• Music Venue Trust Announces New Save Our Venues T-Shirt Campaign

    June 18, 2020 - By 

    The Music Venue Trust has been a force of immeasurable value within the arts sector in the last few months, saving a great number of  venues UK-wide with their #SaveOurVenues campaign, which continues to guarantee the presence places in which to gather, once gathering is an option. Their latest initiative will offer the official Save Our Venues T-shirt for sale on the Crowdfunder page of each artist – with each costing £20 posted. From this, each £20 will go directly towards the individual venue’s campaign, with production & distribution costs being covered by the Trust itself. The six MVT venues under threat in Northern Ireland are Belfast’s Black Box, Voodoo, Oh Yeah…

  • Second Issue of ‘Spread’ Zine Set to Raise Funds for JaJa Studios

    June 19, 2020 - By 

    Feminist zine Spread was introduced in December 2019 as part of the Sex Workers Alliance Ireland Art Exhibition, covering themes of  music, sex and DIY culture in Ireland. Initially intended as a March release, editors Yvonne Kiely and Mairead Mullan decided to push back its release in order to effectively engage with the Covid-19 crisis. Spread #2 is available online at Lazer Guided Reporter, as of 3pm – completely free to read and download. Parallel to this, one of our favourite DIY artist spaces on the island, Stoneybatter’s JaJa Studios have recently been given the unenviable task of finding a new location in Dublin. In addition to this, Spread have generously…

  • Premiere: Cruiser – Ovaltine

    June 17, 2020 - By 

    At the beating heart of Limerick’s fully thriving music scene as of late are Cruiser, a foursome comprising Ger Devine, Rachael Drennan, Chris Quigley and Steve Savage. Striking a sweet point between supremely candid indie rock and intricately-woven shoegaze worship, the gentler side of the band’s sonic M.O. is laid bare across the four minutes of ‘Ovaltine’. Originally featured on the band’s split EP with Belfast trio Mob Wife late last year (check out our premiere here) it’s a song evoking everyone from Bedhead and early Slowdive, to Codeine and Duster. Today, we’re pleased to present a first look at the song’s brand new video. Doubling up as one…

  • Stream: Goodtime John – Hang On/Black Sunrise

    June 11, 2020 - By 

    Exactly a year on from releasing one of the Irish albums of the year, Beauty & Chaos, Goodtime John (AKA J. Cowhie, GOODTIME) is back with a stellar brace of gently-rolling, psych-inflected pop. Featuring long time collaborators including Richie Egan aka Jape and Ross Turner (Lisa Hannigan, Villagers) ‘Hang On’ and ‘Black Sunrise’ are equally emphatic efforts that place deft harmonies and refrains center-stage. “These songs have never quite fit on an album to my mind, but have always felt to me that they go hand in hand,” John said. “Cut from the same cloth as it were. In the current…

  • Watch: Pillow Queens – Handsome Wife

    June 11, 2020 - By 

    Few bands earworm quite like Pillow Queens. Having been on our radar since 2017, the Dublin indie quartet will release their debut album, In Waiting, in September. If their new single ‘Handsome Wife’ is anything to go by – and it surely is – we’re in for something special. Featuring wonderful visuals shot and assembled during lockdown, it’s a star-shaped and suitably burrowing gem from the foursome. “‘Handsome Wife’ begins with a glimpse into an emotional homecoming, one that intensifies and romanticises the seemingly insignificant,” the band said. “Throughout, the mundane but tender moments are held up and deified, paying…

  • Video Premiere: Dott – Extra Introvert

    June 11, 2020 - By 

    If there’s any band in Ireland who can lay claim to an Earworm Guarantee™, it may well be Galway’s harmony-laced dream-pop quartet Dott, and new single ‘Extra Introvert’ proves that once more in spades. As interactions return to relative normality in time for summer, the gradual reacquaintance with our old friend social anxiety proves much easier when masked in a seasonally-appropriate bop. Dott were in the midst of recording their third album when the Covid-19 pandemic put a stop to things, but mercifully they’ve delivered us a homespun, all-too-relatable video, made for phone. Featuring lead singer Anna and her many attempts to overcome Lockdown Anxiety, it records the day-to-day of using…

  • EP Stream: Eoin Dolan – June Hope

    June 9, 2020 - By 

    A master of carefully-crafted throwback pop, Galway’s Eoin Dolan has steadily emerged as one of the country’s most distinct songwriting voices. Off the back of last year’s sublime Commander of Sapiens – Dolan’s third full-length album to date – new EP June Hope is a feat of minimal, psych-inflected indie-pop. Equal parts focused and optimistic, it’s a release that looks to the horizon with a heart full of hope. Speaking about the EP, which he also produced, mixed and mastered, Dolan said, “Winters are fairly dark in the west of Ireland – what keeps you going are thoughts of a fresh spring and the warmth…

  • Infinitesimal Hinge: Tender With Malcontent

    June 8, 2020 - By 

    In the latest installment of his column, Infinitesimal Hinge, Belfast musician, producer and writer Jamie Thompson aka James Joys reflects on the political and economic realities underlying the momentous times we find ourselves in. Perhaps the salient characteristic of our neoliberal capitalist moment is that the people who benefit most from the orthodoxy of centuries of structurally reproduced inequalities are the ones who present themselves as the only pragmatic, electable solutions to the eruptions of discontent these inequalities spur. That our system – a festering seam of collaborators – of the expensively schooled, of finance lads, of property developers, landlords,…

  • Album Stream: Brigid Mae Power – Head Above The Water

    June 5, 2020 - By 

    Her debut release via London’s Fire Records, and her third album overall, Head Above The Water finds Galway’s Brigid Mae Power at their peak of her powers. Recorded at analogue studio The Green Door in Glasgow, from boundlessly earworming opener ‘On A City Night’ to the release’s closing title track, it makes for a perfectly escapist 45 minutes of first-rate cosmic folk from one of the country’s most distinctive songwriting voices. Head Above The Water by Brigid Mae Power

  • Girls Names Release ‘Demos: 2009​-​2012’

    June 5, 2020 - By 

    For ten years, Belfast’s Girls Names consistently underscored their status as one of the country’s best bands. From 2010’s You Should Know By Now to what would become their feature-length swansong, 2018’s Stains on Silence, Cathal Cully and co. made music that, unlike so many contemporary bands, warranted the albeit loose descriptor post-punk. Having disbanded last year, the band have briefly re-emerged to release Demos: 2009​-​2012. Over 37 tracks, it’s a fascinating, true-to-life release, documenting the creative process of a band whose sound wonderfully evolved over the years. As posthumous, feature-length curios go, this one is worth delving into. “I hear the walls of each…