• Neo-Neo @ Black Box

    August 12, 2016 - By 

    A live performance series celebrating the very best in underground music and experimental visual art, Neo-Neo is a new, four-part series that will take place at Belfast’s Black Box across August and September. Bringing together a choice selection of the country’s most innovative electronic musicians contemporary artists including Barry Lynn AKA The Host, Kab Driver, Black Mountain Transmitter and Kaidi Taitham with visual artists such as Ben Craig, Laura McMorrow, Helena Hamilton & Rachael Campbell-Palmer and more, each installment offers a unique collaborative slant, with the distinct prospect of some very catalytic moments throughout each night. See below for the full schedule for what is set…

  • Stream: President Obama’s Summer Playlist

    August 12, 2016 - By 

    “Been waiting to drop this: summer playlist, the encore. What’s everybody listening to?” Featuring everyone Janelle Monáe, Charles Mingus and Courtney Barnett to Nina Simone, Beach Boys and D’Angelo, Barack Obama has reminded us once more that he is unequivocally the coolest POTUS ever by sharing his 2016 summer playlist. Presumably the last of his several playlists compiled and release during his presidency, Obama first shared what was on his iPod whilst running for office back in 2008, revealing big-hitters John Coltrane, Bob Dylan and the Stones amongst his favourites. His parting Summer playlist of ’16 is a more diverse and intriguing affair,…

  • Stream: Hot Cops – Dumbbo

    August 10, 2016 - By 

    A grinding, forlorn four-minutes wielding crescendo in fine fashion, ‘Dumbbo’ by Belfast trio Hot Cops is easily their most foreboding single to date. The follow-up to ‘Passive Passive’, the track – something of a recent live highlight for the Carl Eccles-fronted three-piece – steadily imparts backwashed thoughts and disorientated solipsism before yielding to a gusto of fuzzed-out resolve. This is a cunning, creeping effort that insists upon the repeated listen. Limited to 250 pink marble copies, ‘Dummbo’ will be released alongside ‘Auto’ via Paper Trail Records on September 2. Stream the A-side below.

  • Watch: No Monster Club – I’ve Retired

    August 10, 2016 - By 

    Filmed over the course of two years in venues and festivals including Whelan’s, The Pop Inn, Knockanstockan, The Button Factory, Galway’s Roisin Dubh, Castlepalooza, Cork’s Connolly’s of Leap, No Monster Club have released the jubilant video for probably the catchiest Irish song of 2015, ‘I’ve Retired’. Compiled by Daniel Martin, the video “follows the song on its journey from house shows to festivals, via rock clubs and dive bars”. Good times. No Monster Club will release a new 7″ EP, Where Did You Get That Milkeshake?, via Emotional Response Records on September 5.

  • Another Love Story 2016

    August 9, 2016 - By 

    Easily our favourite small Irish summer festival, Another Love Story returns to the sublime Killyon Manor in Co. Meath from August 19-21. With less than a month to go until this year’s outing, organisers Happenings and Homebeat have revealed their final line-up, including their first ever international act, Sweden’s Badlands. With a host of live acts and DJs including Talos (pictured), Slow Skies, SlowPlaceLikeHome, Lastertom, Somadrone, Carriages and Ships set to make an appearance, the return of The Library and a veritable cornucopia of theatrical and artistic happenings (see full line-up poster below) will take place over the weekend. Tickets are priced…

  • Stream: Extra Fox – Ain’t That The Way

    August 9, 2016 - By 

    Dublin producer Neil Adams AKA Extra Fox was last on our radar back in February with ‘Lunar Float’, a spectral single we called “nigh on onomatopoetic”. With a rare live show expected to be announced over the next while, Adams has returned with the equally strong ‘Ain’t That The Way’, a brilliantly bobbing slice of electro-pop that, by virtue of its restrained, gradually layered repetition, burrows its way inside very nicely indeed.

  • First Acts Announced for Metropolis 2016

    August 9, 2016 - By 

    Following a massive inaugural outing last year, Dublin festival Metropolis have revealed Grace Jones, DJ Shadow, Solomun and Moderat are amongst the first acts set to play its second installment from November 3-5. Presented by POD and Hidden Agenda, this year’s festival will return to RDS at the end of the year after a sell-out first year. Set in the industrial array of warehouses and venues with the RDS complex, the indoor event offers a tapestry of music, art installation performance and conversation over 6 days. With many more acts still to be announced, SBTRKT (DJ Set), Booka Shade –…

  • Super Furry Animals Set For Irish Dates

    August 8, 2016 - By 

    Kicking off a string of winter dates culminating in a homecoming show in Cardiff, Welsh psych-pop legends Super Furry Animals will perform their landmark debut album, Fuzzy Logic, and its follow-up, Radiator, in order and back-to-back at Belfast’s Limelight and Dublin’s Olympia on November 30 and December 1. The dates mark the forthcoming re-issue of Fuzzy Logic on heavyweight vinyl, CD and digital formats. Fully remastered from the original tape reels, the band have enlisted their official archivist Kliph Scurlock and mastering expert Donal Whelan to ensure the recordings have been “meticulously rediscovered”. In a statement, the band said: “We were a young…

  • Nirvana/Sonic Youth in Cork: 25th Anniversary Show

    August 5, 2016 - By 

    “[Cobains] came from County Cork, which is a really weird coincidence, because when we toured Ireland, we played in Cork and the entire day I walked around in a daze. I’d never felt more spiritual in my life. It was the weirdest feeling and I have a friend who was with me who could testify to this. I was almost in tears the whole day. Since that tour, which was about two years ago, I’ve had a sense that I was from Ireland.” The words of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain in an interview with a US magazine in July 1993. Less than two…

  • Watch: FONDA – Dreaming

    August 4, 2016 - By 

    Few things can compete with that fuzzy feeling you get discovering a band – particularly one close to home – that just instantly tick all the boxes and hit home on first listen. A three-piece garage band from Limerick, Galway and Glasgow, FONDA are one of those bands. Having drawn comparisons to the likes of Crystal Stilts and the Go Betweens, the three-piece recorded their debut EP, Social Services with So Cow’s Brian Kelly last Summer. Now they’re back with ‘Dreaming’, a wonderful, perfectly understated new single that wields hard truths and major-minor chord transitions with a knack normally reserved for acts that have been around the…