• Playlist: 30 Unmissable Acts at Electric Picnic 2015

    September 3, 2015 - By 

    Befitting tradition, this year’s Electric Picnic is set to be another weekend-long congregation of some of the very best sights and sounds. From the Little Big Tent and Rankins Wood to Electric Arena and the Body & Soul stages, every corner will reveal a cornucopia of the beautiful and brash, restrained and rapturous, up-and-coming and positively established. Having ran our eye over this year’s line-up a few times, we reckon the following thirty acts are worthy of the collective title “unmissable”.  Have a listen and make sure to check them all out if you’re lucky enough to be gracing Stradbally Estate this…

  • Watch: Girl Band – Pears For Lunch

    September 3, 2015 - By 

    To say Dublin’s Girl Band are on a bit of a roll would be a towering understatement. Set to play a Thin Air show at Belfast’s Bar Sub on Friday, September 25 as part of a forthcoming new UK tour (full dates below), the Dara Kiely-fronted four-piece have just unleashed ‘Pears For Lunch’, the latest single from their hugely-anticipated debut album, Holding Hands With Jamie. A suffocating, masterfully maniacal three and a half minutes culminating in the the immortal adage “I look crap with my top off…”, the track feels like an epilogue of sorts to last January’s ‘Lawman’. If the…

  • Watch: Abandcalledboy – LA Dick (Keian Remix)

    September 3, 2015 - By 

    Back in May we introduced Lia, the debut EP by Dublin-based Irish-Iranian songwriter and producer Keian Roohipour AKA Keian. Four months on, the Co. Down man has worked his shuffling, unravelling wizardry on ‘LA Dick’, the latest single by Abandcalledboy. Warping the original to a barely recognisable state, it makes for five odd minutes of wonderfully tangential electronic nocturnalism, hinting at some great things in the pipeline. Watch the video for the original track here and check out Keian’s remix below.

  • Stream: Little Xs For Eyes – Funk Island

    September 2, 2015 - By 

    Funk Island: not only where James Brown desperately (possibly) wanted to see in his retirement, but also the tropical-tinged new single by Dublin indie-pop band Little Xs For Eyes. While they’re just a little late in capturing the sound of the great (cough) Irish summer, they’ve certainly fused a whole plethora of sun-kissed sounds on the new release, which is accompanied a remix of ‘Logical Love’ by Rory Grubb. It’s not quite as radiant but we’re fans. Funk Island by little xs for eyes

  • Make Quarter Block Party 2016 Happen

    August 26, 2015 - By 

    Having totally knocked it out of the park in its inaugural outing at the start of the year, Cork’s Quarter Block Party have announced that they aim to return next across the weekend of February 5-7. With the creative community and collaboration very much at the heart of their would-be manifesto, the guys have also launched an Indiegogo campaign in order to help fund and make next year’s QBP twice as memorable and exciting as the first. “What’s in it for me?” you ask? That fuzzy feeling and much more besides. Get involved here and check out our review from Quarter Block Party 2015 here.

  • Watch: Girls Names – A Hunger Artist

    August 26, 2015 - By 

    With its wonderfully droll pisstake intro transporting us right back to an age of super-awkward 80s TV interviews, the video for Girls Names‘ ‘A Hunger Artist’ is a sparse, brilliantly realised, perfectly self-contained little no man’s land where their music couldn’t serve any more aptly as a soundtrack. A highlight from the band’s forthcoming third studio album, Arms Around a Vision, the track is a sneering and gallant slab of burrowing post-punk (yes, we went “there”) with a payoff that marries Magazine and Gary Numan at their most utterly resolute. Girls Names kick off another string of Europeans shows at Belfast’s Empire Music Hall on…

  • Stream: Contour – Rearrange & Realign

    August 26, 2015 - By 

    One of our favourite Irish acts at the minute – and arguably the jewel in Belfast imprint Champion Sound’s crown – Dublin’s Contour has returned with ‘Rearrange & Realign’, a six-minute track bursting with the pair’s increasingly distinctive brand of electro-pop. Taken from their forthcoming second EP, the brilliantly titled Blessed With Weird Things, you can stream it below now via the Champion Sound Soundcloud page.

  • Interview: Beach House

    August 25, 2015 - By 

    Ahead of their highly-anticipated return to Belfast and Dublin in late October, Beach House will release their stellar fifth full-length album, Depression Cherry, via Bella Union on Friday, August 28. Touching on the past, present and future of the band, Brian Coney talks energy, myth and release with the band’s frontwoman Victoria Legrand. Hi Victoria. You’ve recently released a statement about Depression Cherry that includes, “Here, we continue to let ourselves evolve while fully ignoring the commercial context in which we exist.” I really like that. Is not being misunderstood that important to you? It’s not about being misunderstood or anything like that. In order for…

  • Out in the Open: Artistic Explorations in the Public Domain

    August 25, 2015 - By 

    Presented by the ever-tasteful Household, Out in the Open: Artistic Explorations in the Public Domain will ask a few questions: What constitutes a piece of public art? Should it be outdoors and monumental? Permanent and made of strong, durable materials? Or is it something that can be more fluid, intimate in scale and ephemeral in execution; operating in our constantly changing urban environment in new ways, inviting us to consider our surroundings in a new light and asking difficult questions about how city spaces are developed and controlled? A three-day programme of new commissions, screenings, interventions and conversations about “what it…

  • Watch: Slomatics in Their Practice Space

    August 25, 2015 - By 

    In a Thin Air we’re first we’re sharing footage a band’s band practice. But rather just any old band or any old practice, it’s Seán Zissou’s B&W mini-film of Belfast sludge-doom overlords Slomatics collectively self-exorcising themselves in behemothic adulation of the (very slow, most crushing) riff. Someone seriously needs to invent whiplash cream just so these guys can be sponsored by it. Watch the video – featuring additional camera by Dave Knox and audio recording/mix Thomas Parkes – below.