Output music conference and showcase will host a day of seminars, panels and keynote speeches at Belfast’s MAC featuring some of the national music industry’s most highly-noted speakers and practitioners. In the evening, several of the city’s venues will host another series of free showcases featuring a selection of Irish bands and solo artists, curated by the likes of The Thin Air, PRS For Music, Help Musicians NI, The Live Room, Nialler9 and more. We’ll be teaming up with Rally for a show at Babel, located at the Rooftop of Bullitt. Performing will be New…

  • Applications Open for Stendhal Festival 2018

    January 8, 2018 - By 

    Hands down one of our favourite Irish summer festivals, Stendhal have made their annual call for applications for acts, artists and traders. Set to return to Ballymully Cottage Farm in Limavady across August 10-11, you can apply for this year’s outing by going here and filling an online form. Festival director Ross Parkhill said, “The Submission process always throws up some amazing finds, Ryan McMullan who has sold out the Mandela Hall and the Limelight in the past 12 months first came to our attention via our submissions, likewise with acts such as SOAK and several other notable names from the…

  • Premiere: Sweat Threats – Hermit

    January 4, 2018 - By 

    With their pure and perfect aim to make “post-punk party music for a public too often deprived of a good time”, Sweat Threats is the new project from Tayne’s Matt Sutton and Niall Jackson (AKA Swimmers and Bouts). Kickstarting their year as they mean to go on, debut single ‘Hermit’ is a blistering opening gambit melding the duo’s respective command of tight, fist-clenched punk and burrowing pop moments channelling two of Vancouver’s finest: Death From Above and Japandroids. A nice tie-in? Recorded and produced by Sutton and Jackson in various bedrooms and rehearsal spaces around London throughout 2017, the single was mixed by…

  • Win Tickets to O Emperor @ Quarter Block Party 2018

    January 8, 2018 - By 

    Waterford psych-pop five-piece O Emperor will mark their long-awaited return as part of this year’s frankly unmissable Quarter Block Party on Friday, February 2. Better still, we have a pair of tickets to give away to the show. Quarter Block Party will take over Cork city’s historic spine across February 2-4, with venues in Peter’s Church, Triskel Christchurch, Spailpín Fánach, and AMP set to play host to a stellar range of pop-up and public music, theatre and dance events. Co-presented by Makeshift Ensemble and Southern Hospitality Board, the Old Quarter will, for the fourth year running, put the focus on all that Cork…

  • Stream: Dandy’s Loft – Shadows In Motion

    January 2, 2018 - By 

    Set to release their debut album in the first quarter of 2018, Lurgan indie quintet Dandy’s Loft well and truly grabbed our attention last June with their four-track debut EP, Introspector. Seven months on, the band are back with the ‘Shadows In Motion’. The lead single from their upcoming LP, it picks up where Introspector left off, proving a carefully crafted and masterfully mournful effort conjuring the likes of Grizzly Bear, Department of Eagles and The Black Heart Procession. As first gambits for upcoming debut albums go, this is right up there with the most promising we’ve heard from an Irish act in quite…

  • Album Stream: Crevice – In Heart

    December 18, 2017 - By 

    Comprised of Irene Buckley of Wry Myrrh, Elaine Howley of the Altered Hours and Morning Veils, and solo artist, Morning Veils member and co-runner of KantCope, Roslyn Steer, the music of Crevice was made for these early dark evenings and associated end-of-year contemplation. Recorded by Cathal Mac Gabhann (also of The Altered Hours), their debut album, In Heart, is a ten-track journey masterfully blurring the lines between electronic nocturnalism, balmy darkwave and sleepy-headed dream-pop. Released via Irish cassette label Fort Evil Fruit today, the album – which was mastered by Noel Summerville, and features a great cover image from Carolyn Collier – conjures the smalltown phantasm…

  • Quarter Block Party Reveal Full Line-Up

    December 18, 2017 - By 

    The full line-up has been announced for Quarter Black Party 2018. Set to take over various venues in North and South Main Street in Cork across Friday 2 to Sunday February 4,  the folow artists will perform: O Emperor, Percolator, Pillow Queens, The Sunshine Factory, Tandem Felix (pictured above), Yenkee, Lowlek, Hawkbastard, Rory Francis O’Brien, Cal Folger Day, Davy Kehoe, Robbie Kitt, Andy Wilson & The Toys, Bad Bones, Fuzzy Hell, Pale Rivers, Damsel, Elaine Malone, HEX, Postcard Versions, God Alone and PowPig. Elsewhere, there’ll be DJs in the form of Ben Bix, Dim The Lights, and Stevie G, as well as Vinyl…