• Album Premiere: A Co-Present Christmas

    December 14, 2015 - By 

    Featuring the likes of i am niamh, Sleep Thieves and Laura Ann Brady, we’re very pleased to present a premiere of the inaugural A Co-Present Christmas, a first-rate, fourteen-track compilation of covers, original tracks and Christmas themed tracks from various Irish artists. To celebration the end of what they rightly have called an amazing year for Irish music (and how) The Co-Present – hands down one of our favourite radio shows in Ireland, broadcast weekly on Radiomade.ie – selected some of their favourite artists to contribute their festive songs to release. Having launched in November 2013, the Co-Present – hosted…

  • Elastic Sleep – Bad Machine

    December 11, 2015 - By 

    We’ve a lot of time for Cork noise-pop wizards Elastic Sleep here at TTA Towers (ok, it’s a singular tower) and never has that been more the case than now, with the release of their rapturous new single, ‘Bad Machine’. Continuing to sound like no other band in the island (at the very least) the Muireann Levis-fronted five-piece the song explores the idea of wilful submission in the face of self destruction, segueing from a hypnagogic groove to full-blown, feedback-drenched ire. Check out Echo Tree’s tripped-out video for the new single (available as a free download from the band’s Bandcamp and Soundcloud pages) and…

  • Premiere: Ealadha – ‘Hurricanes’

    December 10, 2015 - By 

    Since emerging in the past few months, and steadily beginning to gig around the country, Cork post-metal trio Ealadha have rapidly become an important part of the city’s scene, hazily bringing together post-metal heft and dreamy ambience, as amply showcased in their debut single released earlier this year, ‘Dive’. We’re excited to premiere their follow-up here on TTA: ‘Hurricanes’ sees them expand their sonic palate with the inclusion of electronic elements and gentle, layered piano, further widening their scope. Frontman/guitarist Dom Murphy had this to say: “This track sees the band exploring new ground and expanding our ambient haze to…

  • Album stream: New Pope – Youth

    December 10, 2015 - By 

    Tapping into the profound and altogether ineffable world of the most powerful of Eternal returns: home, tracing the years back to their source and what it means to belong, Youth by Galway dream-folk artist David Boland AKA New Pope is a seven-track, debut full-length chronicle of youthful reminiscence perfectly balanced between the tender and more pining realms of nostalgia. Released at a perfect time of year, when many of us return home, gradually taking stock of another year just gone, the album – evoking the likes of Red House Painters and American Music Club – offers up a wonderfully re-assuring, immaculately crafted summation of the inner, intersubjective workings of…

  • Watch: Daithí – Mary Keane’s Introduction

    December 9, 2015 - By 

    Shot and directed by Conal Thomson, the video for ‘Mary Keane’s Introduction’ by Daithí is a wonderfully evocative accompaniment to a track featuring the Galway experimental electronic maestro’s 90 year old grandmother reminiscing about romance in her youth in the West coast of Ireland. Back in October, we said the said the single track “fused distinct worlds – that of the old and that of the new – to spawn something so innately joyous that you would struggle to find it anything but wonderfully accomplished.” With Thomson’s video it takes on an even greater sense of resonant context. In a Facebook post today, Daithí said: “Dotted along…

  • Duke Special Announced as Lyric Theatre Artist in Residence

    December 9, 2015 - By 

    Having released eighth studio album Look Out Machines! earlier this year Peter Wilson AKA Duke Special has been announced as the new Artist in Residence at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre. Hands down one of Northern Ireland’s most respected and consistently innovative artists, Wilson is no stranger to work in the theatre. In 2009 he appeared stage at the National Theatre in London as part of a new production of Bertolt Brecht’s play Mother Courage and Her Children for which he wrote music for a number of songs, and earlier this year he wrote the music for Youth Music Theatre’s production of Gulliver’s…

  • Watch: No Monster Club – Lemonade

    December 8, 2015 - By 

    Set to play Popical Island’s jam-packed All-Dayer on Saturday, December 19, Bobby Aherne’s No Monster Club have unveiled the video for their new single ‘ Lemonade’. Lifted from his forthcoming eleventh (yes, eleventh) album I Feel Magic, the track – helped along very nicely by Aherne’s accompanying video – is an equal parts bobbing and burrowing slice of art-pop worthy of many repeated listens. The PR say it “bask[s] in a strange, newfound intersection of Future Islands, Talking Heads and early Flaming Lips” and we’re not even remotely inclined to disagree. I Feel Magic is released via Popical Island on February 5.…

  • Watch: A.S. Fanning – Carmelita

    December 8, 2015 - By 

    Currently residing in Berlin and with a debut album in the works, the debut single from Dublin singer-songwriter A.S. Fanning retains a wonderfully wry and decidedly literary tone and import that could only stem from the streets of the Irish capital. Having gigged in pubs around Ireland from the age of 12 – “playing mostly Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley covers among some original songs” – Fanning’s carefully constructed, almost Cohen-esque craft harks back whilst preserving a very present-day resonance. Combined with Candice Gordon’s superb video, below, this is a very memorable opening gambit from an artist certain to keep us on…

  • Watch: The Shaker Hymn – Sucking It Out

    December 8, 2015 - By 

    Having supported Gaz Coombes at Cyprus Avenue on Saturday night – an apt local/international pairing if there ever was one – Cork four-piece The Shaker Hymn look back on a two month U.S. road trip as the spur for their de facto formation in 2012 having made “rudimentary teenage noises” since 2005. To say the least, the imprint of this rather curious, drawn-out gestation period shines through on the band’s new single, ‘Sucking It Out’. Revealing a band who seem to know each other’s musical anatomy inside out, it’s a perfectly discriminating release, tipping its hat to the likes of QOTSA’s more undemanding, subtly swaggering…

  • Stream: The Altered Hours – Silver Leather

    December 8, 2015 - By 

    Unveiled with a string of European dates for Spring – including a Belfast show hosted by yours truly on Friday, February 26 – Cork five-piece The Altered Hours will release their hugely anticipated debut album, In Heat Not Sorry, via Art For Blind and Penske Recording on January 29. The second single to be taken from that, five-minute cut ‘Silver Leather’ reveals the more rapt and ruminative side to the band, evincing a woozy netherworld full of brilliant restraint and shoegaze-leaning dark psych wonder. Stream the track and check out the band’s forthcoming tour dates below. Sat 19th Dec – Connolly’s of Leap, Co. Cork (IE)…