• New Acts Announced for Electric Picnic 2015

    As we posted about last week, Blur are amongst several new acts set to play this year’s Electric Picnic. Also confirmed to play the annual Co. Laois festival – set to take place from September 4-6 – are Interpol, FKA Twigs, Grace Jones, Mac DeMarco, Sam Smith, Despacio, Yasiin Bey (Mos Def), MK, Gavin James, Printer Clips, Julio Bashmore, Paul Kalkbrenner, The Riptide Movement, The 2 Bears, SOAK, Viet Cong, Fickle Friends, Kwamie Liv, Honne, Fat White Family, Dawes and Benjamin Clementine. Blur and Sam Smith join Florence and the Machine as the festival’s headliners. With many more acts to be announced,…

  • New Acts Announced For Body & Soul 2015

    Having announced their return back in February, Super Furry Animals are amongst several new acts announced to play this year’s Body & Soul festival. Set to take place at Co. Westmeath’s Ballinlough Castle from June 19-21, the festival has also revealed that Tiga, Kuenta i Tambu, Kiasmos, SOAK, Cu, Vin Gordon and the Real Rock Band, Cloud Castle Lake, Planet Parade and Bleeding Heart will also perform. With many more acts set to be confirmed, check out the current line-up for the festival below and go here to buy tickets.

  • Stream: C-Beams – Le Voile

    Comprised of Richard Butler and Paul Shevlin, C-Beams is, for those of you not in the loop, an electronic audio/visual project based in Belfast. Thirteen months on from the release of the first installment, ‘Tannhauser’, the duo have unveiled the second of the four-part endeavour, titled ‘Le Voile’. A perfectly drifting, three-minute slice of layered, nuanced alt-pop, the track is accompanied by a visuals – featuring Shevlin atop Belfast’s Cavehill – shot by Butler and Dan Brown. Fingers and all else crossed that the installment of the project comes around quicker than part two, as we’re most definitely fans.

  • Stream: DAÄG HUR – Buried My Head

    Evoking the likes of Bardo Pond, Black Angels and early My Bloody Valentine, Dublin psych rockers DAÄG HUR have really caught our attention with new track, ‘Buried My Head’. Opting for hyper-hyphenation over self-myopia, the band call themselves a “dream-pop-doom-rock band” – a fitting descriptor for a sound that straddles the balance between dread and ecstasy. ‘Buried My Head’ embodies that very nicely indeed, proving an all-too brief, psych-soaked traipse into the nether regions of the psyche, bound by cirrus streams of reverb and release. This is the theme from a soundtrack to emerging from a bad trip in a friend of a friend’s shite…

  • Stream: OneKnown – Jektify

    The latest in a spate of new material, Belfast electronic producer Chris Hanna AKA OneKnown has unveiled a new track, ‘Jektify’. Speaking of a forthcoming EP, titled Blue Galaxy, Hanna said, “I might just release it on Bandcamp as a Pay What You Want thing. I wanted the EP to be a bit spacey and weirder. Maybe I’m hanging out with Jack (Space Dimension Controller) too much.” Stream the track via Soundcloud below.

  • Watch: Rory Nellis – Outdoorsman

    One of Ireland’s most naturally gifted songsmiths, Rory Nellis‘ music betrays an increasingly tangible sense of conviction and candor. Where no lyric or phrase feels throwaway, no chord progression or melodic flourish seems kneejerk or unconsidered. This almost meditative attention to detail is something that has often set his music apart from many of his peers, something that’s more than evident on his forthcoming debut album, Ready For You Now. Recorded with Phil D’Alton of Master & Dog, the album – currently available to fund on Pledgemusic – features a cast of local musicians including Herb Magee (formerly of LaFaro, now of Goons), Pete…

  • Stream: Pleasure Beach – Go

    Belfast dream-pop bands are few and far between. Deeming themselves just that – exactly 3,339 miles to the east of Baltimore’s Beach House – are Pleasure Beach, a new-fangled five-piece who met whilst working in the “estimable coffee shops of Belfast”. Featuring members of Northern Irish acts including Yes Cadets and In An Instant, the band’s debut single, ‘Go’, takes its cue from “pounding stadium Americana, hypnotic krautrock and blurry-eyed Scandinavian pop”, forging a self-assured and decidedly mesmeric four-and-a-half minutes of sun-kissed, wanderlust-driven pop. A self-proclaimed “part bruised break-up song, part existential post-apocalyptic horror story”, you can stream the track below.

  • Watch: Sleep Thieves – You Want The Night

    A masterclass in woozy, nocturnal electro-pop, You Want The Night by Dublin three-piece Sleep Thieves is easily one of our favourite debut albums by an Irish band in… well, forever. A year on from its release, the Sorcha Brennan-fronted band have unveiled the video for its title (and arguably best track) ‘You Want The Night’ – and what a distance director Mike P. Nelson has gone to wonderfully, rather cinematically capture the song’s dark, marauding tangents.

  • Album stream: Screaming Parent – The Completist

    Tagged on Bandcamp with terms including “bad glitch” and “cubase disasters”, The Completist by Screaming Parent AKA Dudley Colley of Dublin’s Dudley Corporation is ten tracks of self-proclaimed “spare-room recorded bedroom classics”. Knowing self-deprecation aside, it’s most definitely not a “disaster” from the musician. With ridiculously infectious melodies, Of Montreal-esque harmonies and Postal Service-like beats melding very nicely across a collection of tracks, the album evokes, at different points, the likes of The Books, Pinback and Metronomy. According to Colley, the album – released in advance of The Dudley Corporation’s fifth studio album – is his first solo “misadventure”, recorded in between school runs and…

  • Exclusive: Fight Like Apes New Album Artwork

    We’re pleased to exclusively reveal the artwork for their Fight Like Apes‘ forthcoming third self-titled album, created by our very own deputy editor/photo editor, Loreana Rushe. Released on May 15 through Alcopop records, we will have a full review of the album in our May issue and MayKay from the band will also be discussing the recording of the album in her column. Tracklisting 1. I am not a Merryman 2. Crouching Bees 3. Pop Itch 4. The Schillaci Sequence 5. Didya 6. Numbnuts 7. Pretty Keen On Centerfolds 8. The Hunk And The Funplace 9. I Don’t Want To Have…