• 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…

  • 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…

  • Tuath – Youth

    January 29, 2018 - By 

    We’ve called them, among other things, the North’s foremost purveyors of hepped-up-on-goofballs psychedelia, but the Letterkenny outfit Tuath release their latest EP, Youth on February 24. Primarily recorded & produced by the band mastermind Robert Mulhern, it follows almost a year on from Things I Don’t Know. Featuring a string of steadily-released singles they’ve been fastidiously putting out over the last 6 months accompanied by videos, they’re peering out gingerly from their their darkened corner of ‘gaze-hued trip-hop for dalliances with post-punk and indie rock, without losing that claustrophobic, nihilistic sound that puts them in a category of just one on the island. Check out their previous material on Bandcamp. Watch the…

  • David Kitt – Still Don’t Know EP

    January 18, 2018 - By 

    Preceding the March release of his eighth studio album, Dublin indie craftsman David Kitt has just released four-track EP, Still Don’t Know. An extension of the lead single from new album, Yous – out in March – the EP is out via All City Records on 10″, available to buy here in a limited run. Described by Kitt as “a travelogue within a dream, a jump-cut journey that crosses the globe. It’s one of those dreams you don’t want to wake from, where you want to go back under to piece the finer details together” it’s a soothing, typically stellar effort from the chameleonic Dubliner, who, since…

  • Brigid Mae Power – The Two Worlds

    January 22, 2018 - By 

    Firmly established as Ireland’s foremost purveyors of elemental folk, Brigid Mae Power releases her second album, The Two Worlds on February 9 through US label Tompkins Square. Her eponymous 2016 debut garnered unanimous acclaim from the likes of Uncut, Mojo, The Guardian and featured on NPR & BBC programming. The Two Worlds, recorded in Co. Down’s Analogue Catalogue Studio, looks set to consolidate Power’s standing amidst a resurgence of Irish music that has redefined the role of traditional music once more in today’s conversation. Here’s what Brigid had to say about the album: “Most of these songs were written in the last year in Ireland and they’re all about the different feelings I had…

  • Landless – Bleaching Bones

    January 16, 2018 - By 

    Dublin/Belfast-based vocal quartet Landless are set to release their debut album in March 2018 on new Irish label, Humble Serpent Records. Landless was formed in 2013 by Lily Power, Meabh Meir, Ruth Clinton & Sinead Lynch, and subsequently released their Landless EP the following year. They’ve spent the last year recording in a variety of churches, corridors and other acoustically fascinating spaces with ‘Spud’ Murphy, who’s responsible for some of Ireland’s most important releases in recent years – notably Lankum, The Jimmy Cake and a number of Ireland’s finest. Entitled Bleaching Bones, we have good faith that the LP will be another feather in the cap of an Irish folk resurgence that…

  • The Number Ones – Another Side of The Number Ones

    January 15, 2018 - By 

    Back with another celebration of retro power-pop songwriting, following their 2014 debut LP, The Number Ones have just released their Another Side of The Number Ones EP. The Buzzcocks and, to a lesser degree of global dominance, Good Vibrations Records – think Protex, Rudi & the likes – injected the British invasion sound with lightning-in-a-bottle youthful insurgency in the late ’70s. Half a decade later, The Number Ones’ latest takes great pride in doing much the same across its twelve hasty minutes. Infectious, immediate, and essential for any fans of modern purveyors of garage pop – Oh Boland, Sheer Mag, and the aforementioned – or the band’s ‘sideline’ projects, Cryboys and internationally-renowned…

  • Somadrone – Wellpark Avenue

    December 13, 2017 - By 

    Dublin producer Neil O’Connor AKA Somadrone has announced details of his forthcoming sixth studio album. The full-length follow-up to 2015’s stellar Oracle, Wellpark Avenue will be released on February 1. According to O’Connor, the album will mark a departure from previous outings. With “dystopia, LSD, Timothy Leary and TV music of the 1970s” all contributing to the sound of the album – elements of which have permeated his work over his two decades of activity – it will forsake drum machines and heavy synth usage in favour of a return to traditional song and instruments akin to his 2010 album Depth of Field. O’Connor has also said…

  • Comrade Hat – Ho Ho Hum

    December 13, 2017 - By 

    After the year we’ve had, it’s quite honestly surprising we’ve not reached another Gary Jules moment of collective despair, but fear not: Comrade Hat has it covered in a typically loungey, subversive fashion. Following up on his five previous Winter ‘festering season’ releases between 2009 & 2015, this latest EP, Ho Ho Hum, manages to smirk through winter’s grimace. It proffers five sunnily low-key ditties that dabble in jazz muzak, apocalyptic calypso [see ‘Driving Home for the Apocalypse-oh’] and and some swooning Stevie Wonderesque turns that bely its sinister undertones, offering another glimpse at the singular, surrealistic, oneiric sonic tapestry woven by Derry-based experimental pop songwriter and avant-crooner Neil Burns. To help set the scene, here’s the…

  • Wyvern Lingo – Wyvern Lingo

    December 12, 2017 - By 

    It’s been a long time in waiting as the Bray trio have traipsed across the world, dominating stages in clubs, arenas and festivals alike in support of fellow Irish icons like Hozier & James Vincent McMorrow, but it looks like Wyvern Lingo are set to arrive, when they unleash their eponymous debut album on Friday, February 23. Out through Rubyworks on vinyl, CD & digitally at the usual outlets, it was primarily recorded in Dublin by producer James Kelly, as well as in Donegal, London & Cologne. The trio of Karen Cowley, Caoimhe Barry & Saoirse Duane released their debut EP The Widow Knows back…