• The Kino in Cork Set To Reopen With The Mary Wallopers, Junior Brother and More

    July 13, 2020 - By 

    The Kino is the latest Irish music venue set to re-open following lockdown. As well as reopening its café from 8pm Monday, July 20th, the Cork venue will host its first live event on Friday, July 24th. Ahead of further gig announcements in the coming weeks, the line-up for the July 24th show will feature The Tan Jackets‘ Rock and Roll Revue Show. Elsewhere, Junior Brother plays the venue on Saturday, July 25th, and Dundalk’s finest The Mary Wallopers will play a two-night stint on July 31st and August 1st. This show will be broadcast live via a multi-camera set-up.  And for the…

  • Premiere: Comrade Hat – Summer of Glove

    July 14, 2020 - By 

    Derry’s resident lounge-lizard/experimental pop savant Neil Burns, AKA Comrade Hat returns today with a slinking, sun-kissed, seven minute porta-epic. A marriage of craft and intuition, journeying through louche tropicalia, psych and jazz-pop, it’s taken from his forthcoming two-volume compilation, Old Gods.  Written during an isolation-necessitated creative spree as progress on his studio album went on pause, ‘Summer of Glove’ sees an emergence of a more guitar-led, full band sound as opposed to Comrade Hat’s factory setting as bedroom producer. Burns spoke to us on the development of his forthcoming two albums, named for their spontaneous birth in fairly mysterious circumstances: “Maybe I was channeling the cautious optimism of…

  • Album Premiere: Our Krypton Son – Modern Ruins

    July 10, 2020 - By 

    Three years on from the release of his NI Music Prize-nominated second album Fleas & Diamonds, Derry singer-songwriter Chris McConaghy aka Our Krypton Son has unveiled highly-anticipated follow-up, Modern Ruins. Underscoring his status as one of the country’s most compelling songwriting voices — a singular breed of artist wielding subtlety and heart-stung harmonic sensibility as a second nature — Modern Ruins is a rare feat of the soul, marrying pure-cut candour and elegy with finely-woven song. Headed with lead single ‘White Sun’, the album unfurls across nine tracks, each as exploratory and lambent as the next. But it’s the sheer scope of…

  • Stream: The Bonk – Songs For The Mean Time Vol. 1

    July 8, 2020 - By 

    Ahead of featuring on the first episode of Live at Guerrilla Studios tomorrow night, The Bonk have gifted us a new, typically superb EP, Songs For The Mean Time Vol. 1. Three songs “about good and bad sense,” the release finds the Phil Christie-fronted collective further distil their perfectly unpigeonholeable craft down to eight odd minutes of experimental song. Though it’s never been in doubt, The Bonk’s rep as one of the country’s most forward-pushing acts has just been doubly underscored. Delve in deep below. Songs For The Mean Time Vol. 1 by The Bonk

  • Video Premiere: Vivid Dreamer – This Is Not Living

    July 9, 2020 - By 

    Something you may have missed amidst the maelstrom of new releases last Bandcamp Friday was the surprise announcement of Vivid Dreamer, a collaborative project between two of Belfast’s synth-pop creators par excellence. Today, they’re lifting the cloche on second single ‘This Is Not Living’, ahead of the release of their eponymous debut album this Sunday, July 12. Both as producers and songwriters – with the likes of Oppenheimer, Beauty Sleep, Malibu Shark Attack, Wonder Villains, amongst others – Rocky O’Reilly & Ryan McGroarty been directly or indirectly integral in the sound of no shortage of Northern Ireland’s most essential listening across the last 15-odd years. Vivid Dreamer…

  • A Litany of Failures: Volume III Announced

    July 3, 2020 - By 

    Two years on from its second volume, islandwide independent music compilation series A Litany of Failures has opened pre-orders and announced the tracklisting for Volume III in the series – out Friday, October 2nd. More eclectic, and more export-ready than ever, the compilation features brand new music from 22 acts across Ireland, including the first recorded output from Fifty Years of Hair (Postcard Versions/Girl Band’s Dara Kiely), The Golden Cleric (Shrug Life/Girlfriend/That Snaake) and Grave Goods (Girls Names, Pins, September Girls), as well as many of our favourites – Robocobra Quartet, Silverbacks, Rising Damp, Percolator, Extravision and many more. With cover art by Nathanaël Roman, it will be accompanied by…

  • Stendhal Festival Unveil First Names For Unlocked Part 1

    July 4, 2020 - By 

    The first line-up announcement for the first-ever socially distant music festival in the history of Northern Ireland has been revealed. The first in a five-part series, Stendhal Unlocked part 1 will, pending the go-ahead in terms of COVID-19 restrictions, welcome the likes of And So I Watch You From Afar (pictured), Ciaran Lavery, Malojian, Amy Montgomery, ROE, Kíla, Ryan McMullan and many other artists to Ballymully Cottage in Limavady on August 21 and 22. Check out the current line-up for Part 1 below. With the second part of the line-up for event one, and the first half of the line-up for the second…

  • Submissions Open For NI Music Prize

    July 3, 2020 - By 

    The submission window is once again open for the Northern Ireland Music Prize. With more details to be announced regarding this year’s awards ceremony, insofar as COVID-19 restrictions is concerned, organisers have revealed that the submission window for albums and singles is open from today until Thursday, July 30th. Any eligible NI single or album must have been released between 15th July 2019 – 14th July 2020 As with last year, all eligible submissions will make up single and album longlists, which will then become two separate shortlists following a voting process carried out by various individuals in the Northern…

  • Sea Pinks Announce Indefinite Hiatus; Stream Single ‘Running Down the Clock’

    July 2, 2020 - By 

    Tomorrow, Belfast’s finest purveyors of sun-kissed jangle-pop Sea Pinks will mark 10 years in existence with a new EP. Arriving exactly a decade on from the Neil Brogan-fronted band’s debut single, ‘Japanese Knotwood’, it doubles up as an ending – an inexorable line drawn under the sand – for one of the country’s most prolific and consistently on-form bands. On the heels of its title track, we’re pleased to present a first listen to the release’s new single ‘Running Down The Clock’. Sure enough, even at the eleventh hour, Sea Pinks are a band that sound like no other. Centering on the onward march…

  • Another Love Story 2020 Cancelled

    July 1, 2020 - By 

    Another Love Story has officially announced that this year’s festival will not go ahead. The annual get-together at Killyon Manor, Co. Meath – is the latest Irish festival forced to pull the plug as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. In a statement, organisers said, “Being small and nimble, we have waited as long as we possibly could to give circumstances as much chance as possible to settle down enough to allow the freewheeling joy of our weekend at the Manor to occur. “However, given the government’s latest announcement regarding event capacities, and more importantly the ongoing risks that abound around all…