• Watch: Meltybrains? – Oh Earth (Live in The Pepper Canister Church, Dublin)

    March 25, 2015 - By 

    Having spent the last week driving home their impossibly distinctive brand of experimental pop at SXSW, Dublin experimental five-piece Meltybrains? will play a special Thin Air show at Belfast’s Bar Sub on Friday, April 10 alongside the equally unmissable Blue Whale. Sitting on the fence about attending? Relieve your behind by watching Bob Gallagher’s live video of ‘Oh Earth’ by Meltybrains?, filmed at Dublin’s wonderful Pepper Canister Church in February. Go here for the Facebook event for the Belfast show.  

  • Stream: Paddy Hanna – Austria

    March 25, 2015 - By 

    Just over a year on from released the exquisite Leafy Stiletto – one of our Irish albums of 2014 no less – Dublin’s Paddy Hanna has returned in something of a new guise with ‘Austria’, a jangle-pop mini-masterstroke evoking the likes of Morrissey, The Divine Comedy and Elvis Costello. There’s also a vague hint of Joe Dolan in there too but we’ll pretend we didn’t hear that. Or will we? Anyway, we’re very fond of ‘Austria’ and wouldn’t even remotely kick up a fuss if Hanna deciding to dander down this sonic path for an eon and an age. Paired with a b-side,…

  • Distorted Perspectives Festival

    March 25, 2015 - By 

    An altogether stellar celebration of modern experimental psych music, art and film, Distorted Perspectives will return to Letterkenny’s Regional Culture Centre this Spring with a thoroughly impressive line-up. Set to take place across Thursday April 30-Sunday May 3, the festival will boast established acts including Ulrich Schanuss and Moon Duo (above), as well as some of the country’s finest psych, electronic, noise-pop and acoustic acts including Autumns, Clanns, Documenta, Nyt Bloomer and Robyn G Shiels. Check out the poster below for full line-up and where to buy tickets.

  • Boiler Room set for Belfast’s AVA Festival

    March 24, 2015 - By 

    Set to take place as part of the inaugural AVA Festival, legendary underground music showcase Boiler Room will make its Belfast debut in the very capable company of Bicep, Space Dimension Controller, John Daly (who performs live), Timmy Stewart and Schmutz. A fine line-up of homegrown electronic talent for a highly-anticipated event, we’re sure you’ll agree. Go here for more information about AVA Festival, including where to buy tickets and all the usual.

  • Idlewild @ Limelight 2, Belfast

    March 23, 2015 - By 

    It was shortly after delivering a memorable, thrashy show in Stiff Kitten back in 2010 that Idlewild quietly disappeared from music. It is fair to say that we missed them. Now, with the itches for solo projects having been successfully scratched and the time taken to patiently develop new material, the band returned to Belfast touring on the back of their first album in five years. The Limelight 2 was packed to absolute capacity. ‘Everything Ever Written’, despite being a good album, is unlikely to have brought such a crowd. This was clearly a loyal audience collected many years before…

  • EP Premiere: R51 – Pillow Talk

    March 23, 2015 - By 

    Belfast-based quintet R51 have come on leaps and bounds over the last couple of years. Having cultivated a perfectly pulverizing live show and an effects-laden, shoegaze-tinged noise-pop craft that continues to surprise and intrigue, the Melyssa Shannon-fronted quartet will launch their debut EP, Pillow Talk, at Belfast’s Bar Sub on Wednesday night (April 25). In his review of the EP for the Thin Air, Will Murphy said, “Each one of the songs has something to recommend, be it the Sigur Ros vibe permeating throughout the EP closer, ‘Seaweed’, the spaced out verses on ‘I Hate That Too’ or the monstrously huge chorus on ‘Pillow…

  • Monday Mixtape: Cathy Pellow (Sargent House)

    March 23, 2015 - By 

    We’re very pleased to present this week’s Monday Mixtape, featuring none other than Sargent House founder and owner Cathy Pellow. A true champion of independent music and some of the very best artists around, Pellow’s mixtape features several unreleased tracks from the likes of R. Ariel, Mutoid Man, And So I Watch You From Afar and No Spill Blood, as well as released material from acts including Helms Alee and Wovenhand. And So I Watch You From Afar – Wasps (from Heirs, out on May 4) Blis. – Floating Somewhere High and Above (from Starting Fires In My Parents House) Empty Houses –…

  • Belfast Film Festival Programme Launch

    March 19, 2015 - By 

    Set to take place in venues across the city from April 16-26, the programme for the 15th Belfast Film Festival has been announced. As is very much its custom, the festival has an extraordinarily diverse line-up up its sleeve this year, with categories boasting categories including New Cinema, Altered States & Twisted Corners, Northern Irish Independents/Shorts, as well as Opening & Closing films I Am Belfast, Shooting For Socrates and The Survivalist. Check out the full programme and buy tickets at the Belfast Film Festival website here.

  • Watch: All Tvvins – Thank You

    March 19, 2015 - By 

    Having received its premiere on Zane Lowe’s Radio 1 programme last month, Dublin duo All Tvvins have unveiled the rather fabulous video for their triumphant debut single, ‘Thank You’. In January we summed up a live version of the track, released last year as “A charming and bewitching math-pop track released as a live video from the post-Adebisi supergroup. Whip-smart in the composition, and beautifully restrained in the delivery, it is a wonderful dichotomy of heart-warming melodies and existential uncertainty, sealed with searing, aching swell guitar.” The video for the single – a hyper-disco, ballerina-centric mini-masterpiece – was directed by Brendan…