• Body & Soul Reveal Electric Picnic Line-Up

    July 31, 2018 - By 

    You only need to hit up the Picnic the once to know that the Body & Soul stage is probably the most rewarding corner of the annual Stradbally festival. Today, B&S organisers have let the cat out of the bag and announced their line-up for this year’s outing, which runs from August 31 to September 2. Including countless TTA favourites including Sleep Thieves, Ryan Vail, Pillow Queens,  SlowPlaceLikeHome, Bad ones, Daithi, Soulé, Paddy Hanna, O Emperor, Laoise (pictured), Hvmmingbyrd, David Keenan and more, you can check out the line-up in full below. Tickets for this year’s Electric Picnic are sold out. Photo…

  • Stream: Kyoto Love Hotel – Still

    July 31, 2018 - By 

    The project of Joe Geaney of Floating Ballroom and former Staring at Lakes member Laura Sheary, Kyoto Love Hotel, we are told, make “songs for thoughts to dance to.” An ambitious M.O. and no mistake, but having stuck their new single ‘Still’ on repeat, we can certainly see the logic. Based in Tipperary, the pair’s latest effort is a sleek trickle of electro-pop that marries low-key trap beats, twinkling synth lines and lyrics courtesy of Sheary which explore “fragmented memories and the disparities that exist between our physical reality and our interior selves.” Delve in below.

  • Watch: EHCO – Éiclips (Live)

    July 31, 2018 - By 

    Back at the start of the year, we tipped Kilcoole’s EHCO as one of our ones to watch for 2018. Headed by ex-Enemies member Eoin Whitfield, the project has hit the ground running via a handful of shows and a brace of slick singles. The most recent of those – and, by our reckoning, the band’s strongest single effort to date – ‘Éiclips‘ now comes accompanied by a new live video. Filmed on location at the Mermaid Theatre in Bray, it was created by Rosie Barrett, with audio recorded and mixed by Eóin Murphy and lighting from Conor Biddle. Catch EHCO at the Ballroom…

  • Album Stream: Kevin Nolan – Absent At the Moment When He Took Up the Most Space (Selected Recordings 1997 – 2005)

    July 31, 2018 - By 

    A selection of recordings that he made between 1997 and 2005, Absent At The Moment When He Took Up The Most Space captures the genesis and creative metamorphosis of Dublin singer, composer and author Kevin Nolan. Comprising thirty-eight tracks, taken from an archive of over 150 recordings during this period, it’s palette-spanning, at times wonderfully inspired collection of music. With many songs clocking in at such over one minute in length – often more than enough time for Nolan to strike earworming gold – Nolan approaches Robert Pollard-like levels of fecundity, all while shapeshifting between downbeat folk musings, a cappella diversions, rock-pop gems…

  • Premiere: Yawning Chasm – Awful Blue

    July 30, 2018 - By 

    The solo moniker of Galway musician and one-half of Mirakil Whip, Aaron Coyne, Yawning Chasm has drip-fed the world some wonderfully ruminative, psych-tinged dream-folk over the last few years. His new album, Songs from Blue House  follows suit, and mines twelve cloistered and candid tales by way of baritone ukulele, four-string electric mandolin, keyboard and voice. Out now on Rusted Rail, the album was mostly self-recorded during a rainstorm in a shed. The album’s lead track, ‘Awful Blue’ is a brisk, major-keyed antidote to a minor-key preoccupation. Have a first peek at its suitably low-key visuals below. Stream/buy Songs From Blue House here.

  • Watch: Fears – Blood

    July 31, 2018 - By 

    From her immersive live shows to recent single ‘h_always‘, Constance Keane, AKA Fears, has grown to become one of Ireland’s foremost creators of ambitious, subtle pop. Her latest in a recent string of audio-visual collaborations revisits her stark, somnambulist 2016 single ‘Blood‘, which has now too met its warped match with the help of director Aodh. ‘Blood’ stars Mark Loughran as father and IFTA-nominated young actor Dafhyd Flynn from award-winning Irish 2017 film Michael Inside as son. Thanks in no small part to the to contrasting camera work from Matthew Rogan & lo-fi footage by Cloda Farrelly, the video is eye-wateringly evocative in its portrayal of the complexities…

  • Premiere: Hot Cops – Decay

    July 27, 2018 - By 

    On Monday (July 30), Belfast indie rock stalwarts Hot Cops will release Speed Dating, a five-track EP that compiles remastered versions of their singles to date. Doubling up as a quick primer of-sorts, the release holds up as an all-killer insight into why the Carl Eccles-fronted band are widely considered to be one of the country’s very best (a theory you may have noticed we’ve shared over the last few years.) The release’s lead track, ‘Decay’ has long been a live highlight for the band. A three-minute blast of fuzzed-out slacker-pop, it’s a full-blown celebration of ennui that finds relief in both simple admittance and its feedback-soaked closing…

  • Premiere: Oisin O’Scolai & The Virginia Slims – Join Me in The Ground

    July 27, 2018 - By 

    Hailing from Donegal, Derry-based artist Oisin O’Scolai is most certainly one to watch. Very accurately being dubbed by his label, Belfast’s Black Tragick Records, as “the Buncrana Beck” (alternatively “if Harry Nilsson was from Donegal” or a latter day Paul Westerberg if he hadn’t have got drunk with the Stinson brothers and started The Replacements”). Self-recorded and released as Oisin O’Scolai and the Virginia Slims, the stellar, slow-burning gothic-folk of ‘Join Me in the Ground’ was mixed Ben McAuley and sees O’Scolai wield subtlety and pathos like a scythe. Taken from his forthcoming debut album, Vacant Sea, the single comes yet more…

  • Premiere: Slouch – Petty Sounds

    July 25, 2018 - By 

    One of our must-see acts at this year’s KnockanStockan in Co. Wicklow this weekend, Dublin threesome Slouch are in a league of their own here when it comes to fuzzed-out, curveballing alt-rock that hits that rare sweet spot between scuzz, low-end groove, intricacy and abandon. A textbook case in point, brand new single ‘Petty Sounds’ – which we’re pleased to premiere below – will be familiar to anyone who has caught Conor Wilson, Kev Shannon and Malachy Burke live over the last couple of years. Littered with submerged arpeggios and eruptions of amp-choking noise, it’s the sound of walking through a…

  • Watch: Our Krypton Son – Falling In Love Is A Suicide Mission (Ryan Vail Mix)

    July 24, 2018 - By 

    A highlight from his critically-devoured second album Fleas & Diamonds, ‘Love Is a Suicide Mission’ by Derry artist Chris McConaghy AKA Our Krypton Son captures his elegiac, carefully-woven craft in under four minutes. Now, fellow Derry artist and producer Ryan Vail (pictured) has delivered his own curveballing take of the single, which was originally released back in May. Mining the track’s heart-rending melodic twists and turns, it evolves from skeletal, contorted electronica to a reveal a simmering, low-key dancefloor jam.