• Tethers – Skinwalker

    April 4, 2018 - By 

    Lisburn-based post-hardcore outfit Tethers are set to release their debut EP Skinwalker via Swallow Song Records. While retaining the kind of pop inclination that made Biffy Clyro household names, the trio channel Derry’s Jetplane Landing, and mathier elements of the post-hardcore sound – the likes of which made Faraquet such an incredibly instinctive, yet compositionally complex outfit. Recorded by Chris Ryan, the EP gets its title from a term in Navajo folklore that denotes a shape-shifting witch, which they’re re-envisioning as ‘a future slang for artificially-enhanced humanoids’, an aspect of the band’s outlook, which – in a way that would please Philip K Dick, Neil Gaiman or Warren Ellis…

  • Lunch Machine – Alt Facts

    April 3, 2018 - By 

    Letterkenny garage indie rock trio Lunch Machine have just released their debut EP, the five track Alt Facts, produced by Fugue State & Tuath. The band is led by Jude Barriscale, whose laconic delivery recalls earlier (and best) Courtney Barnett, Barriscale’s knack for injecting personal, universal truths with a detached sincerity elevates what could be slack meanderings into idiosyncratically-woven pieces, that veer from frustration at rural isolation, political outrage and, in the evocatively smoky, poignant-in-the-AM closer ‘Obi Wan for the Road’, love and loss. Take, for example, the 7> minute highlight ‘Yellow Door’, which is, in her own words “about me being humbled by my past mistakes and about how…

  • Girls Names – Stains on Silence

    March 26, 2018 - By 

    It stands to reason that many vital albums come critically close to never being made. The eight-track upshot of doubt, upheaval and financial strain, Stains on Silence by Girls Names is one such release. Following 2015’s Arms Around a Vision, and the parting of drummer Gib Cassidy just over a year later, the Belfast band suddenly found themselves facing down a looming void. “There was a finished – and then aborted – mix of the album, which was shelved for six months,” reveals Girls Names frontman Cathal Cully. “We then took a break from all music and went back to full-time work. We chilled…

  • Doomed & Stoned in Ireland

    March 14, 2018 - By 

    Since its inception, international metal blog Doomed & Stoned has went to great lengths to appraise and give voice to the heft-inclined communities across time and space throughout its sprawling back catalogue of compilations, from obvious hotspots like Portland, to 70s proto-doom, to current day Asia. Incredibly, they’re all available on Bandcamp, on a name-your-price basis. Being one of our most fertile and certainly overlooked creative grounds, it’s vindicating then, that no less than 24 tracks from all corners of Ireland’s doom, stoner & sludge scene comprise Doomed & Stoned In Ireland, the latest in the series. Outright sludge-doom exports like Nomadic Rituals and Slomatics, who’ve played stoner Mecca –  Roadburn Festival – and beyond, are represented alongside…

  • Four Irish Acts set to play London St. Patrick’s Day Show

    March 14, 2018 - By 

    In the kind of lineup we’d kill for back home, London is lucky enough to bear witness to a St. Patrick’s Day celebration that we’d hold our watch to, packed with fiercely singular hibernophiles & noteable outsiders. It’s the first edition of the national stereotype-subverting Cushty Gamut, and takes place at New River Studios, Ground Floor Unit E on the Eade Road. Five live acts perform in the main venue, comprising four of our own who’ve made the trip across the pond. They are: Cork cosmische, drone voyagers Percolator – who released our Irish album of the 2017, Sestra. Dublin noise rock quartet Hands Up Who Wants To Die, who’ve returned recently with new frontman Rory O’Brien…

  • 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,…

  • Exhibition: Gaelic Fields @ The Library Project

    March 6, 2018 - By 

    Opening today in The Library Project is Paul Carroll’s new body of work Gaelic Fields. The project is the culmination of seven years work, that saw Carroll traverse the 32 counties of the island documenting local GAA pitches. These spaces are hubs of the communities and the artist’s capturing of these local landscapes speaks of the both the societal nature of sport and its impact on the land. The work is on show from today (Tuesday 6th) with the official opening this coming Thursday (8th). The exhibition will continue until March 25th, with a book also produced, full details are available online…

  • Music Current 2018

    March 5, 2018 - By 

    Showcasing of the best of new Irish and international contemporary electronic music, Dublin’s Music Current will return for its third outing across April 12-14. Billed as the city’s annual contemporary music festival, the festival – presented by Dublin Sound Lab – will host concerts, panel discussions and a music commission at Smock Alley Theatre on Exchange Street Lower over three days. At the top of the agenda this year is a “distinct celebration” of piano and keyboard music, with several international artist performing in Ireland for the first time at the festival. On the bill this year is Belgium composer Stefan Prins,…