• Robocobra Quartet – Plays Hard To Get

    March 12, 2018 - By 

    Belfast-based jazz-punk ensemble Robocobra Quartet have just announced details of the follow-up to their NI Music Prize-nominated debut album, entitled Plays Hard To Get. Released through Abbreviated Records on May 25 on digital & vinyl formats, it’s going to be one of Ireland’s finest releases of 2018. With drummer, vocalist & producer Chris Ryan once more at the helm, it features a broader palette of sounds, it rocks harder, pushes its avant-garde & contemporary classical flourishes further out there, and is more lyrically daring than ever before – no small statement for arguably the most unique outfit on the island. Never resting on any one idea or preconceived notion, its blackly comic, starkly…

  • Album Stream: David Kitt – Yous

    March 8, 2018 - By 

    Back with his first solo full length in almost a decade, one of modern Ireland’s most enduring, chameleonic songwriters, David Kitt, has just released Yous through All City Records after its preceding Still Don’t Know EP. It’s a soothing, typically stellar effort from Kitt, who, since breaking through with 2001’s bedroom indie mini-masterpiece The Big Romance, consistently remains one step ahead at every point of his musical path, with him in the running for this year’s Choice Music Prize for his electronic New Jackson project. Entirely written and produced by Kitt, aside from a cover of Fever Ray’s ‘Keep The Streets Empty For Me’, it’s a wistful, intimate release, with flashes of a JJ Cale’s Troubadour for the 21st century. As…

  • Album Premiere: Zombie Picnic – Rise of a New Ideology

    March 9, 2018 - By 

    Progressive instrumental post-rock four piece Zombie Picnic release their new album, Rise of a New Ideology today. This follows up on the Limerick outfit’s 2016 debut LP, A Suburb of Earth, and is available on a limited run 12″ vinyl through Bandcamp and Burning Shed. Ideologically, it’s an ambitious work that’s inspired by political figures & commentators, and the most respected names in science fiction literature. As with acts like King Crimson, the finest progressive bands are unconfined by the box in which modern prog rock & post-rock artists find themselves trapped; Zombie Picnic’s sound is imbued with the kind of exploratory, trippy experimentalism found in classic psychedelic & space rock that’s been dragged forward a millennia,…

  • Stream: Orchid Collective – Winter’s Pass

    March 7, 2018 - By 

    Marking the onset of Spring from a long Winter, Dublin-based indie-folk quartet Orchid Collective‘s latest single, ‘Winter’s Pass’ could hardly have come at a better time. While retaining the serene, atmospheric sound they’ve been developing over the past few years through the harmony-led influence of Fleet Foxes, there’s an evolution in its composition that has, in our view, defined it as the outfit’s best work to date. A product of home recording, as opposed to more produced previous releases, ‘Winter’s Pass’ has a substantially more organic quality, without sounding in any way lo-fi. In any case, it’s a sparse and measured arrangement that subtly utilises the kind of electronic manipulation that’s seen folk music’s contemporisation in recent years, in…

  • Video Premiere: Casavettes – Winter Smoke

    March 1, 2018 - By 

    Alongside cornerstones of a Limerick DIY scene that’s organically developed over the last few years, threaded with the spirit of independence shared by Anna’s Anchor, Cruiser, Eraser TV and Post-Punk Podge & The Technohippies, Casavettes have shared with us the video for new single, ‘Winter Smoke’. Channelling the similarly independent – and undeniably stronger – recesses of the Biffy Clyro back catalogue and more recent guitar-led post-hardcore & emo, it’s another step up for the outfit who debuted back in 2015. It’s also further evidence of the organic development of an integral, genuine community founded by artists and fans in a corner of Ireland that’s too often overlooked. ‘Winter Smoke’ was…

  • EP Premiere: Tuath – Youth

    March 3, 2018 - By 

    As we’ve said before, Letterkenny’s Tuath are one of the most genuine purveyors of hepped-up psychedelia on this island, with band leader Robert Mulhern having, as we’ve said before, drawing a consistent thematic throughline throughout the band’s extensive output; one that’s about questioning accepted ideals, organised ideology, and what it means to be, if anything. Once more, they effuse their worldview with a half-maniacal cackle, half-nihilistic-shrug, helped along by its kitchen sink absurdist imagery. Since midway through last year, they’ve been drip-feeding singles from their latest EP, Youth, which we’re delighted to exclusively premiere here today, on its day of release. It’s launched upstairs at Galway’s Roisin Dubh tonight,…

  • Bicurious – I’m So Confused

    February 28, 2018 - By 

    Riff-strewn Irish-French instrumental math-rock duo Bicurious release their new EP, I’m So Confused on March 9. Blending looped guitar layers and rhythmic spontaneity & dynamism, they channel the spirit of Sargent House and the sadly-departed Richter Collective. It’s understandable then, that they went over to Cheshire to record the EP with Alpha Male Tea Party‘s Tom Peters – with whom they’re set to tour across Ireland in early May. Their previous release was the ‘T.O.I.‘ single, and as with it, their new material is set to channel the spirit of righteous anger, vocals arriving, as ever, in the form of pointed samples. I’m So Confused holds its launch upstairs at Whelan’s…

  • The Barbiturates – Only Folkin’ Jokin’

    February 23, 2018 - By 

    Arguably the Irish group most deserving – in the literal sense – of the cult band status, Derry’s The Barbiturates have just released their latest LP, Only Folkin Jokin. Like its mini-album predecessor The Holy Mountain, it comes with  a visual accompaniment that threatens ocular trauma. Loaded with a sense of backwoods fear of the urban sprawl and the powers beyond their control, it’s another self-produced release that comes as act II in a larger thematic trilogy. With an Easter Egg that begs to be discovered – trust us – The Barbiturates’ leader has crafted what feels like an extended invitation to tune in, drop out, with pieces that casually dabble in acid…

  • Watch: Landless – Doomsday

    February 15, 2018 - By 

    In what’s one of our most anticipated Irish releases of 2018, traditional vocal quartet Landless have released the video for ‘Doomsday’, the first single from debut album Bleaching Bones. First heard on their eponymous debut EP, the Belfast & Dublin-based outfit’s brief & minimal video highlights the qualities – “Evocative, celestial, ethereal and, above all, extremely resonant” – that make Landless such an important prospect in the current resurgence & contemporary progression of Irish traditional music. Bleaching Bones is out on March 9 through Humble Serpent Records, with the Dublin launch at St Ann’s Church. More details here. Read Dominic Edge’s 18 for ’18 piece on Landless.

  • Paddy Hanna – Frankly, I Mutate

    February 14, 2018 - By 

    It’s been a long time coming, but singer-songwriter Paddy Hanna‘s new album Frankly, I Mutate, is upon us through Strange Brew on March 2. This follows his 2014 debut album, Leafy Stiletto, and the string of strong singles he’s since released – the likes of ‘Unprotected’ and ‘Bad Boys‘. Also the frontman of supergroup Autre Monde, it’s a long-held view of ours that Hanna is one of Ireland’s most accomplished true songwriters; elusive, nuanced, capable of broad truths, while invoking the kind of Elvis Costello, Jarvis Cocker or Scott Walker-esque dark humour & vulnerability that catches one offguard in an otherwise ’70s pop tune. Frankly, I Mutate is filled with rich, retro-current…