• A4 Sounds Presents: Ten Past Seven & Aonghus McEvoy Trio

    October 7, 2019 - By 

    Sometimes-slinking, sometimes-monolithic, always-dynamic Kerry instrumental trio Ten Past Seven play their first Dublin headline show in a number of years with a performance at gig & art space A4 Sounds this Saturday, October 12. They’ve just recorded their new album at Dublin’s Guerrilla Studios, set for release in 2010, ten years after their last album, Bothar Buí, which featured an appearance from Katie Kim, and remixes by Kevin Blake, Toby Kaar, Molotov Ape & Laura Sheeran. Sharing the bill is Woven Skull member, composer & guitar explorer Aonghus McEvoy‘s trio. Expect hypnotic, deconstructed music rooted in blues, jazz, and the underbelly of primitivism. Have a listen to his work on…

  • Music Venue Trust & PRS Foundation Announce New Support for Young Women Promoters

    September 30, 2019 - By 

    The Music Venue Trust and PRS Foundation have announced a new partnership with the goal of encouraging more young women & gender minorities to break into the world of live music promotion. This scheme builds upon the successful Fightback: Grassroots Promoter project last year, and offers training, mentoring and a practical support network for aspiring independent promoters. Each participant will work towards organising gigs in grassroots music venues across the UK in Spring 2020. Of the initiative, the Trust says: “In the past couple of years there has been a lot of discussion of the need to offer more opportunities for women, trans and non-binary artists. Alongside…

  • Girl Band – The Talkies

    September 27, 2019 - By 

    Like a bucket of red paint into white, Girl Band’s explosion in the Irish music scene half a decade ago proved a new year zero for the country’s underground scene. Their modus operandi was laid out with ‘Lawman’ and a simple, radical rework of Blawan’s ‘Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage’.  By the time 2015 debut LP Holding Hands With Jamie came out, they were primed for success. Eschewing the role of traditional rock instrumentation, it was seemingly the sound of four people left in isolation, handed a stack of experimental techno 7”s and traditional rock instruments, and…

  • Video Premiere: Jake Regan – Unfair

    September 25, 2019 - By 

    When Jake Regan‘s debut single ‘Over It’ came out, we said he’d “instantly staked his claim as one of the country’s most promising and distinctive songwriting voices”, and new double A-side ‘Unfair / Stay’ compounds that fact – with the former’s video out today. It’s a perfect 3 minute, scuzzed-out power-pop song about the would-be artist’s reality crash-landing that deftly navigates the tightrope between sincere & pointedly self-aware. Based on the oh-so-relatable D.I.Y. artist’s perspective, Regan tells us more: “The song came from frustration at the stratospheric recent success of the Fontaines, and the weird flurry of identical bands that followed them. There are so many angry young men…

  • Video Premiere: The Bonk – May Feign

    September 25, 2019 - By 

    The first of ten commandments that Captain Beefheart drilled into guitarist Moris Tepper upon joining the band in 1976 was: “Listen to the birds – That’s where all music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren’t going anywhere.” If you’ve caught The Bonk live, then you’ll know what it is to be hypnotised by exactly that pendulous meditation on a single groove, as each of their seven(ish) members instinctively weave around each other, while time falls away. Today, we’re delighted to premiere ‘May Feign’,…

  • Album Premiere: Barry Wilson – Portrait

    September 18, 2019 - By 

    Never more than in the past few years has our national affinity for groove-laden jazz, funk & soul become something whose re-evaluation was overdue, what with Vulfpeck becoming one of Ireland’s adopted sons, and traditional offshoot, The Ollam. Over that same timeframe, multi-instrumentalist and composer Barry Wilson has been steadfastly crafting debut album, Portrait. Recorded across a multitude of studios in Ireland and Portugal, and featuring over 20 collaborators, it’s a focused, but eclectic collection of funk & neo-soul which feels emblematic of the spiritual ties between modern Ireland and soulful, intricately composed fusion. Portrait‘s initial recordings took place in Grawa Sound Studio in Porto, with…

  • Spook Screen Film Festival

    September 10, 2019 - By 

    Cork-based production company Deep Red – named for Argento’s 1975 masterpiece – hold their their Spook Screen festival this weekend, which takes in a range of appropriate environments for a fully immersive horror & fantasy experience, accompanied by Q&As with special guests, in association with Cork Cinemas Kicking off on Friday the 13th at Triskel Arts Centre is 1991’s Robin Hood, which stars Patrick Bergin and Uma Thurman. The former will be in attendance at the event, giving a talk beforehand on the film, as well as his other work. Its second night is an audience with Hammer horror & James Bond star Caroline Munro, who…

  • Video Premiere: Percolator – Freshin

    August 28, 2019 - By 

    Since the release of their debut LP and our runaway album of 2017, we’ve been sitting on our hands waiting on fresh cosmische mastery from Percolator for what fees like eons. At long last, we can breathe, as the Dublin-based trio have just followed Sestra with a video for their next single, ‘Freshin’. More than delivering on expectation, the new single leans further into the slaloming, hypnosis-inducing rhythmic interplay that made their debut album such an exciting proposition. The track was written and recorded for An Taobh Tuathail‘s twentieth anniversary back in May, but the band liked it enough to release it as a digital download single with…

  • UK Post-Punk Duo JOHN Set For Irish Tour

    August 15, 2019 - By 

    Raw UK garage-punk duo JOHN are set to make their first appearance in Ireland later this year, accompanying the release of their second album, Out Here On The Fringes, set for release on October 4. This run of shows comes at the end of a lengthy spell in France & the UK, following an eleven-country spell in 2018 with Idles. Taking place in conjunction with some of our favourite venues, artists & promoters (Why. Gigs & Drone Mansions) – their three-date run is as follows: Friday, November 29 // Bennigans Bar, Derry w/His Father’s Voice & SHŌTO Saturday, November 30 // The 343, Belfast w/Problem Patterns and Wake House Sunday, December 1 // The Sound…

  • Video Premiere: Not I – Please, No Kindness, Please

    August 15, 2019 - By 

    Being a consistently arresting two-piece is no easy task – not least when the majority mines along the garage-blues-punk spectrum with little deviation. Dublin duo Not I – formerly Nervvs – take a hard left into something far more sophisticated by virtue of their grasp of minimalism, and seemingly telepathic interplay between vocalist/guitarist Thomas O’Reilly & drummer Ian Meagher. The title track of their debut album is an immediate primer for the band, O’Reilly’s sardonic, kitchen sink worldview screams for meaning in the mundane; “It’s a song about the struggle to make art and not get lost in the swamp of the day-to-day, resolving with an…