• EP Premiere: Sweat Threats – Sweet Treats

    October 12, 2018 - By 

    We’ve been fans of the righteous post-punk party music of Sweat Threats since they reared their heads at the start of 2018 – and most recently last month’s ‘Suffocate‘ – and today, we’re delighted to lay down on a platter assorted Sweet Treats, the debut EP from the London-based Irish pairing of Niall Jackson (Bouts/Swimmers Jackson) and Matthew Sutton (It was All a Bit Black and White/Tayne) – recently joined by drummer Lucy Brown. Very much in line with their modus operandi, Sweet Treats is a six track earworm infestation, filled with that Death From Above, Idles & Fucked Up strain of insurgent punk that links hips to brains. Written around themes…

  • EP Premiere: Porphyry – Wounded, White Light

    October 26, 2018 - By 

    The term folktronica is just a touch reductionist for what the Derry-born, now Berlin-based Porphyry is doing. While in a more superficial sense, he could be described as an outsider Villagers, nothing in Ireland is attempting to achieve what Daryl Martin has with new EP, Wounded, White Light.  We loved his previous, self-described ‘maximalist’ Ursa Minor/Coming Home EP, not least for managing “the unenviable job of being boldly unpigeonholeable as art, and deeply personal, without approaching any level of bloated grandiosity”. Through minimalistic methods, however, the same result has been reached once more, with effortless finesse. Its cleansing, organic, seemingly breathing compositions weave unexpected synth textures into alternately piano & guitar-led freak-folk-meets-Robbie Basho-ian primitivism. Across its four tracks,…

  • Premiere: Documenta – Lady With the Ring

    October 2, 2018 - By 

    A break from their planned trilogy of Drone Pop albums, ahead of its final chapter, Documenta will release their first music since 2015’s Drone Pop #1 through Belfast’s Touch Sensitive Records on October 12. Titled Lady With The Ring, it’s the story of “lived once, buried twice” Margorie McCall, who lived in rural Ireland in the early 18th century. She succumbed to a fever and was hastily buried in Lurgan’s Shankill cemetery. Her grave was visited by “a tramp of disreputable character with a reckless and thieving disposition” who drew blood as he tried to prise the ring from her finger, awakening the dead woman who subsequently lived…

  • Malojian announces Let Your Weirdness Carry You Home Deluxe Edition

    October 3, 2018 - By 

    The latest NI Music Prize-nominated album from Stephen Scullion, aka Malojian is getting a much-deserved deluxe edition. Released through Quiet Arch Records on November 30, it’s his fourth solo album, and his strongest collection of songs to date, injecting the golden era of 60s pop melodicism he’s known for with the perfect power-pop of Teenage Fanclub & Grandaddy, as well as a more experimental, psychedelic edge than we’d seen from him until this point. Recorded in a lighthouse on NI’s Rathlin Island – in contrast to its Steve Albini-recorded predecessor, it features guest performances from a pedigreed cast of collaborators – Teenage Fanclub’s Gerard Love, Beck/R.E.M./Atoms For…

  • Preview: WorldService Project

    October 2, 2018 - By 

    This Friday, the second of our run of shows co-presented by esteemed Belfast tastemakers Moving on Music takes place at the Black Box, when British punk-jazz quintet WorldService Project make their first Belfast performance. Blending the third-eye-opening freneticism of Return To Forever or late 60s Zappa with an acerbic surrealist Britishness that’s one of few ties to any place of origin – look for a cameo from nightmare fuel himself, Mr Giggles. A fine example of nominal determinism, their rootlessness & contempt for genre classification has led to a confluence of math-rock, prog, punk, and the kind of contemporary, groove-laden fusion carried out by the likes of Snarky Puppy, rooted in the playfulness of Mingus & Coltrane to counteract their clearly schooled…

  • Album Premiere: Katie Kim & Crash Ensemble – Salt Interventions

    September 28, 2018 - By 

    Ethereal Waterford drone-folk artist Katie Kim is one of Ireland’s most enchanting auteurs, and prolific collaborators, having worked on projects with Radie Peat, David Kitt, Milosh & The Waterboys over the last few years. She’s set to drop Salt Interventions tomorrow alongside Crash Ensemble, and we’re delighted to be able to bring you an early listen ahead of its release tomorrow. The album was recorded at the Grand Social back in 2017 in a performance of the same name by Guerrilla Studios’ Spud Murphy, with the show being performed at the likes of the Music Town and Body & Soul Festivals. Based around Katie’s Choice Music Prize-nominated debut album Salt, it…

  • Video Premiere: Bróna Keogh – Sea Witch

    September 26, 2018 - By 

    After a busy year of writing and performing, supporting the likes of David Kitt, I Draw Slow & Wyvern Lingo, singer-songwriter Bróna Keogh’s new single ‘Sea Witch’ has arrived. With a vibrant video by Ed Cleary that accentuates the organic quality of her writing, Keogh melds folk with the hopeful wist of 60s pop, measured in its use of diverse acoustic instrumentation and harmony. It was recorded by Michael Hogerzeil & mastered by Eoin Whitfiled. As with the many Irish music festivals she’ll win hearts and weary minds at, ‘Sea Witch’ possesses the ability to restore basic human functions and feelings…

  • Preview: Peter Brötzmann’s Full Blast

    September 27, 2018 - By 

    For over fifty years, German saxophonist & clarinettist Peter Brötzmann has exemplified European improvised music. His excoriating, volatile style soundtracked a continent ravaged by division & civil unrest, tearing up convention and laying the groundwork for the defiant late 60s European avant-garde. Pitchfork describes him as “one of the most devastating forces to ever touch a saxophone”. In the first of what’s planned to be an ongoing collaboration, we’re delighted to co-present his Full Blast project, in partnership with esteemed Belfast-based tastemakers Moving On Music. Self-taught on saxophone, Brötzmann was originally a painter, schooled in the Cage-influenced Fluxus movement in before moving through Dixieland, ultimately turning his hand to…

  • Stream: Hiva Oa – Souvenir

    September 25, 2018 - By 

    Blending electronic complexity with their unique strand of primal noise, one of Belfast’s most engaging live & recorded propositions over the last three years, Hiva Oa, have released new single ‘Souvenir’. It’s experimental, but far from inaccessible. Anchored by its bassline, driven by a Detroit hi-hat-led narrative, its crepuscular groove is that of someone dancing in isolation in a long-abandoned post-industrial dystopia, reluctantly alone. With cover art by Helen Tubridy, the trio – Stephen Houlihan, Christine Tubridy & Chris McCorry, with help from Edinburgh’s Matthew Collings and Daithi McNabb –  mangle fragmented guitar & synthesised textures with borderline glossolalic vocals on the track, contrasting space and claustrophobia – as is…

  • Blue Whale ‘Process’ Album Launch @ The Menagerie

    September 21, 2018 - By 

    Belfast experimental rock quartet Blue Whale are finally set to launch their highly anticipated debut album Process, which reins the satiating havoc of their live show into a slightly more ordered studio format. The havoc, however, will come to the Menagerie on November 9, where its launch is hosted by Moving On Music. With an aim to always been to veer away from the trappings of the traditional guitar-centric four-piece, they have experimented heavily with unconventional scales and time signatures. Their cadenced, angular and atonal compositions tread fine lines between dance and discord, chaos and intricacy, with the resultant aural tension unique in its capacity to simultaneously provoke mental…