• 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.

  • Stream: A Bad Cavalier – Moving On

    August 24, 2015 - By 

    Almost two years on from unveiled his debut EP, Ex Libris, Niall Kennedy and his band AKA A Bad Cavalier have went several steps further with with their stupendous new single, ‘Moving On’. A nigh on four-minute slab of deliciously tight, totally triumphant alt-pop, the track is the follow-up to the band’s July single ‘I’m a Wreck’. Judging by the awesome trajectory of his output to date, a forthcoming full-length release is something we would very happily lap up indeed. Stream the single below via Bandcamp. Moving On by A Bad Cavalier

  • Watch: Overhead, The Albatross – Big River Man

    August 25, 2015 - By 

    There’s videos capturing the sheer kinesis and electricity of performance, then there’s the video for ‘Big River’ Man by Dublin instrumental six-piece Overhead, The Albatross. Directed by the band’s guitarist Luke Daly, it masterfully taps into OTA’s inexorable brand of post-rock, capturing the sheer power innate in its pockets of ardor and zeal. We’re big fans. Watch the video below. And again.

  • Premiere: Music For Dead Birds – English Weed/What a Waste

    August 24, 2015 - By 

    Ahead of the unveiled of an EP for September, we’re pleased to premiere a pre-release double-single of sorts from Galway/Mayo duo Music For Dead Birds. Brimming with the band’s distinctive brand of lo-fi indie “anti-folk”, ‘English Weed/What a Waste’ clocks in at just under seven minutes but still manages to pack an emphatic punch. Seemingly operating outside of any strong semblance of a scene in Connacht, Jimmy Monaghan and Dónal Walsh continue to embody the outsider spirit that they drove home on the likes of 2009’s And Then It Rained For Seven Days, the sublime The Pope’s Sister and their album, Vitamins,…

  • Inbound: Peter McVeigh

    August 20, 2015 - By 

    In the latest installment of Inbound, we chat to Belfast-based singer-songwriter Peter McVeigh, touching on the recording and release of his new album, PM, collaborating with an array of musicians on the release and the current state of the Irish music industry. Hi Peter. First thing’s first: for those not acquainted with your backstory, how did you first get into writing and making music? I’ve always played music of some sort. I played flute at primary school, got kicked out of it for not doing my homework in high school and decided to teach myself piano, guitar and sing. Then…