• Blue Whale – Process

    September 21, 2018 - By 

    At long last, one of our favourite bands in Ireland are set to release their debut album. Alluding to their deconstructivist tendencies, Belfast-based experimental rock band Blue Whale release Process on November 9. Recorded with Ben McCauley at Start Together Studios, lead single ‘Shortbread Fingers’ has recently premiered over at The Quietus, and ‘Coitus‘ featured on Irish independent compilation A Litany of Failures: Volume II. Their carefully-constructed chaos has led to a considerable live portfolio, where their potency is as undiminished on the dancefloor as it is with Can’s Damo Suzuki as improvised sound carriers. Oft-compared to Swans, Captain Beefheart, King Crimson and Slint, we’ve described them as “one of the country’s most thoroughly…

  • Video Premiere: VerseChorusVerse – Chord (Gunn Laws)

    September 13, 2018 - By 

    Tony Wright is going through the most fertile creative stretch of his career right now. Unanimously positive reviews have accompanied the release of the third VerseChorusVerse album, outro, while his new, much-anticipated memoir Another Dickhead (On The Road) is to be launched at Belfast’s The MAC on October 17 – more details on that here – where he also currently happens to be the resident artist. Oh, and he just put in an organic performance co-starring in the heavily relatable Belfast-based short comedy series The Also Rans, the (only partly-fictionalised) tale of a pair of failed musicians. And after all that preamble, we’re today premiering the video for possibly the LP’s finest cut, ‘Chord (Gunn Laws)’. Something…

  • Lisa O’Neill Set to Launch Fourth Album at Vicar Street

    September 10, 2018 - By 

    Unquestionably one of the finest folk voices in Ireland, Cavan native Lisa O’Neill, has announced details of her fourth album, Heard A Long Gone Song. Following a sellout show at Quiet Lights Festival in Cork & ahead of upcoming dates in the UK, New Zealand and beyond, the album will come out on October 19, and will be her first release on Rough Trade imprint River Lea Records. To mark its release, it will be launched at Vicar Street on October 27 in a seated performance. Heard A Long Gone Song was co-produced at Blackbox Studios alongside Dave Odlum. Featuring a broad cast of musicians in Cormac Begley, Christophe…

  • EP Premiere: Elaine Malone – Land

    August 29, 2018 - By 

    Ahead of high-profile performances at Electric Picnic & Quiet Lights Festival, the debut EP that Limerick-born, Cork-based singer-songwriter Elaine Malone has been drip-feeding elements of throughout the year is finally here. Vivid stories manage to sidestep the usual potholes of romantic imagery, as Malone strings together a narrative as well as one can across four tracks. Pop moment ‘You’ warbles its way into existence, glaring directly into the once-beating heart of first love, with its honesty cushioned by psychedelic, oneiric arrangements, going onto explore similar, loose threads of humanity. We made some grand statements some months back about about her last single ‘No Blood’, which “musically recalls some of Tim Buckley’s airy jazz…

  • Richard Thompson w/ David Keenan @ Empire Music Hall, Belfast

    August 17, 2018 - By 

    There’s been a recurring narrative in most critical discussion around Richard Thompson over the years, that he exists as this undiscovered national treasure. In terms of the comparable reverence commanded by former peers like Nick Drake & John Martyn, that might be true – it’s not a trendy sell, not quite fitting perfectly into folk or rock pigeonholes in a business that operates most efficiently under binary conditions. Couple that with themes that veer wildly between mordant meditations on humanity, and congenial, quintessentially British kitchen sink themes without the ‘benefit’ of A) dying young, or B) self-mythologising as a romantically-inclined…

  • Premiere: Mob Wife – Warm Water

    August 17, 2018 - By 

    In the vein of past noise rock/post-hardcore outfit PigsAsPeople, and following the closure of Chris Leckey’s emo-hued dark alt. country project Via:Barvikha, he returns to the idea of the power trio. Today, we introduce you to Mob Wife, a new project that carries the heft of the former without losing the subtlety of the latter. The band’s caliber isn’t under question, with one of Belfast’s busiest drummers in Gascan Ruckus‘ Mark McDaid and producer & Ghost Office/Pale Lanterns‘ Carl Small on bass. ‘Warm Water’ is characteristic Leckey – blackly comic in its nihilism, the song tackles the 9-5 office grind that Dolly loved so well – stale coffee…

  • FairPlé Set To Hold Two Day Festival of Music & Ideas

    August 8, 2018 - By 

    The first of its kind in Irish traditional music, grassroots coalition of musicians FairPlé holds its first festival of music & ideas over Saturday 8th & Sunday 9th September was founded to address gender balance in Irish traditional and folk music, and has been expanding and rolling out an increasing number of important events across the island. A series of panel discussions are set to take place at Liberty Hall on September 8 to address the issue of sexual harassment in the arts and Irish music, with a focus on the self-employed status of musicians. Participants will explore the rights and responsibilities of…

  • Video Premiere: Bokotono – You’re Looking A Little Rough Around the Edges

    August 10, 2018 - By 

    Did you catch Electric Dreams last year? It was an uneven, but effective rendering Philip K. Dick’s warped simulacrum of reality. Know what’s not uneven? The new video for Bokotono‘s latest single, ‘You’re Looking a Little Rough Around the Edges’, which we’re premiering here today. Formed in West Ireland in 2017, Bokotono are a trio informed by the frantic, but composition-conscious heavy post-hardcore of the likes of Botch, Daughters & Fall of Troy, as well as peers like ASIWYFA, Alpha Male Tea Party & Gallops, with whom they’ve shared stages. As chance would have it, their Venn diagram has a not-insignificant crossover with one of our longstanding favourite Irish music collectives, the…

  • Apartment [Eleven] – Apartment & Sunday Times

    August 6, 2018 - By 

    Dublin electronic label Apartment Records is set to put out its eleventh release on August 13th. A compilation EP, its four tracks are contributions from the ranks of revered Cork-based party-planners, Sunday Times. The tracklisting is as follows: A1: TR One – Afrodiscobeatdown A2: Colm K – Hey B1: Colm K – Rays B2: Static. – Fallen Sky Sunday Times is a monthly all-day party on the cusp of celebrating its ninth birthday. Comprised of DJs Dean Feeney (sometime member of TR One alongside Eddie Reynolds), Colm K (All City / R2 / Bastard Jazz / NTS), John Hennessy (Static.) and Barry Walsh, their parties have become not only a local institute but…

  • Video Premiere: Post-Punk Podge & The Technohippies – Home Is Where The Heart Bleeds

    August 3, 2018 - By 

    If you’ve been on the festival circuit this summer, you might have noticed a couple of masked, sometimes shirtless dad-bod satirists spitting fire in a nearby tent. Mangling and dragging traditional instrumentation all the way into the 21st century, Post-Punk Podge & The Technohippies are the willing, furious voice for a certain voiceless subsection of Irish people right now. Challenging Jobsbridge disillusionment, corruption at the highest levels, and the media’s compliance with that, their latest single, ‘Home Is Where The Heart Bleeds’ returns to another social issue held very dear to the act – homelessness. Oh, and the music? A heady blend of trip-hop, infused with the band’s trademark Irish Tourist…