• Going Mutant: A Catch-Up With Search Results

    June 5, 2025 - By 

    TTA favourites Search Results have been on a tear. Since introducing them back in November 2023, the Dublin maestros have become one of the island’s most vital sonic forces. Off the back of their deadly second album Go Mutant, guitarist/vocalist Fionn Brennan and drummer/vocalist Jack Condon chat to Cathal McBride about their evolving DIY ethos, the joys of working with cult mixer Mikey Young, balancing chaos and craft on stage and what’s already coming down the pipeline. Hi guys. You’ve just released your second LP, Go Mutant. How did your approach to this album differ from previous releases? Fionn: It…

  • Interview: Buzzcocks

    March 18, 2025 - By 

    Few bands have shaped the landscape of punk rock like Buzzcocks. Seminal is an understatement: since the late ‘70s, their blend of biting lyricism, sharp melodies, and unrelenting energy has cemented them as icons of the genre. Now fronted by long-time member Steve Diggle, the band continues to push forward, balancing their legendary catalogue with new material that keeps their spirit alive. Ahead of their show at Belfast’s Limelight on Friday, 21st March and Dublin’s Academy on Saturday, 22nd, Steve spoke with Cathal McBride about touring, fronting the band after Pete Shelley’s passing and what’s next for Buzzcocks. Hi Steve.…

  • Ginnels – The Picturesque

    February 3, 2025 - By 

    Though originally hailing from the north of England, Mark Chester has been a stalwart of Ireland’s DIY indie scene for years now. As an integral part of Dublin’s Popical Island collective, Chester has had countless production credits among the label’s roster and beyond, as well as performing in bands like No Monster Club, Grand Pocket Orchestra, and most notably his own project, Ginnels, quietly perhaps Popical Island’s crowning glory. While primarily a one-man band on record, the live band contained the likes of Paddy Hanna, No Monster Club’s Bobby Aherne and Squarehead members Roy Duffy and Ruan van Vliet, the…

  • Lighting the Way: How Blowtorch Records is Helping Shape Ireland’s Independent Music Scene

    December 10, 2024 - By 

    For a country as small as Ireland, for many years now there has been no shortage of quality independent record labels from each corner of the island that have punched well above their weight in terms of output. While some, like Sligo’s always excellent Art For Blind, have called it a day in recent years, one of the burgeoning newer labels picking up the mantle is Blowtorch Records, founded by Richard Burke in early 2019 and increasingly involved with some of the finest records coming out of these shores. Though based in Galway, their roster covers the length and breadth…

  • The Personal Vanity Project – The Personal Vanity Project

    June 10, 2024 - By 

    Anyone who’s ever been to Féile na Gréine or watched their excellent 2023 documentary film Out of Place will know all about the strength of the resolutely DIY Limerick music scene. Formed as something of a local supergroup, The PVP – short for The Personal Vanity Project – was put together by Cruiser guitarist Chris Quigley, who began recording demos alone during lockdown (initially trying to replicate the imagined sound of Kevin Shields’ fabled unreleased drum’n’bass album), before recruiting James Reidy of His Father’s Voice on keyboards along with drummer Brendan McInerney, who’s played with everyone from Bleeding Heart Pigeons,…

  • Whaling On: An Interview With Blue Whale

    March 6, 2024 - By 

    Next Friday, March 15, Belfast jazz-punk band Blue Whale return with their highly-anticipated second LP, Last Immediate Images. The follow-up to 2018’s Process, it’s another masterfully shapeshifting leap forward from one of the island’s most fiercely unpigeonholeable bands. Recorded and produced by Gilla Band’s Dan Fox, the album is a remarkable expansion, and deft deconstruction, of what the Quietus once hailed as their “chaotic, yet controlled experimental rock.” Ahead of its release, Cathal McBride spoke with guitarist Ben Behzadafshar about prolonged experimentation, the magic of biding one’s timing, being ‘sound carriers’ for Damo Suzuki and more. Blue Whale launch Last…

  • ØXN – CYRM

    November 2, 2023 - By 

    Not content with earning a Mercury Prize nomination for this year’s False Lankum album, Lankum’s Radie Peat returns mere months later with the debut LP by new group ØXN. Originating in a collaboration between Peat and Katie Kim – who is herself coming right off the back of last year’s masterful Hour of the Ox – the pair expanded to a quartet with the addition of Percolator members Ellie Myler and John ‘Spud’ Murphy, the latter already a long-term collaborator of everyone involved as well as being an increasingly in-demand producer further afield. Long awaited since the then-unnamed group performed…

  • Autre Monde – Sensitive Assignments

    October 11, 2023 - By 

    It feels fitting for Dublin label/collective Popical Island to re-emerge from hibernation with the release of this second album by Autre Monde – something of a supergroup of Popical Island alumni, fronted by Paddy Hanna along with members of Ginnels, No Monster Club and Land Lovers. Produced once again by Gilla Band’s Daniel Fox, on Sensitive Assignments the quartet stray further still from the more conventional indie pop of their early singles, taking the more synth-heavy direction of 2020 LP The Imaginary Museum into deeper oddball territory than ever before. While the excellently titled ‘Road to Domestos’ – an ode…

  • Dreaming In Another Language: An Interview with Arborist

    September 28, 2023 - By 

    Riding a wave following the release of his stellar third album, Mark McCambridge chats with Cathal McBride about subtlety, sold-out shows and winning over BBC 6 Music Photos by Jane Donnelly When Arborist managed to entice US indie rock royalty Kim Deal, of Pixies and Breeders fame, to sing backing vocals on debut single ‘Twisted Arrow’ back in 2014, one could easily have assumed this was an early peak that would be impossible to top. In actual fact, the project of Belfast-based Ballymena man Mark McCambridge has only gone from strength to strength ever since, scooping NI Music Prize nominations…

  • The Good DIY Young: An Interview With Belfast Promoters Asphyxia

    April 13, 2023 - By 

    Ross Cullen from Belfast’s newest independent promoters gives Cathal McBride the lowdown on the DIY spirit behind their packed-out shows across the city Photo by David McEneaney  For such a relatively small city, Belfast often punches above its weight in terms of live events, both in terms of big-name bookings from larger promoters and those on the more DIY side, like the brilliant Strange Victory or the now sadly departed Sizeable Bear. A newer name in the city’s DIY promoter circuit is Asphyxia. Helmed by Ross Cullen, Ethan Rea, Conall Coulter and Sienna-Lillie Munn, they have hit the ground running…