• Aoife Nessa Frances – Land of No Junction

    February 10, 2020 - By 

    In certain strands of philosophy, opposing forces are just another cog in the machine that keeps the world working. Full resolutions to a problem are unobtainable, a pipe dream, given that the universe is in a constant flux. Instead, contradiction is to be embraced in order to achieve balance, rather than trying to reach a final resolution. For many, this is a sweat-inducing prospect. For Dublin’s Aoife Nessa Frances, however, this theory binds together her sensational debut album, Land Of No Junction. Frances’ solo debut is a far cry from the raw shoegaze of former band Princess, and instead is…

  • Andy Shauf – The Neon Skyline

    February 6, 2020 - By 

    Canadian singer-songwriter Andy Shauf invites listeners into a whimsical narrative with his latest album The Neon Skyline. This is Shauf’s sixth album, following his hugely successful 2016 outing, The Party. In similar style, The Neon Skyline incorporates casual conversation with friends into the lyrics, and with many of the songs we find him as a quiet observer in deep contemplation. The stories that are told throughout the tracklist all take place over the course one evening in the Skyline restaurant, after which the album is named, and loosely mirror the events in Shauf’s life in the aftermath a breakup. The title…

  • Gareth Davis & Merzbow – Broken Landscapes

    January 30, 2020 - By 

    To be rich in friends is to be poor in nothing, or so the saying goes. Given how barely anyone who dedicates their life to experimental music ends up rich, perhaps the success of such musicians should be measured by their influence and the connections they create. Of course, such an idea cannot be measured quantitatively, but if one were to do that, collaborations could be a handy metric. And by that standard, Masami Akita, or Merzbow to you and I, would take some beating. An exhaustive rundown of his collaborations would be too exhausting to list, but in the…

  • Algiers – There Is No Year

    January 30, 2020 - By 

    One thing that you can’t fault Algiers on is the fact that they know how to start all guns blazing. The title track and album opener for their latest LP, There Is No Year, grabs you by the lobes in the first few seconds and does not let go. It’s pulsating and bumping and filled will an anxious, impassioned cry over a world that is too far gone to save. Franklin James Fisher’s vocals oscillate between a soulful croon and desperate warble over a rip-roaring death march. Your blood begins bumping, things begin to coalesce and the feeling that your…

  • Duster – Duster

    January 25, 2020 - By 

    It somehow seems fitting that San Jose slowcore outfit, Duster, would come back from the dead to release an album on the penultimate day of the decade. Nearly 20 years since their last LP, it’s a move that reflects the same elusive and distant feeling their music evokes. Like Duster’s two previous albums, Stratosphere and Contemporary Movement, the tonal theme of outer space is heavily present and with the opening track ‘Copernicus Crater’, that theme is picked right back up. Setting out the cosmic manifesto early on with a driving  bassline and a gloom laden guitar that really makes you feel like you exploring an other worldly geographical feature. Tracks like ‘Hoya…

  • God Alone. – God Alone

    January 20, 2020 - By 

    Genre is a tricky thing. While useful for an audience looking for a labelled path to expand their listening, the idea of slapping a label on your music chafes most artists. This can be especially true for metal acts; given its highly specific sub-genres,  it is hard to not be boxed into one or the other. Cork band God Alone. are aware of this, and on their self-titled second EP they demonstrate their grasp on a variety of different styles to avoid any easy categorisation. Opener ‘Feeling on Tic’ is, by a large margin, the heaviest song on the EP.…

  • Field Music – Making A New World

    January 18, 2020 - By 

    One of the under-discussed merits of living in the post-streaming age is that musicians are limited only by their ambition. It used to be that if your label hated your record you either had to bite your tongue and make it more commercial or try to wrangle out of your contract and sell it somewhere else. But now that those Goliaths are largely gone and anyone can host their music for next to nothing, the sky’s the limit. This is an idea which prog-poppers Field Music have embraced wholeheartedly on their seventh album, Making A New World. This LP is…

  • Maija Sofia – Bath Time

    January 5, 2020 - By 

      The best albums are like books. Each song should act like a chapter, with a clear purpose at the core, laying foundations to the narrative flow. This may sound simplistic, but it’s an achievement only a handful of artists can lay claim to. Maija Sofia is one of them. The Galway-born singer-songwriter began writing her long awaited debut Bath Time while living in London, before recording it upon resettling in Ireland. By writing over extended chapters of her life, Sofia never had any intention to produce a concept album, but found herself with a collection of nine tracks informed by her…

  • Mount Palomar – The Perils Of Youth

    November 11, 2019 - By 

    For those with a finger on the pulse of Ireland’s eminently reputable electronic music scene, Neil Kerr’s Mount Palomar alias and output – though in its semi-infancy – should be fairly familiar by now. With a burgeoning homegrown fanbase and increasingly frequent overseas appearances in the likes of Panorama Bar, Kerr’s development as an authentic purveyor of the analog has been a refreshing expedition to observe. While his debut offering Black Knight’s Tango saw the Falls Road native looking up and gazing into the endless cosmos beyond the nocturnal orange haze of inner city Belfast’s streetlamp sky, The Perils of…

  • Kim Gordon – No Home Record

    November 5, 2019 - By 

    “The way the word ‘empowered’ is used makes feminism more digestible … I wanted to make work that was maybe less digestible.” This was Kim Gordon in conversation with Sinéad Gleeson at Dublin’s Light House Cinema this past July, having launched an exhibition of her visual art at the IMMA entitled She bites her tender mind. Its title is derived from one of Sappho’s fragments, connecting the project to the ancient poet’s evocations of feminine beauty and desire – while also nodding to the broken-down language that has consistently graced Gordon’s own work, in both her coolly minimalist lyrics and the shredded phrases…