• Bats – Alter Nature

    March 28, 2019 - By 

    At long last, one of Ireland’s finest, most singular time-signature-wielding visionaries are back. One of the figureheads in the Richter Collective sound that sculpted independent Dublin music some years ago, BATS are set to release their third album later this year. Titled Alter Nature, it’s been 7 years in the making. The album was recorded by Rian Trench and Robert Watson at The Meadow in Delgany. Frontman Rupert Morris says “It’s fully in keeping with BATS ethos of promoting science and reason over superstition and features songs about CRISPR technology, artificial intelligence, Christian science and a legendary giant hammerhead shark called Old Hitler.” Slated for release…

  • Oranges – Hey Zeus

    March 21, 2019 - By 

    Last December, we premiered first single ‘The Way You Look’ by Dublin three-piece Oranges. We said it “recalled the abrasive, minimalist alchemy of The Fall”. The following single, ‘Upside Upside’ was a “skeletal post-punk riposte that, in its simmering climb and surging climax”. Taken from their forthcoming debut album Hey Zeus, they’re both firm hints at something special. A bare-bones approach has been applied to the entire process of Hey Zeus, which saw band members Gavin Duffy, Mici Durnin and Ed Kelly spit the LP out live in six hours with renowned engineer Stephen Quinn in a room on North Frederick Lane, Dublin, with only two of its eleven segments passing…

  • EP Premiere: His Father’s Voice – Context and Perspective

    March 15, 2019 - By 

    The caveat with most ‘scenes’ tends to be that there’ll be some nadir to follow, once its signature sound has had a post-rock-esque fall into over-saturation and self-parody, but Limerick seemingly has no throughline other than its open ear and fiercely independent streak. The city has been responsible for galvanising a new school of Irish artists, and Blindboy seems to be very much emblematic of that. At DIY LK shows, we’ve borne witness to abstract field recording-based performances and 90s-recalling indie rock bands comfortably side-by-side in an idealistic cultural mindset that functions as a microcosm for how we’d love music to be widely presented. A great number…

  • Album Stream: Regret Will Come – Regret Will Come

    February 13, 2019 - By 

    We didn’t know about this until yesterday, but thanks to a rare bit of social algorithmic fortune, we’re sharing with you the new, self-titled album from lo-fi bedroom indie project Regret Will Come. At times a catch-all Bandcamp postcard of a solitary bedroom life unlived in the vein of early (Sandy) Alex G – see: ‘Tainaka’ – and at times vulnerably discordant and slowcore – there’s Duster all over ‘Akari’ – it was seemingly made to fit on the dynamic shelves of Exploding In Sound Records or some other unheard-of indie label out in the American midwest. Regret Will Come is comprised solely of Co. Monaghan auteur Fintan Gallagher, who writes, plays and…

  • Album Premiere: Postcard Versions – Postcard Versions

    February 6, 2019 - By 

    Making good on the promise of last year’s debut single ‘Sunday Morning With Nate‘ – which came in at number 28 on our 2018 Irish Tracks of the Year and featured on independent compilation A Litany of Failures Volume II – Postcard Versions‘ debut album is here. Comfortably resigned and pragmatic in its optimism, Postcard Versions looks at a hungover languor as a chance for reprieve. Its 10 tracks never outstay their welcome, clocking in at just short of half an hour, making this another essential breezy indie rock album to add to Dublin canon alongside Popical Island, Tandem Felix & company – and it’s arguably the finest ever not to include a cymbal. Clearly a…

  • The Gloaming Announce Album Number Three

    January 15, 2019 - By 

    The Gloaming have announced details of their forthcoming third studio album. The trad super band – comprised Martin Hayes, Dennis Cahill, Iarla Ó Lionáird, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, Thomas Bartlett and Matt Purcell – will release The Gloaming 3 on February 22 via Real World Records. Produced by Thomas Bartlett, the album was recorded last autumn at New York’s Reservoir Studios. See some thoughts on the release by Irish author Colm Tóibín – and check out the artwork for the venue – below. The Gloaming play Dublin’s The National Concert Hall on March 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, 10th, & 11th. “What you notice first…

  • Album stream: SPIES – Constancy

    November 27, 2018 - By 

    Having re-emerged back in March after a three year hiatus, Dublin five-piece SPIES have released their long-awaited debut album, Constancy. From single and cascading alt-pop anthem-in-the-making ‘Ho Chi Minh’ to slow-burning closing lament ‘Love is a Dream’, via three other first-rate singles, ‘Young Dad’, ‘Broadstone’ and ‘Uriah’, it’s an assured return from a band who have well and truly hit their stride. According to singer Michael Broderick, the album primarily revolves around change and transformation: “Our attempts to remain constant in an environment that is inevitably transforming. I wanted the songs to journey through a process of coping (and not…

  • Goth Girl / Queer Fuck – Wish You Were Here

    November 26, 2018 - By 

    The first release on new Belfast-based label Love Will Bury Us is a statement. Optimistically titled Wish You Were Here, it’s a digital & cassette collaboration from Canadian noise artists Queer Fuck and Goth Girl. Devastating, corrupted and immeasurably intense, Wish You Were Here is a forty minute machine noise opus created initially by Queer Fuck – responsible for its majority of screeching – in two twenty minute drum sessions, that were then heavily edited and augmented to sound “like the chattering death rattle of a super computer from the 50’s”. Goth Girl’s wall of screeching turn the release into a blunt object, and is encapsulated in art by Queer Fuck. Nick Tooms,…

  • Arthuritis – I’m Great

    November 23, 2018 - By 

    Pan-dimensional (Cork) experimental electronic artist Arthuritis is set to release his sprawling fourth album, I’m Great through KantCope on tape & digitally next week via Bandcamp. Following up on the supremely-titled Neglected Ambient Shirts Vol. 1 and The Worst Of, alongside Arvo Party II, it’s as texturally-rich an Irish album we’ve heard this year. It’s presentation belies the presence of a real vibe here, and like that artist, it deserves to be taken much more seriously than its name & presentation suggests. In Arthur’s own words, it’s “a collection threaded together by themes of confusion and isolation”. An eclectic collection, and an internalised world in itself, where…

  • EP Premiere: Son Zept – Q2B

    October 19, 2018 - By 

    Liam McCartan, AKA Son Zept, releases his debut today, and it’s one of the most exciting, forward-thinking electronic releases to emerge from here in some time. Parallels could be drawn with the likes of Autechre or Aphex Twin from an experimental standpoint, as his Q2B EP reveals McCartan as a true polymath, where concern with ideology is tantamount to creating limitless club potential. Brimming with atmosphere punctuated by his dense ‘polypatternism’, the Q2B EP is a work of deconstructed club music that alludes to the memory-triggering aspects of techno, noise, trance, power-ambient and industrial, often falling into umbrella of electroacoustic composition. We’ll have a full interview with Son Zept in the coming…