• Watch: Ten Ton Slug – Hunting Ground

    August 6, 2019 - By 

    Galway sludge metal quartet Ten Ton Slug have long been masterfully crafting some of the finest riff-led, crushing metal on the island and with international slots amassing, their debut album is set for release next year. The first single to be taken from the LP – and their first release since 2017’s Blood and Slime – is the  ‘Hunting Ground’, and if its sonic pulverisation is anything to go by, 2020 looks to further galvanise the band’s status. The single was recorded & produced by Ciaran Culhane, and its occultist, paranoia-inducing video was filmed at Cavan’s stately See House, directed and edited by Pádraig Conaty. Check out more on…

  • Stream: Sorbet – Born Purple feat. Mícheál Keating

    August 2, 2019 - By 

    One of Irish music’s bona fide polymaths, Chris Ryan – Robocobra Quartet leader and Hot Cops, Just Mustard & Hunkpapa producer – has unveiled his new collaborative project. Aptly titled Sorbet, it offers a fresh palette to a string of musicians upon which they can “write tangentially from their usual process to avoid creeping burnout.” As masterfully understated as you’d hope from its creators, Sorbet’s first iteration is a subtly brooding piece which unfurls with repeat listens. Ryan’s distorted, at-times claustrophobic beats, muted piano, lay  by an incredible falsetto-heavy vocal performance from Mícheál Keating, frontman of Limerick experimental alternative trio Bleeding Heart Pigeons. Mícheál said of his lyrical approach: “The imagery in the verse comes…

  • Video Premiere: Van Panther – The Cutters

    August 14, 2019 - By 

    With each act imprinting its own singular identity with the backing of a supportive community operating completely in tandem, we’ve already waxed lyrical on how the fecund Limerick music scene is Ireland’s musical petri dish. Van Panther are one such act, marrying technicolour pop immediacy with jagged post-punk revivalism. New single ‘The Cutters’ is as tight-knit and pristinely crafted without losing the warm, lo-fi charm of its predecessors, and is taken from forthcoming EP Overcast, following up on 2016’s Café van Hemel and 2017’s Hark! The EP was played by, recorded & produced by band founder Kieran Ralph. “Musically, the song is basically a look at the meld between guitar-based music and…

  • Album Stream: Mark Waldron-Hyden – Stream Segregation

    July 30, 2019 - By 

    Last month, we premiered the cavernous somnambulance of first single, ‘Did You Hide’, and today, founder of Cork-based label Sunshine Cult, and psychgaze act The Sunshine Factory, Mark Waldron-Hyden has released the debut album under his own name. Titled Stream Segregation, and out through his own label, the LP’s source material is a blend of field recording, acoustic instrumentation, synths and tape machines, and was written, recorded & produced by Waldron-Hyden. Its name came from a psychoacoustic phenomenon “in which a sequence of sounds is perceived as more than one auditory stream, each arising from a distinct acoustic source in the environment”. Mark goes on: “That’s what I wanted…

  • Watch: Tandem Felix – Nightclub (I Sold My Soul To The Devil)

    July 25, 2019 - By 

    Perennial TTA faves and Americana songwriting masters Tandem Felix are back with their first single in two years, ‘Nightclub (I Sold My Soul To The Devil)’. Pristine slide parts and curveballing synth moments accompany the “tale of a boy who makes a Faustian pact; exchanging his soul for the means to spend every remaining night inside a grotty club”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the band have one-upped themselves once more – ‘Nightclub’ offers a clarity of vision and progression of their country-informed storytelling, exciting us for what’s to come on their long-awaited debut album, Rom-Com. Songwriter David Tapley had this to say of the song: “Over three nights, over three…

  • Video Premiere: Queen Bonobo @ The Live Room Belfast

    July 11, 2019 - By 

    The Live Room is one of Belfast’s most valuable musical resources – an eclectic, Live At KEXP-esque showcase of the finest artists to pass through Belfast, based in the city’s most welcoming and well-equipped studio, Start Together. They’ve run the gamut from the crushing doom of Slomatics and Conan to the Word Up Collective‘s hotly-tipped R&B voices of Super Silly & Jordan Adetunji. Back after a brief quiet spell, the latest in their series is title track ‘Boom Boom’, taken from the debut album by Derry-based, Idaho-born chanteuse Queen Bonobo, taken from a session recorded during Belfast’s Output Convention in February. We’ve said it before, but Maya’s vocal has the uncanny ability to take the quality of a sine wave, and…

  • Premiere: Mark Waldron-Hyden – Did You Hide

    July 3, 2019 - By 

    Mark Waldron-Hyden, as a member of cosmic psych outfit The Sunshine Factory & founder of Sunshine Cult Records, has become an integral figure of Cork’s underground music community. Today, we’re pleased to premiere the first release under his own name, single ‘Did You Hide’. Lifted from his forthcoming debut album, Stream Segregation, it’s a somnambulant, sedated piece of experimental electronic music. The song marries the sparse otherworldliness of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to the cavernous ambience of Pauline Oliveros’ school of Deep Listening, while impressionistic, Thom Yorke-ian vocals draw in something recognisably – just about – of the now. ‘Did You Hide’ was written, recorded and produced by Waldron-Hyden using a mixture of field recording, acoustic instruments, synths and tape…

  • Watch: Yankari – Change Your Ways (Mago Mago)

    June 25, 2019 - By 

    Far be it from us to make a sweeping statement, but no one – and we repeat: no one – in Ireland can hold a live audience captive to rhythm quite like Afrobeat collective Yankari. We played their 2017 single ‘Enyimba‘ to death, and at last they’re back with ‘Change Your Ways (Mago Mago)’, the first single taken from their debut album, set for release through Hipdrop Records later this year. Masterful in their updating and expanding of Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat, the band offset its infectious groove with loaded cultural symbolism; the band sought out kids from Dublin’s inner city to sing Mago Mago’s…

  • Video Premiere: Post Punk Podge & The Technohippies – Heavenly Tones

    June 19, 2019 - By 

    It’s been quite a year so far for Podge. More than delivering on the 19 For ’19 tip we gave him at the start of the year, he’s released a string of singles, made his first English appearances, and is set to play some of the biggest shows of his career to date in the next fortnight. Today, he unveils the video for last month’s single ‘Heavenly Tones’. The video, filmed by DJ Jurassic Park Two and Gavin Lyons, plays out as an HB ice cream-sponsored, ‘Visit Bundoran’ campaign, with a sun-kissed 90s Balearic house beat – feat. late-period Thom Yorke – fit for the optimistic, grey “Bord Failte advert…

  • Video Premiere: Great White Lies – Fear

    June 18, 2019 - By 

    Led by singer Siobhán Shiels, one of the gems of Derry’s thriving experimental jazz & weirdo pop scene are Great White Lies. They last week tackled Brexit scaremongering with single ‘Fear’, for which we’re pleased to be premiering the video today. Accompanying Shiels in the band are Comrade Hat, aka Neil Burns on keys, incredible young double bass player Jack Kelly, Ruth McCartney on vocals & ukulele, with Luke Beirne on drums, who deftly weave around her composed & repetitive, yet evocatively uneasy vocal. ‘Fear’ is the first single to be taken from their forthcoming debut album, Chrysalis, which is set for an Autumn release. It was inspired…