• Zlatanera w/ Slomatics & Bad Boat @ Limelight, Belfast

    January 2, 2016 - By 

    Hail Satan! After four years, Belfast’s premier groove/stoner devil-worshipping metal band Zlatanera have finally put together their debut album Lergerdemain (literally ‘sleight of hand’, or trickery) and of course launched it in fine fashion in their spiritual home, the Limelight in Belfast. Both they and their two support acts also rather brilliantly showcased the many facets of stoner metal to boot. First of these supports is Bad Boat, who have been kicking around the local scene for the last fourteen years (“we should probably get an album together ourselves” quips frontman Tom Clarke). Tonight they are in outrageously superb form…

  • Electric Picnic Reveal First Acts

    March 2, 2016 - By 

    With the rumours coming thick and fast over the last couple of weeks, Electric Picnic have revealed the first acts confirmed to play this year’s festival. With much more yet to be revealed, LCD Soundsystem, Lana Del Rey, New Order and The Chemical Brothers top this year’s festival. Super Furry Animals, Haim, Todd Terje, Animal Collective, Broken Social Scene, Savages are also amongst the first confirmed acts. See the full first announcement below. Weekend camping tickets for Electric Picnic 2016 are now on sale here. To enter our competition to win two weekend tickets to this year’s festival, go here.

  • Stream: Solar Bears – Gravity Calling

    March 2, 2016 - By 

    This time last month we were rather giddily raving about Solar Bears‘ ‘Wild Flowers’, a track we said seen the Dublin duo “as prismatic and sorcerous as ever”. Very much following in that vein, ‘Gravity Calling’ is the latest track to be streamed from their forthcoming third album, Advancement, which drops via Sunday Best Recordings on March 18. Inducing yet another neon-lit netherworld of lambent retro-futurism, it’s a superbly synth-driven, soundtrack-like four minutes of flawless mastery from the twosome. Solar Bears play Belfast’s Lavery’s on Friday, March 18. Pre-order Advancement here.

  • Watch: New Secret Weapon – You’re Still Losing (Live)

    March 1, 2016 - By 

    Few Irish alt-rock bands command their own sound quite as convincingly as Dublin’s New Secret Weapon. Counting The Fear, The Late Late Show and OJ Simpson as their many influences on their Facebook page, the David Griffin-fronted trio have unveiled a live version of ‘You’re Still Losing’, a riff-fuelled, multi-part ode to the interminable, Sisyphean strife of The Everyday. Evoking everything from Jeff Buckley’s more tenacious efforts to the backwashed urban doom of Enablers and Incubus’ earlier, more emphatic material. Created by Scan and recorded by Deaf Bros, watch the video below.

  • KnockanStockan 2016

    March 1, 2016 - By 

    Having expanding to three days due to demand, annual Wicklow independent music and arts festival KnockanStockan will return to Blessington Lakes across the weekend of July 22-24 for its tenth anniversary outing. Calling it a “celebration of the last 10 years of Irish music”, this year’s festival will also play host to special ‘Honorary Guests’ that won’t be identified until they take to stage. Bettine McMahon from the festival said, “We really want the element of a birthday surprise at this years festival, so our lineup is under lock and key right now, even most of the crew don’t know…

  • Women’s Work Festival

    March 1, 2016 - By 

    A programme inspired by the likes of Kate Bush and Bjork, the seeds of forthcoming inaugural Women’s Work Festival at Belfast’s Oh Yeah Centre were sown amidst planning for the 2014 International Women’s Day event at the Belfast venue and music scene. Two years on, the festival – that will highlight, celebrate and showcase women in music, as well as facilitate discussion with industry and artists on the issues surrounding the debate – is a fully-fledged,  proposition, set to take place from its launch with legendary DJ Annie Nightingale on Friday, March 4 until Friday, March 11. Set to be a wonderfully eclectic and important festival…

  • Watch: Bad Bones – Games

    March 1, 2016 - By 

    Set to play the next installment of Psykick Dancehall – our new night with Medium presents at Dublin’s Bello Bar – Dublin producer Sal Stapleton AKA Bad Bones released her shadowy, wonderfully cloistered first gambit last month in the form of ‘Beg’. Going one better, her new single ‘Games’ is a delicious slice of darkly electronica weaving perfectly-spliced beats, bobbing bass and modulated vocals in a fine, cimmerian mesh of noise. Check out the video for ‘Games’ – also created by Stapleton – below.  

  • And So I Watch You From Afar in Japan

    February 29, 2016 - By 

    And So I Watch You From Afar drummer Chris Wee reports from their recent stint in the Nihon lights of the Far East. With paper cup of coffee in hand I sat, knees wedged toward my chest in the first passenger row of our boxy Hiace van, the intrepid road warrior of many an Asian motorway. The whole thing shook and bumped at every contour of the Tomei Expressway connecting our last city of Nagoya to Tokyo. There are not too many certainties in life, but in terms of ASIWYFA, whether it was the 1000mile stretch from Edmonton to Salt…

  • EP Premiere: Bouts – Unlearn

    February 29, 2016 - By 

    Self-described as a “pop-grunge noise rock band with an inherent, unashamed attachment to big pop hooks” Dublin indie rock quartet Bouts have well and truly lived up to that explication over the last few years. Having fully arrived with their stupendous debut album Nothing Good Gets Away back in 2013, today marks the release of a five-track EP that sees their craft as downright convincing as ever, in spite of two members living overseas. Recorded at various points in 2015, at no point during the process where all members present together – a fact that both underlines the studio efforts of John Murphy and Shane…