• Metropolis Announce Day-To-Day Breakdown

    August 17, 2016 - By 

    With less than three months to its return to Dublin’s RDS, Metropolis have announced the Day-to-Day breakdown of this year’s festival. Boasting some big-hitters in the form of DJ Shadow, Grace Jones and Solomun, Crystal Shadows, BADBADNOTGOOD, Crystal Castles and Girl Band are also amongst some of the highlights from the bill thus far. With more acts are yet to be announced, here’s the current Day-to-Day breakdown. Thursday (Opening Night) DJ Shadow Plus very special guests Friday Solomun Moderat SBTRKT (DJ Set) BADBADNOTGOOD Girl Band Saturday Grace Jones Booka Shade (Movements 10) Crystal Castles The Sugarhill Gang Fatima Yamaha Fakear With Weekend 2…

  • Watch: September Girls – Catholic Guilt

    August 16, 2016 - By 

    Imagine, just for one second, hopping in a time machine, zapping back to 1970s Ireland and telling someone there would one day be a 360-degree video on a thing called the internet for a song called ‘Catholic Guilt’. The distance we’ve come, man. The distance we’ve come. Made using a special 12-camera GoPro rig, the video for September Girls‘ new single was shot by the band’s director and guitarist Jessie Ward O’Sullivan in just one take. Pretty impressive. According to the band, “The video symbolises this force as over the course of the song, the band lose their autonomy as they are subjected…

  • Kate Tempest Set For Dublin Show

    August 16, 2016 - By 

    Few artists come in the mould of Kate Tempest. Having started out when she was 16, the London poet, spoken word artist, rapper and playwright’s career to date has a traversed a critically-acclaimed series of plays, being awarded the Ted Hughes Prize for her theatrical spoken word piece Brand New Ancients, a Mercury-nominated debut album in Everybody Down and more. A restless, trailblazing creator, the self-proclaimed poet-rapper-playwright will play Dublin’s Whelan’s on November 26 off the back of the release of her forthcoming new album, Let Them Eat Chaos, which is released on October 7 via Fiction Records. Tickets for her Whelan’s show are on sale…

  • Stream: Colour Canyon – Neon

    August 16, 2016 - By 

    Having been members of the delightful indie-pop outfit Little x’s for Eyes for several years, Michelle Considine and Harry Bookless recently began a venture down a more electronic, synth paved route with their new project Colour Canyon. Having already released the italo-disco infused ‘Home’ earlier in the year and releasing a cover of The Human League’s ‘Open Your Heart’ as part of 2015’s Record Store Gay compilation, the duo have just unveiled their third outing. ‘Neon’ is a delicate number with its smooth, smoky keys and gentle harmonies, the casio-reminiscent percussion clicking away in the back drawing the listener toward a quiet room to sway…

  • Watch: Majia Sofia – Stains

    August 19, 2016 - By 

    In Novemeber of last year, Galway native and then London based musician Maija Sofia released her captivatingly stark The Sugar Sea EP, a collection of four icy, brittle folk tunes with a lo-fi crispness purveying throughout. Having since relocated to Dublin, the songwriter this week revealed the brand new video for ‘Stains’. Directed by Ciarán O’Brien, the video shows Sofia on an overcast Sandymount beach, the natural greyness of the early morning scene complimenting the lyrical and musical themes of the song which she has described as confronting “. . . the universal feelings of inadequacy and insecurity that come with being in a…

  • Stream: Hot Cops – Dumbbo

    August 10, 2016 - By 

    A grinding, forlorn four-minutes wielding crescendo in fine fashion, ‘Dumbbo’ by Belfast trio Hot Cops is easily their most foreboding single to date. The follow-up to ‘Passive Passive’, the track – something of a recent live highlight for the Carl Eccles-fronted three-piece – steadily imparts backwashed thoughts and disorientated solipsism before yielding to a gusto of fuzzed-out resolve. This is a cunning, creeping effort that insists upon the repeated listen. Limited to 250 pink marble copies, ‘Dummbo’ will be released alongside ‘Auto’ via Paper Trail Records on September 2. Stream the A-side below.

  • Watch: No Monster Club – I’ve Retired

    August 10, 2016 - By 

    Filmed over the course of two years in venues and festivals including Whelan’s, The Pop Inn, Knockanstockan, The Button Factory, Galway’s Roisin Dubh, Castlepalooza, Cork’s Connolly’s of Leap, No Monster Club have released the jubilant video for probably the catchiest Irish song of 2015, ‘I’ve Retired’. Compiled by Daniel Martin, the video “follows the song on its journey from house shows to festivals, via rock clubs and dive bars”. Good times. No Monster Club will release a new 7″ EP, Where Did You Get That Milkeshake?, via Emotional Response Records on September 5.

  • Stream: Extra Fox – Ain’t That The Way

    August 9, 2016 - By 

    Dublin producer Neil Adams AKA Extra Fox was last on our radar back in February with ‘Lunar Float’, a spectral single we called “nigh on onomatopoetic”. With a rare live show expected to be announced over the next while, Adams has returned with the equally strong ‘Ain’t That The Way’, a brilliantly bobbing slice of electro-pop that, by virtue of its restrained, gradually layered repetition, burrows its way inside very nicely indeed.

  • First Acts Announced for Metropolis 2016

    August 9, 2016 - By 

    Following a massive inaugural outing last year, Dublin festival Metropolis have revealed Grace Jones, DJ Shadow, Solomun and Moderat are amongst the first acts set to play its second installment from November 3-5. Presented by POD and Hidden Agenda, this year’s festival will return to RDS at the end of the year after a sell-out first year. Set in the industrial array of warehouses and venues with the RDS complex, the indoor event offers a tapestry of music, art installation performance and conversation over 6 days. With many more acts still to be announced, SBTRKT (DJ Set), Booka Shade –…

  • Super Furry Animals Set For Irish Dates

    August 8, 2016 - By 

    Kicking off a string of winter dates culminating in a homecoming show in Cardiff, Welsh psych-pop legends Super Furry Animals will perform their landmark debut album, Fuzzy Logic, and its follow-up, Radiator, in order and back-to-back at Belfast’s Limelight and Dublin’s Olympia on November 30 and December 1. The dates mark the forthcoming re-issue of Fuzzy Logic on heavyweight vinyl, CD and digital formats. Fully remastered from the original tape reels, the band have enlisted their official archivist Kliph Scurlock and mastering expert Donal Whelan to ensure the recordings have been “meticulously rediscovered”. In a statement, the band said: “We were a young…