• Cork Sound Fair 2018

    March 5, 2018 - By 

    A new, non-profit arts and music event set to take place across March 23-March 24, Cork Sound Fair aims to give local and international artists a platform to showcase experimental sound through installations and live performances. Over two days, the event will take over 12th century church St. Peter’s and Cork City Gaol with over 20 homegrown and international acts: African Fiction, Static, Robert Curgenven, Autumns, Isochronal, Kevin Callaghan and Thomas Penc, Davy Kehoe, Dream Cycles, Ellenberger Trio, Nadir, Soft Stone, Beatrice Dillon, Belacqua, Gadget and the Cloud (pictured), Little Movies, Kyteler, Warrior, Signal, OutOut and Baby, Red & Wolf.…

  • 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…

  • International Women’s Weekend Cork

    March 1, 2018 - By 

    Running from March 8th-11th upstairs in The Roundy, Cork, International Women’s Weekend Cork is a four-day fundraiser event for the Rape Crisis Centre. Set up by Emma Kelly aka Merakindie and friends, Elaine Malone, Izabela Szczutkowska, Marjie Kaley and Francesca de Buyl Pisco, it will present a diverse, multidisciplinary line up including daily artists market, performances from Dowry, Elaine Malone, Saint Caoilian, Lowlek, The Come Out And Play Cabaret hosted by writer Tina Pisco and a number of DJs including Toby Kaar, Aisling O Riordan and Cuttin Heads Collective. With several more names to be announced, the daily run-down of events…

  • 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…

  • F I V E R T H O N @ A4 Sounds

    February 23, 2018 - By 

    A4 Sounds need your help and more importantly they need your fivers! The interdisciplinary artist studio and gallery organisation provide affordable access to studio spaces, artist facilities as well as running workshops and courses. In recent years these spaces have been disappearing from the Dublin creative scene and their presence is vital for the community. Recently A4 sounds was awarded a 10 year lease, securing their long term future. Along with this lease they also secured funding to carry out vital refurbishment to the space. To complete this work (which is for refurbishment to the the electrical system, to install a fire alarm system, and…

  • 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…

  • EP Stream: Perish – Inertia

    February 13, 2018 - By 

    At the start of the month, we shared ‘Terror Swimming’ by Cork-based band Perish. Calling it a “hazed-out trip bursting with submerged, starry-eyed guitar shapes and a wondrous wall of reverb-soaked noise” the single was a first-rate opening gambit from the Ciaran Corcoran-fronted project. The track is taken from the stellar Inertia, a brand new, five-track EP out via Cork imprint Sunshine Cult records, home to TTA favourites The Sunshine Factory. From the blissed-out noise-pop of opener Vision to the Motorik strut and swirling, effects-laden Kosmiche of closer ‘No Time’, it is hands down the strongest EP from an Irish act we’ve heard this…

  • Preview: Brilliant Corners 2018

    February 5, 2018 - By 

    Returning for its sixth year, the country’s finest jazz festival, Brilliant Corners will take over various venues in Belfast across March 3-10. Programmed by the ever tasteful team at Moving On Music, this year’s bill is a wonderfully diverse patchwork of jazz and first-rate sonic digression. As well as films including Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker being screened in association with Belfast Film Festival at the Bean Bag Cinema, this year’s programme boasts Belfast’s experimental rock masters Blue Whale, the singular guitar explorations of Jim Mullen alongside the Ronnie Greer Organ Band and a homegrown showcase featuring Joseph Leighton Trio, Sue Rynhart…

  • Exhibition: Like Me @ The Dock

    February 19, 2018 - By 

    Alice Hanratty – Handsome Youth at Public Assembly I Carrick-on-Shannon’s The Dock is currently showing the work of three Irish artists: Alice Hanratty, Kian Benson Bailes and Eleanor McCaughey, in their latest show Like Me. This exhibition is the third in the gallery’s continuing series of group shows that feature artists at varying stages of their careers and practices. Hanratty, a member of Aosdána, has exhibited extensively both nationally and internally since the 1990’s and here presents etching work that reference here travels abroad; while Benson Bailes, whose has recently shown in Tulca, Galway and CCA Derry-Londonderry, presents work that interrogates the notion of queer identity in modern…

  • Ciaran Lavery – Sweet Decay

    January 30, 2018 - By 

    From inauspicious beginnings in Aghagallon, one of Northern Ireland’s most talented and celebrated songwriters, Ciaran Lavery, has announced details of third album. Launched in Belfast’s Empire Music Hall on the same day, Sweet Decay is released on April 13, following on from his 2016 NI Music Prize-winning LP, Let Bad In. Totting up well over 80 million streams on Spotify, he’s one of our most poetically-gifted singer-songwriters, not to mention one of the most wilfully eclectic. As well as scattering soul, hip-hop or R&B on top of what was once a bread & butter strain of heartfelt, earnest indie-folk & chamber-pop, his short collaborative album with electronic producer Ryan Vail won high…