• Split EP Premiere: Mob Wife / Cruiser

    November 27, 2019 - By 

    It’s easy for bands to serve up those oft. espoused platitudes about the value of “co-operation in the music scene”, but to be pro-active in that is another matter entirely. Gladly, we’re seeing that attitude start to spread, with the latest in the trend being two of the most exciting DIY, guitar-driven bands on the island coming together for a split EP release. Mob Wife/Cruiser features, unsurprisingly, two tracks each from Belfast trio Mob Wife and Limerick quartet Cruiser, conceived of in early 2019. Both with their own singular imprint, Mob Wife and Cruiser share the emotionally-charged influence of 90s post-hardcore and fist-clenched modern indie rock & punk sensibility, as well…

  • Win Tickets To Other Voices Dingle

    November 15, 2019 - By 

    Ireland’s foremost musical TV moment is with us again as Dingle is overtaken up by Other Voices over the weekend of November 29-December 1. With tickets for the intimate TV recording available only through competition via Other Voices and partners, we’re delighted to be offering a chance to win two tickets for the Music Trail over the full weekend, as well as the St. James’ Church TV recording on Saturday night. This year’s lineup is yet another veritable who’s who of Irish music, as well as a number of international names. St. James’ Church features Editors, Whitney, Angie McMahon, SOAK, Joy Crookes, Ye Vagabonds, The Murder Capital, Jafaris & Arlo Parks – each performance at…

  • Stream: Fears – Bones

    November 15, 2019 - By 

    Last year’s ‘h_always‘ came in at #3 in our 100 tracks of 2018, and following up on her excellent ‘Fabric’, Fears might have delivered her finest slice of experimental pop yet in ‘Bones’. Both the song and its fragmented visual companion are completely self-produced. The staggered, introvert’s club tune is further progression in the trajectory of an artist whose multi-faceted craft recalls the leftfield likes of Carla Dal Forno & Holly Herndon in its elevation of pop songwriting as an fully-fledged art form; understandable, given she’s one of three artists in Moving On Music’s Emerging Artists Programme 2018/19. Exploring the gradual, imperfect nature of trauma recovery, ‘Bones’ is spiritual closure…

  • Album Stream: Careerist – Weird Hill

    November 15, 2019 - By 

    It’s been a long, weird (sorry) trip up to this point, but the debut album for Belfast’s slickest indie rock trio Careerist (fka Hot Cops) is upon us. Weird Hill‘s nine tracks manage to slink through any number of influences and curveballs without losing coherence, clocking in at just under a half-hour. The wry smirk of Pavement can be glanced through buoyant, Deerhunter-sized melodies and slaloming Spaghetti Western guitar work, while the trio’s distinct, jerking sense of otherness remains consistent throughout. The LP was recorded & produced by Robocobra Quartet’s Chris Ryan, who does justice to the band’s reputation as one of Ireland’s tightest, most…

  • Premiere: Naoise Roo – Falling Stars

    November 13, 2019 - By 

    Dublin’s Naoise Roo creates a world unlike any other in 2019 Ireland – atmospheric electronics lay alongside towering, glacial electric guitars brimming with portent, driven & controlled by Nick Cave-esque astromancy by Roo’s unmistakably beguiling chanteuse vocal. We adored her 2015 debut LP, Lilith, and recently, she’s been gradually rolling out material from her forthcoming Sick Girlfriend EP, after a break from the Irish music scene. Its second single ‘Falling Stars’ directly addresses that issue, and that of mental health in the music industry at large, in a slow-burning gratification that’s more than worth its delay. Produced by Liam Mulvaney, with Roo backed by Rian Trench on drums, Daniel Fox on bass & guitarist Karl Tobin. Tomorrow night – Thursday, November 14…

  • Stream: Mantua – Mantua

    October 31, 2019 - By 

    The latest release from experimental Cork tape label Sunshine Cult is Mantua improvised live drone collaboration from accomplished singer-songwriter Elaine Malone (also of improvised group Hex & Land Crabs) and prolific fiddle player Niamh Dalton of Trá Pháidín. Across its two pieces – recorded in Plugd Records, Cork, Malone predominately leads with sepulchral harmonium work, her voice swollen with reverb. From this space, Dalton explores frayed ends with measured portent, attempting to uproot her foundations in traditional Irish & old-time music – and it’s this familiar flavour that makes Mantua’s eponymous debut so beguiling. Like cult collective United Bible Studies, the strength…

  • Hyperobjects @ Catalyst Arts

    October 31, 2019 - By 

    Catalyst Arts Gallery’s latest exhibition, Hyperobjects, runs from Thursday, November 7 until December 5, with its opening night featuring a sonic performance from Jez Riley French with his piece, island | fjórar (dissolve). French uses uses intuitive composition, field recording, improvisation & photography to explore emotive responses to places and situations, with an interest in largely unnoticed, unreachable sounds. He has recorded resonances of architectural spaces and structures, the sounds of insects feeding, and recently spent time recording the sound of glaciers melting in Iceland. His work has been exhibited in the Tate Modern & Britain, Iceland’s Harpa & Mengi, The Whitworth, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, and…

  • Video Premiere: Joey Gavin – Home Sweet Home

    October 17, 2019 - By 

    Berlin-based Irish tunesmith Joey Gavin is back, albeit briefly, for a run of Irish dates to celebrate the release of ‘Home Sweet Home‘, the first single taken from his forthcoming debut album, due in 2020. Where early solo releases had more in common with the slacker or psych work of his old flame, Thumper, he appears now to have found his own voice without losing those hallmarks; rather, they’ve been reined-in, and kneaded – Wilco style – into pastoral, Americana-tinged songcraft. Written in mid-2016 in Greece, Joey told us more about his headspace at the time of writing: “There was a coalescence of ideas about patriotism, homelessness…

  • Video Premiere: Arthuritis – Condo

    October 18, 2019 - By 

    The latest thing to emerge from the mind of idiosyncratic polymath Arthuritis is an avant-pop fever dream. The glitchy ‘Condo’ – the sound of a brain puttering out before completing a factory reset – is as decidedly nausea-inducing as its uncanny accompanying video, masterfully shot & edited in three hours by CLAP Media’s Colm Walsh; recalling Twin Peaks: The Return, three selves are dragged down a cold, dark back-path adorned only by barriers and wet grass. It’s a perfect example of Arty’s latest approach, which explores the relationship between rhythm & time. He tells us: “One of the main things that influenced it was I looked at a…

  • Stream: His Father’s Voice – In The Shade

    October 14, 2019 - By 

    Staking their claim as one of the brightest prospects in Irish post-punk & shoegaze with their Context & Perspective EP earlier this year, Limerick’s His Father’s Voice are back with a new single. Written around the same time as their debut EP, the quartet’s A-side goes further down the path trodden down fellow ‘gaze revivalists like DIIV & Cheatahs, without letting the wall of sound envelope what it is – a great pop song that plays on the idea of “how resentment finds room to feed and grow through hiding behind the appearance of a bright and happy exterior”. Meanwhile, B-side ‘Close’ is the kind of miasmic sea of…