• Bill Callahan – Gold Record

    September 21, 2020 - By 

    Despite having an impressively prolific career behind him, after the long gap between Bill Callahan’s last two albums – 2013’s Dream River and 2019’s Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest – you’d be forgiven for not expecting a follow up any time soon. But the fact that the latter record was a 20-track double album should have been an ample warning that after taking some time away to get married and have a child, the songwriting floodgates had well and truly reopened. And so we find that, just a year on, we have Gold Record in our midst – his seventeenth…

  • Carrion (Devolver Digital, Multiformat)

    September 11, 2020 - By 

    A blood red, mutating, tentacled organism rampages around a subterranean research facility ripping apart gormless scientists and security guards as it tries to escape its confinement. It is a set-up that should be familiar to fans of Horror or Sci-Fi cinema: we have seen such gruesome shenanigans many times before in media such as  Life, Stranger Things, The Thing and lots of others with the word “thing” in the title. However, the gimmick in this twist on the Metroidvania sub-genre is that the player controls said beast: you start the game as a relatively small globule of appendages and viscera, breaking out of a specimen jar…

  • Orville Peck – Show Pony

    September 1, 2020 - By 

    Bedecked in a Stetson hat, a Roy Rogers Nudie Suit and enough rhinestones and country verve to power the Dollywood Ferris wheel, enigmatic troubadour Orville Peck’s star has been on a steady rise since first ten-stepping his way onto the world stage back in 2019. His acclaimed debut album Pony marked Peck out as an important new songwriter in country music, showcasing not only his unique style and towering vocal chops but also a seemingly endless array of face obscuring leather fringed masks, a stylish nod to anonymity that has since become his calling card.  Melding the macho “outlaw country”…

  • Angel Olsen – Whole New Mess 

    August 28, 2020 - By 

    The songs on Angel Olsen’s new album should not, we are told, be considered to be merely a collection of demos. Nine of the eleven tracks on Whole New Mess already appeared on last year’s All Mirrors record, albeit in a more fleshed out form, and then some. For that album Olsen teamed up with orchestral composer Jherek Bischoff, arranger Ben Babbit, and an expanded band to deliver a feast of synths, strings and horns, all topped off with some of Asheville, North Carolina-based artist’s most commanding vocal performances to date. While unavoidably similar, Whole New Mess, is a very…

  • Fontaines D.C. – A Hero’s Death

    August 26, 2020 - By 

    Veteran YouTuber and renowned online personality Tom Scott has an interesting point about the double-edged sword of Internet virality. He posits that if you want to be a successful content creator, then a viral smash hit at an early point in your journey can derail you just as you’re leaving the station. His argument fundamentally rests on the belief that most artists and creators don’t have a clear enough idea of who they are, or what exactly it is they want to say, at that early stage. It’s better, he believes, to spend time honing your craft and developing a distinct identity, rather…

  • Brién – DIY VOL. 1

    August 26, 2020 - By 

      You wouldn’t want to put money on what’s going to drop next from the ever-reliable Soft Boy Records. Whether it’s creating a platform for groundbreaking Irish hip hop (Kojaque) or injecting new life into Dublin jazz (Five to Two), the collective has quickly established itself as a bastion of progressive and forward-thinking homegrown music, with each release offering something genuinely new.  DIY VOL. 1 from Belfast-based multi-instrumentalist Brién is no exception. Encompassing hip hop, jazzy broken beat and R&B in its short run-time, Brién’s latest offering encapsulates the very essence of Soft Boy Records into one, easily-digestible amuse-bouche of…

  • MuRli – Till The Wheels Fall Off

    August 25, 2020 - By 

    MuRli is an Irish music renaissance man. The Limerick rapper, producer and singer has stamped his mark on the Irish scene over the past half decade as part of Choice Music Prize winning  trio Rusangano Family and through a string of striking solo releases. 2019’s The Intangibles mixtape saw the Togo-born artist further establish his distinct sound through experimentation and collaboration with some his favourite Irish artists – including Outsider YP, God Knows, Farah Elle and Denise Chaila.  On 5th June, as Black Lives Matter protests took place around the world in reaction to the killing of George Floyd by a…

  • Evenings & Weekends – Your Guitar

    August 4, 2020 - By 

    Earlier this year, those lovely people over at Evenings & Weekends, the label run by Dublin’s Loud Mouth Collective, decided give us all a gift, Your Guitar. This 12-track compilation was gifted to the world just before lockdown began and was a perfect companion piece to those long, lonely days. The label, which chiefly trades in downtempo and electronic music, found the opportune moment to deliver their latest broadcast right as we divorced ourselves from the outside world. The brooding, yet warm-hearted, sounds granted us space and much-needed solace in that period isolation, and we suspect it will continue to do…

  • Resident Evil 3 (Capcom, Multiformat)

    July 30, 2020 - By 

    Following hot on the shambling heels of the brilliant Resident Evil 2 remake, the latest port in the long-running series is very much a mixture of mercies. It is undoubtedly as exciting and enjoyable as its predecessor but it is also very short. Just when the game is hitting its stride, it strides even more quickly towards its denouement. It giveth and before you can savour its wares it taketh away. For many players, this will not be a problem: reminiscent of classic releases that could be completed in one or two sittings, Resident Evil 3 seems to be designed…

  • Julianna Barwick – Healing is a Miracle

    July 29, 2020 - By 

    In the four years since her last full-length release, Julianna Barwick uprooted herself from New York City, her home of sixteen years, and relocated to LA. A move spurred on by the need to discover “joy and delight” again, it was in the wake of this change of life and landscape that her aptly-titled, luminous new album, Healing is a Miracle was formed. In the spring of last year, Barwick began work on a new project; sitting down with a pared back array of her “most trusted” pieces of gear, she began shaping melodies, and looping her voice around skeletal,…