• Premiere: Mob Wife – Captain Care A Lot & Hellsong

    February 8, 2019 - By 

    Following the release of debut single ‘Warm Water’ in August, Belfast’s Mob Wife are back with new double A-side Captain Care A Lot / Hellsong. Recorded by Chris Ryan at Start Together Studios, with striking artwork by Billy Woods, the release strikes a midpoint between the dissonant fury of Metz or Unwound, and the melodic vulnerability of Pile. A contrasting couplet, ‘Captain Care A Lot’ continuing down the narrative & noise-ridden path of twentysomething angst and confusion laid by ‘Warm Water’, sardonically chronicling mass depersonalisation as a result of social media. ‘Hellsong’ is a more inward-looking exploration of disintegration, through the maelstrom of substance abuse, isolation and depression; in eschewing the…

  • Meat Puppets Set For Dublin, Belfast and Limerick Shows

    February 7, 2019 - By 

    Arizona alternative rock heroes Meat Puppets will play three dates in Ireland in June. The band – who formed in 1980 by brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood with Derrick Bostrom – will play Limerick’s Dolan’s on June 7, Belfast’s Empire Music Hall on June 8 and Whelan’s in Dublin on June 9. The shows will take place as part of a tour marking the band’s new album, Dusty Notes, which will feature the band’s original line-up for the first time since 1995. Tickets go on sale this Monday, February 10 at 9am.

  • Premiere: Alpha Chrome Yayo – Breakfast In Daytona

    February 7, 2019 - By 

    It’s not every day, but every once in a while, a track will land in our inbox that just instinctively makes us want to punch the air. A textbook case in point is the new single from newfangled Belfast producer and musician Alpha Chrome Yayo. Bursting at the seams with pure-cut throwback goodness, ‘Breakfast in Daytona’ is a synth-soaked, SEGA-leaning gem from an artist who set out to chart the “excitement of one day at a sun-bleached race-track”. The musician put it best when he said, “Waking up with the drivers, crew members and spectators, this synth-wave single starts hazy and hopeful,…

  • Premiere: TAU – Craw

    February 6, 2019 - By 

    TAU is the collective project of Berlin-based Irishman Shaun Mulrooney, an artist who refers to his psych-soaked, genre-mangling experimentalism as “medicine music”. It’s a term that fits well: also member of Dead Skeletons and Berlin Kraut conjurers Camera, Mulrooney’s sorcerous craft as TAU – which is strongly influenced by his interest in what lies beyond both the eye and the veil – carries with it a strong and slow-burning anagogic air. New single ‘Craw’ is a potent case in point. Featuring a sublime video, co-directed with Kyle Ferguson (who also filmed and edited the accompaniment), it’s a song that traces the dense…

  • Premiere: Ferals – The Low

    February 5, 2019 - By 

    The island of Ireland has always batted out out of its league when it comes to riff-fuelled post-rock. Right up there with the acts flying the flag in the North right now is Belfast-based threesome Ferals. Listing Foals, Biffy Clyro, Deftones and North Coast instrumental machine And So I Watch You From Afar as their main influences, the Zool Records-affiliated band have re-emerged with their new single, ‘The Low’. Doubling up as the band’s strongest single effort to date – and accompanied with a suitably emphatic video – the song strikes a fist-clenched mid-point between low-end riff slinging, gang vocals…

  • Album Premiere: Postcard Versions – Postcard Versions

    February 6, 2019 - By 

    Making good on the promise of last year’s debut single ‘Sunday Morning With Nate‘ – which came in at number 28 on our 2018 Irish Tracks of the Year and featured on independent compilation A Litany of Failures Volume II – Postcard Versions‘ debut album is here. Comfortably resigned and pragmatic in its optimism, Postcard Versions looks at a hungover languor as a chance for reprieve. Its 10 tracks never outstay their welcome, clocking in at just short of half an hour, making this another essential breezy indie rock album to add to Dublin canon alongside Popical Island, Tandem Felix & company – and it’s arguably the finest ever not to include a cymbal. Clearly a…

  • Alice In Chains Set For Dublin and Belfast Shows

    February 4, 2019 - By 

    Legendary Seattle band Alice In Chains will play two Irish shows in the Spring. Taking place as part of a broader UK and Irish tour, the band will play Dublin’s Olympia Theatre on Monday, May 20 and Belfast’s Telegraph Building on Tuesday, May 21st. Tickets go on sale this Friday (February 8) at 9am.

  • Isobel Anderson and Alliance for Choice Launch #IMALIFE Fundraiser

    February 1, 2019 - By 

    Belfast-based musician Isobel Anderson has teamed up with Northern Irish abortion rights organisation Alliance for Choice for an important fundraiser, #imalife Centering around one woman’s account of her journey to England to have an abortion, her song ‘_4284_ / I’m A Life’ – titled after the number of women who travelled from NI and ROI to access abortions in 2015 – doubles up as a powerful and incredibly well presented accompaniment to the appeal. “This money is vital to enable us to deliver workshops across Northern Ireland and GB,’ Alliance for Choice said. “Those we have done so far have made a tangible…

  • Premiere: Winterlude – Winterlude II

    February 1, 2019 - By 

    Winterlude is an occasional song outlet of Neil Brogan, better known as the singer and guitarist of Belfast’s perennial bittersweet janglers Sea Pinks (who released 7th album, Rockpool Blue, back in September). But were Sea Pinks tend towards vibrant colour, Winterlude is a much more muted, understated prospect. Following on from 2015’s Four Songs, now available for the first time on all digital outlets, the two new songs on Winterlude II strip things right back. Brogan’s voice floats over a murmured Spanish guitar on ‘Thrown Chorus’, before pulling back to reveal a barren panorama of double tracked cello and skeletal piano. ‘Frozen Lake (Fade)’ is even more sparse sounding, just…

  • Album Premiere: Empire Circus – Tí

    January 31, 2019 - By 

    Dublin quartet Empire Circus are a band whose accessible, yet eclectic indie-pop craft bears the imprint of influences including Wilco, Beck, The War on Drugs, R.E.M. and even early Peter Gabriel (always a plus in our eyes Founded in 2012, their self-titled debut album – which was released in September of 2013 – confined within its twelve tracks real promise, and an FM-leaning, carefully-crafted sound that hinted at something more substantial with the passing of time and the creative maturation that accompanies that. Tomorrow (February 1) the band release its long-awaited follow-up, Tí. And sure enough, it’s a cohesive and accomplished release that trims Empire…