• Watch: September Girls – Love No One

    February 8, 2016 - By 

    A dark and charging effort from the South by Southwest-bound Dublin five-piece, September Girls have re-emerged with new single ‘Love No One’. Pretty much exactly what we’d imagine the opening theme from a revenge horror re-imaging of a spaghetti Western to sound like, it’s a wonderfully tempestuous cut taken from their forthcoming album, Age of Indignation, which is set for released on April 8.  Check out the suitably baleful video for the single, courtesy of the band’s vocalist and lead guitarist Jessie Ward O’Sullivan, below.

  • Download: The Crytearions – Selected Recordings From The Album Trilogy

    February 8, 2016 - By 

    Concisely self-summed up as “Lo-fi punk by an Irish man” on his Bandcamp page, The Crytearions is prolific Co. Mayo musician Jimmy Monaghan, also of Music For Dead Birds. Brilliantly ramshackle and fuzzily ecstatic in all the right places, he has just released Selected Recordings From The Album Trilogy, described as “The best bits [from his first three albums]. All the imaginary hits. No shits. One for the inquisitors, the idle listeners. The loners, the stoners, and the perpetual boners.” And the perpetual boners, like. Pure poetry. Clocking in at 16 minutes in length, stream/download the album below. Selected Recordings From The Album…

  • Watch: Naadia – Omut

    February 8, 2016 - By 

    Russian indie-pop quintet Naadia have, over the past few years, been firmly establishing themselves as towering examples of the country’s quietly bubbling alternative music scene; a scene that is, by and large, embarrassingly overlooked from our all-too-cosy, “western” media bubble. Moscow’s Naadia however, along with St. Petersburg’s dreamy shoegazers Pinkshinyultrablast, have recently begun making vibrant waves that have become utterly impossible to ignore. Naadia (Наадя) create music that is radiant and warm, and bouncing with melody. Nowhere is this dazzling sound more evident than in their most recent single Omut (Омут). Opening with a shimmering, echoed vocal, the song starts as it…

  • First Acts Announced for Life Festival

    February 5, 2016 - By 

    One of the strongest first Irish festival announcements we’ve seen in some time, Life Festival revealed today that Paul Kalkbrenner, 2manydjs, Mano Le Tough, John Talabot, Blawan and Joy Orbison are amongst the acts set to make an appearance at Westmeath’s Belvedere House from May 27-29.With a limited number of early bird tickets on sale now, Jeff Mills, Ben Klock, Cyril Hahn, Martyn, Bicep, Jamie Jones and Sunil Sharpe are also amongst the first wave of acts to play the festival’s X1 outing. Go to the Life festival website for full information

  • Premiere: A Northern Light – Paranoia

    February 5, 2016 - By 

    Having formed back in the starry-eyed days of 2010, Belfast-based alt-rock trio A Northern Light have always leaped straight for the jugular, a tradition which their rousing new single, ‘Paranoia’, more than comfortably attests to. Recorded for the most part with Neal Calderwood at Manor Park studio, much of the instrumentation on the track, including its web of synths, drum loops and backing vocals, were recorded by the band at home. Driven by Omar Ben Hassine’s urging drum-and bass rhythm – often an ANL sonic trademark – it’s a subtly layered, typically impassioned effort from the threesome. Taken from the forthcoming first installment of their two-part LP, Kingdoms, ‘Paranoia’ is released on February…

  • Townlands Carnival Unveil First Line-up

    February 4, 2016 - By 

    With Irish summer festival announcements creeping up all over the place recently, Co. Cork’s Townlands Carnival have revealed their first string of confirmed acts. Set to return to Macroom from July 8-10, Damien Dempsey, Jerry Fish (pictured), R.S.A.G, Daithi, Talos, Saint Sister, The Altered Hours and the Eskies are amongst the first names to be announced. With quite a few more acts to be unveiled, check out the current line-up below and go here to buy tickets.

  • Stream: Vogelbat – Banx

    February 4, 2016 - By 

    Over the course of the past year, Berlin based Kilkenny native Vogelbat has been steadily releasing a stream of tracks that have ceaselessly dazzled. Crafting instrumental hip-hop that draws from the pools like Trip-Hop and Avant-garde R&B is a tough job to do while still managing to sound sincere and professional. Where others may stumble and crash at the first pretentious hurdle of trying too hard to be “experimental”, Vogelbat’s music takes that experimentation and plays with it like a new toy, ensuring that it remains playful and heartfelt. Work on a debut LP continues, but in meantime we have…

  • The Co-Present Returns

    February 4, 2016 - By 

    The Co-Present on Radiomade.ie have been providing one of Irish music’s most valuable independent services, and resume their 3pm Saturday afternoon slot on February 6 with the inimitable BP Fallon and 21st century Irish national treasure, drag queen and gay rights activist Panti Bliss. It’ll no doubt be a fantastic, honest chat with the show’s perennial host, Dwayne Woods (below). As ever, the show will feature some live music, this time from cross-border atmospheric-folk-pop duo Saint Sister. The young act, featuring Gemma Doherty and Morgan MacIntyre, have in no time become one of the hot prospects on the island, playing with Arcade Fire’s Will Butler following a performance…

  • Stream: 202’s – ‘Oh My My’

    February 3, 2016 - By 

    Dublin three piece 202s have been more or less silent since their self-titled debut release in 2009. The first sound they’ve made since then has now arrived in the form of the lush ‘Oh My My’, a hypno-pop chunk of fuzzed vocal harmonies and slowly grooving drums. The track draws influence from across the genre spectrum with plenty of psych-rock and Krautrock sounds embellishing the more contemporary comparisons to the likes of Alt-J or Foals’ more recent output. With a new album due to drop in Autumn of this year, 202s patient approach to releasing music appears indicative of a “quality over…

  • Watch: Solar Bears – Wild Flowers

    February 2, 2016 - By 

    A sublime three-minute of quick cuts and ecstatic late-summer intoxication, Michael Robinson’s video for ‘Wild Flowers’ by Dublin duo Solar Bears is the culmination of months of shooting footage on both 16mm and 8mm film in the Mid-Atlantic region of America. Running parallel with the track’s conjuring of an clarion dreamland far beyond, its footage wonderfully juts around a veritable Shangri-La of perfect Summertime abandon. Musically, the track more than delivers; Solar Bears through and through, its bubbling, synth-heavy electronica is as prismatic and sorcerous as ever. With fresh warping textures emerging and warping on every bar, it feels as much a swift exploration as its visuals.…