• NI Science Festival 2016

    February 15, 2016 - By 

    Is there anything more satisfying than flicking through a freshly-printed, beautifully designed festival programme bursting with every shade of varyingly mind-expanding and curiousity-sating event? Having recently had that very same experience checking out the programme for this year’s forthcoming NI Science Festival we swiftly discovered that the short (and long) answer to that is no. Set to return to various venues across the North of the country from February 18-28, the festival will be divided into many day and night events. During the day the festival will present a range of workshops, talks and interactive activities for young people, parents and schools. In the…

  • Premiere: Monster Monster – The City’s Ours

    February 12, 2016 - By 

    Ahead of its release on March 11, we’re pleased to present a premiere of ‘The City’s Ours’ by Dublin alt-pop duo Mick Stuart and Ríona Sally Hartman AKA Monster Monster. Taken from their debut EP of the same name (released last year and recorded with UK producer James Lewis) the lead track is a rousing battlecry of urban abandon and collective immunity. Check out the video for the single and forthcoming Monster Monster tour dates below. Tuesday, March 1 – Ruby Sessions, Dublin Saturday, April 9 – Brewery Corner, Kilkenny Friday, April 15 – Boyles, Slane Thursday, April 21 – Róisín Dubh, Galway Saturday, May 14 –…

  • Crowded With Different Voices: an interview with Julia Holter

    February 11, 2016 - By 

    Few artists follow their own path so downright convincingly as Californian experimental pop auteur Julia Holter. With her extraordinary, peerlessly prismatic fourth studio album, Have You In My Wilderness, finishing at the top-end of many ’15 End of Year lists, her standing as a supremely individual musician is incontestable. Ahead of her show at Dublin’s Button Factory next Wednesday night (January 17) Brian Coney chats to Holter about inspiration, the thematic concepts underlying her music and the consequence of widespread critical acclaim. It’s five months on from the release of Have You In My Wilderness. I’m curious: does the kind of acclaim it…

  • Watch: OCHO – Vines

    February 11, 2016 - By 

    Set for release via Cork’s Feel Good Lost tomorrow, ‘Vines’ by Dublin act OCHO is a masterfully creeping, all-too-short burst of wonderfully subdued electronica. Accompanied by a phenomenal, cunningly claustophobic DIY video by the band (hands down one of the best we’ve seen in a while) it is OCHO’s first release since 2012’s debut LP ‘Young Hunting’. With live dates in the pipeline, the single is out digitally via Feel Good Lost tomorrow and on 12″ with a Darshan Jesrani (Metro Area) remix via Dublin’s Bodytonic later this year.

  • Premiere: Hot Cops – Scared of Everything

    February 11, 2016 - By 

    It’s no coincidence that we’ve hosted Belfast indie rock trio Hot Cops in four different TTA shows over the last couple of years, most recently at a packed-out show at Belfast’s Lavery’s on Tuesday night for the launch of their stellar new single ‘Passive Passive‘. The b-side to that, ‘Scared of Everything’ is an equally emphatic effort from the fast-rising threesome, forging pounding, fuzzed-out chords and frontman Carl Eccles’ admissions of apprehension (“I’m afraid to go outside/I don’t want to see your skin/I’m afraid to let you in”). Conjuring the likes of Pinkerton-era Weezer and Cloud Nothings’ more tuneful throwdowns, it gives everyday quasi-agoraphobic dread yet another…

  • First Acts Revealed for Forbidden Fruit

    February 9, 2016 - By 

    Tame Impala, Jungle and Underworld are amongst the first acts announced to play this year’s Forbidden Fruit. Set to return to Dublin’s Royal Hospital Kilmainham during the June Bank Holiday of June 3-5, Flume, Groove Armada, Kiasmos and Battles also feature amongst the first wave of acts to be confirmed. With many more acts set to be announced, check out the current line-up below. Tickets go on sale tomorrow (Wednesday, February 10) at 9am.

  • Watch: Talos – In Time

    February 9, 2016 - By 

    Having first streamed it back in September last year, the exquisite  ‘In Time’ by Cork singer-songwriter and producer Eoin French AKA Talos has been brought to life via what should probably be commonly referred to as the Feel Good Lost treatment. Speaking about video for the track, FGL’s Brendan Canty said, “It is an abstract portrayal of searching for a lost love, clinging onto memories and doing everything you can to save it.” Wonderfully mirroring lyrics including, “I was loved and now that loves lost I know they’ll never find us/Way out amongst the madness I feel free” Canty summons an arcane world in which every movement…

  • Watch: September Girls – Love No One

    February 8, 2016 - By 

    A dark and charging effort from the South by Southwest-bound Dublin five-piece, September Girls have re-emerged with new single ‘Love No One’. Pretty much exactly what we’d imagine the opening theme from a revenge horror re-imaging of a spaghetti Western to sound like, it’s a wonderfully tempestuous cut taken from their forthcoming album, Age of Indignation, which is set for released on April 8.  Check out the suitably baleful video for the single, courtesy of the band’s vocalist and lead guitarist Jessie Ward O’Sullivan, below.

  • Download: The Crytearions – Selected Recordings From The Album Trilogy

    February 8, 2016 - By 

    Concisely self-summed up as “Lo-fi punk by an Irish man” on his Bandcamp page, The Crytearions is prolific Co. Mayo musician Jimmy Monaghan, also of Music For Dead Birds. Brilliantly ramshackle and fuzzily ecstatic in all the right places, he has just released Selected Recordings From The Album Trilogy, described as “The best bits [from his first three albums]. All the imaginary hits. No shits. One for the inquisitors, the idle listeners. The loners, the stoners, and the perpetual boners.” And the perpetual boners, like. Pure poetry. Clocking in at 16 minutes in length, stream/download the album below. Selected Recordings From The Album…

  • First Acts Announced for Life Festival

    February 5, 2016 - By 

    One of the strongest first Irish festival announcements we’ve seen in some time, Life Festival revealed today that Paul Kalkbrenner, 2manydjs, Mano Le Tough, John Talabot, Blawan and Joy Orbison are amongst the acts set to make an appearance at Westmeath’s Belvedere House from May 27-29.With a limited number of early bird tickets on sale now, Jeff Mills, Ben Klock, Cyril Hahn, Martyn, Bicep, Jamie Jones and Sunil Sharpe are also amongst the first wave of acts to play the festival’s X1 outing. Go to the Life festival website for full information