• Lingo Festival 2015

    October 15, 2015 - By 

    Ireland’s first and only spoken world festival, Lingo returns to Dublin from Friday, October 16 to Sunday, October 18 to for another week of exceptional performances from fresh voices and spoken word masters from Ireland and much further afield. Organised by some of the Dublin’s most attuned independent promoters, arts curators and spoken word artists, this year’s outing boasts everyone from headliner extraordinaire Saul Williams and experimental poet and playwright Dylan Coburn Gray to UK poet and spoken word artist Hollie McNish and Derry-based performance poet Abby Oliveira. Go here to read our new interview with Saul Williams and here to check…

  • Download: Paper Trail Records – Thanks For Listening

    October 12, 2015 - By 

    Compiled and released by Paper Trail Records for World Mental Health Day 2015 on Friday, Thanks For Listening is already one of our favourite Irish compilations in… well, ever. Featuring everyone from Katie Kim, Paddy Hanna and Shrug Life to Eskimeaux, Cloud Castle Lake and Simon Bird, the sixteen-track release – featuring both Irish and international acts – was put together to help raise awareness for World Mental Health Day, founded in 1992. All proceeds from this compilation will go directly to Console, so please help by donating what you can. Artwork by Holly Tratnor and Brian FitzPatrick. Stream (and…

  • Stream: Saint Sister – Blood Moon

    October 12, 2015 - By 

    Having made a big impression at Hard Working Class Heroes last weekend, Irish duo Gemma Doherty and Morgan MacIntyre AKA Saint Sister have hit the ground sprinting with their new single, ‘Blood Moon’. Taken from the band’s forthcoming Madrid EP – set for released via Trout Records on October 30 – the track is a brilliantly earworming three minutes of drifting and empyrean folk-pop. Madrid was recorded in a short, “intense” session at County Kerry’s Noise studio by Alex Ryan of Hozier. Stream ‘Blood Moon’ below. Photos by Deborah Sheedy.

  • Irish Tour: 100 Onces & Stonemasons

    October 12, 2015 - By 

    “It feels like an attic in here.” This is the first thing a friend says to me when we walk into the upstairs room of the Roisín Dubh on a Saturday to catch one of the last shows of Los Angeles duo 100 Onces’ extensive tour which saw them travelling around the UK, Eastern Europe, Russia and back to Ireland. The feeling that we’re in an attic is largely owing to the lack of much light of any sort and the cluttering of three band’s worth of equipment in the corner. It’s not a bad feeling at all, and it…

  • Monday Mixtape: James McNew (Yo La Tengo)

    October 12, 2015 - By 

    Ahead of their highly-anticipated return to Dublin at the National Concert Hall on Thursday night (October 15), Yo La Tengo’s James McNew reveals eight tracks “that roll through my head almost every single day of my life”, including Cornelius, Grateful Dead & El-P. EL-P – Deep Space 9mm  Every detail, and there are ones I’m still discovering, has gotten me to the end of every day since 2002. This guy somehow finds the exact humor/ humanity in the scariest of shit, just when you need it. Grateful Dead – Live on Beat Club   Like a dream where you discover new…

  • EP Premiere: Grassfight – Please Don’t Tell

    October 8, 2015 - By 

    With influences as downright venerable as Spacemen 3, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Spoon, New York quartet Grassfight meld cosmically-inclined indie-pop with a subtly anthemic moxie that’s positively strewn across their new EP, Please Don’t Tell – a release which we’re delighted to premiere in full ahead of its release tomorrow (Friday, October 9) Tempting the semi-inevitable Fleetwood Mac comparison (no bad thing in itself, surely), their new five-track EP documents the break-up between two of the band members. Naturally, then, a certain weight of import permeates the length and breadth of the release – the latter word faring pretty operative in the EP feeling not…

  • My Tribe Your Tribe – Ghost With You

    October 8, 2015 - By 

    The follow-up to the sublime ‘Will To Survive‘ – one of our favourite Irish tracks of the year thus far – Dublin’s My Tribe Your Tribe are back with a new single, ‘Ghost With You’. Marking their expansion to a three-piece with multi-instrumentalist Colm Daffy entering the fold, the track – yet another instantly impressive slice of anthemic indie-pop from the George Mercer-fronted band – is accompanied with a self-made video featuring the band playing and recording the single. Check out the video below.

  • Watch: Sleep Thieves – High

    October 8, 2015 - By 

    Set to play New York next week, Dublin threesome Sleep Thieves have unveiled the video for their new single, ‘High’. Directed by Canada-based Irish artist and filmmaker Claire Byrne in Toronto, the video presents an otherworldly Arcadia of tripped-out, anonymous fantasy land; one that fuses extremely well with the Sorcha Brennan-fronted trio’s dusky electro-pop.

  • Stream: Documenta – Chiaroscuro

    October 7, 2015 - By 

    Having delivered a suitably (inter)stellar performance supporting Girls Names at their album launch in Belfast last week, drone pop septet Documenta are streaming a new track from their forthcoming second album, Drone Pop #1. A drifting, subtle dance of burrowing psych-pop, ‘Chiaroscuro’ is the Joe Greene-fronted outfit’s implicit manifesto distilled to five minutes of Kosmiche-soaked, two chord concrète groove. Drone Pop #1 – recorded by Ben McAuley at Belfast’s Start Together Studios – will be released via Touch Sensitive records on Friday, November 13. Pre-order it here.

  • Hard Working Class Heroes 2015 – Friday

    October 6, 2015 - By 

    Fast forward through your own boring life and the cycle starts again. Another night of wall to wall quality music with the criminal schedule clashes an unfortunate reminder of the standard for the night. By 8pm the Mercantile is host to its first few shuffling visitors and Lie Ins fuzzy pop-rock. It’s comprehensive, bouncy stuff but maybe a little unexciting. However the room slowly fills and by the time Staring at Lakes overcome what seems to be a host of technical difficulties the place could almost be called busy. Despite the Mercantile venues shit wedding party charm, half a song…