• Watch: Girl Band – In Plastic

    June 21, 2016 - By 

    Surrealism is no unbeaten path for Girl Band, and the latest video from the Dublin noise-rock darlings, as usual directed by long-time collaborator Bob Gallagher, takes matters in a much more grimly funny direction. Set in a security line, somewhere, someplace, the video for ‘In Plastic’ mirrors in Gallagher’s inimitable manner the current paranoia around borders, travel, and security, as things quickly unravel for our nameless protagonist. Speaking with Spin mag in the States, Gallagher expands on its themes: “the video is obviously totally ridiculous in many ways, but it touches on themes of surveillance, paranoia, and how arbitrary the…

  • Album Premiere: The Fiction Aisle – Fuchsia Days

    June 16, 2016 - By 

    Led by former Electric Soft Parade/Brakes musical polymath Thomas White, The Fiction Aisle are a Brighton-based musical collective whose second album, Fuschia Days, establishes them as a singular alt-pop force in the making. Spanning seven tracks, the album – which we’re pleased to premiere here – is a remarkably immersive release, striking a keen, almost meditatively restrained balanced between ambient, dream-pop and drone in the vein of Robert Wyatt, Broadcast and Flaming Lips‘ more symphonic efforts. With White’s monophonic Oberheim OB-1 synth at the heart of the mesmeric soundtrack-like quality of the album, it’s a wistful, beautifully-rendered journey traversing everything from true love, ecstasy and death to depression,…

  • Stream: I Am The Cosmos – Letting It Go

    June 16, 2016 - By 

    Set to launch at Dublin’s Bello Bar on July 16 , ‘Letting It Go’ sees Dublin electronic duo Ross Turner and Cian Murphy AKA I Am The Cosmos re-capture the magic that set them apart on their 2013 debut album, Monochrome. Wilfully sparse to begin, the track unwinds in typically commanding fashion, each cyclical re-iteration yielding new shades of propulsive, synth-laden magic from the pair. Set for release via Happy Valley on July 1, there’s an almost mechanical simplicity to the track that proves delightfully deceptive with repeated listens. Mastered by Simon Cullen, the single comes with b-side Taciturning On You and a re-imagining of the…

  • Premiere: Hiva Oa – A Great Height

    June 15, 2016 - By 

    Not merely the second largest island in the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia, Hiva Oa are a Belfast duo set to release their long-awaited new EP mk2 (part 1) on August 5. Having returned to their native Ireland after residing in Edinburgh, Stephen Houlihan and Christine Tubridy turn their attention to the laws and imprint of fear, loneliness, abandonment and awakening on the new release, something that’s impressively manifest on its lead single ‘A Great Height’. Evoking the likes of PVT, The Twilight Sad and a more inward-looking Not Squares, the track’s swirling flurry of contorting electronica, weaving bass patterns and braying guitar swells meld…

  • Watch: August Wells – She Was a Question

    June 14, 2016 - By 

    “One day you wake up, as the man that you are, And not as the one you thought you’d become. You stop making promises, you stop telling lies. You look right into your own eyes and start saying your goodbyes.” Few Irish singer-songwriters command with the same immediacy, pathos and poignance as August Wells‘ Ken Griffin. Of all their single releases to date – including the particularly excellent ‘Here In The Wild‘ – the band’s new single ‘She Was a Question’ aims straight from the psychic jugular, distilling Sisyphean acceptance to three minutes of sublimely woven, Bacharachian alt-pop where cold, hard reality simply has…

  • James Blake set for Dublin and Belfast

    June 14, 2016 - By 

    Having released his stellar third album, The Colour in Anything, last month, James Blake will kick off a UK and Ireland October/November tour with two Irish dates. Five years on from making his Irish debut at Whelan’s in March, 2011 (we’d love to say we were in attendance – alas) Blake will play Dublin”s Olympia on October 27 and make his Belfast debut on October 28. Tickets go on sale this Friday at 9am, priced €37.00/£19.50.

  • Video Premiere: Alana Henderson – Song About a Song

    June 14, 2016 - By 

    Before setting off on the very long road as cellist/backing vocalist for Hozier, Dungannon singer-songwriter Alana Henderson (one of our ones to watch last year) had staked her very own captivating claim with her debut EP, Wax & Wane. Released in early 2013, it was veritable pandora’s box of burrowing folk noir, each of the release’s four traditional-tinged chamber tales bounding forth with gallant imagination and delicate, melodic finesse. With brand new material in the pipeline, ‘Song About a Song’ – a perfectly ruminating peak from Wax & Wane that’s had an incredible 5,000,000 plays on Spotify – has been resurrected with a homespun video by David Moody that wonderfully captures the song’s essence.

  • Music City 2016 Announce First Line-up

    June 13, 2016 - By 

    Returning for its fourth consecutive year, the first line-up announcement for this year’s Music City in Derry – “the festival where everyone can play” – has been revealed. Set to take place from July 4-10,  Choice Music Prize winner SOAK, The Strypes, Girls Names (pictured), Saint Sister, The Willis Clan, Overhead The Albatross, R.S.A.G, Bitch Falcon, David Kitt, Malojian, Best Boy Grip, Chris McConaghy AKA Our Krypton Son, The Clameens, Paddy Nash & The Happy Enchiladas, Strength, Triggerman, Ruth McGinley and Gerard McChrystal will make up the bill. Taking place in various squares, neighbourhoods, shops, pubs and clubs throughout the city, more acts…

  • Premiere: The Hipshakes – Attention Spans

    June 11, 2016 - By 

    Set to headline the last ever (and downright unmissable) Retro Revival Club at Dublin’s soon-to-be-departed Sweeney’s, Manchester garage punk quartet The Hipshakes recently released their blistering, new album, Snake, via Sligo independent label par excellence, Art For Blind records (The Number Ones, September Girls, The Altered Hours, Perfect Pussy, No Ditching, etc.) An outright highlight from said release, we’re pleased to premiere the video for ‘Attention Spans’ – a breathless, Harmacy-era Sebadohesque throwdown – below.