• Premiere: JaJa Studios – The Lost Sound Vol. 1

    November 5, 2020 - By 

    Having provided Dublin musicians and various other creatives with a vital hub over the last seven years, Stoneybatter DIY music and art space JaJa Studios recently lost its home on Cowper Street to a developer. Dusting themselves down, the collective have wasted no time in looking for a new HQ – and ways to make that a reality. Cue The Lost Sound Vol. 1, a new, 22-track cassette tape compiled to raise proceeds for a new space. A self-proclaimed (and entirely accurate) slice of the Irish music underground from some scene stalwarts, it’s a wonderfully eclectic release, featuring Flowers at Night, Declan…

  • Jeff Tweedy – Love Is The King

    November 2, 2020 - By 

    Warm, Warmer, Warmest. Jeff Tweedy’s latest collection of homespun wisdom is more inviting and immediate than its predecessors. Recorded in Wilco’s loft studios, arrangements are sparse and to the point, kept conveniently within the family bubble through contributions from his sons Spencer and Sammy. Here I am There it is At the edge Of as bad as it gets The title track’s opening lines and ominous chord progression could be alluding to the coronavirus, Trump, or both. Despite circling back to the refrain of “Love is the king” the clouds never quite lift, abetted by familiar A Ghost is Born-reminiscent electric…

  • Matt Berninger – Serpentine Prison

    October 21, 2020 - By 

    Solo albums, for the most part, present artists with the opportunity to  indulge in experiments their bandmates would reject. Take Thom Yorke going fully electronic on The Eraser, or Sigur Ros’ Jónsi’s journey into  glitch-pop on his new album Shiver: Neither proved to be too much of a deviation from their main projects’ sound, but provided them with a detour that musicians often need to get out of their system between “proper” albums. The lowered expectations that can come with a solo album free up an artist to make whatever they want without restriction, and can sometimes lead to something…

  • Moving On Music Set To Hold Online Concert Event ‘All The Noels’

    October 20, 2020 - By 

    Belfast-based tastemakers par excellence Moving on Music are set to hold unique online live music experience held throughout the Black Box, Belfast, titled All The Noels. The 30-odd-minute single shot, walk-through experience is set to showcase different music taking place across the various spaces of the venue. The video – recorded across one day by a team of audio-visual professionals – attempts to capture the feeling of being in possibly our favourite Belfast venue for live music. Performances come from some of TTA faves, experimental rock quartet Blue Whale, traditional Irish vocal quartet Landless, Irish jazz pianist Scott Flanigan‘s Trio, jazz drummer Steve Davis, folk duo Laytha and traditional flute & whistle player Martha Guiney with Shane McCartan. Speaking of the project, Mick Bonner of Moving on Music said “it was…

  • “Is There Ever NOT More To Say About the Institutional Oppression of Women?” – M(h)aol Release First Single in 5 Years

    October 5, 2020 - By 

    Having releasing one single (‘Clementine‘ – featuring guest vocals from none other than Dara Kiely) in 2015, laying out a pointed intersection feminist & animal welfare-centred manifesto across their raw, visceral 15-minute sets, fast becoming one of the most talked-about bands in Dublin – their bassist the titular Jamie on Girl Band’s debut album – before inexplicably withdrawing with the same unpredictable energy they rode in with, M(h)aol, are the stuff of punk legend. As you well know, the intervening years in a post-referendum and post-Girl Band Irish landscape have seen a seismic transformation – with peak post-punk dude fecundity. Things were supposed to improve. Women were to experience something resembling equal representation on every…

  • New Music Initiative Safe In Sound Launches in NI

    September 23, 2020 - By 

    Just announced today, Safe in Sound is a new initiative set to provide a safe space for underrepresented voices in the Northern Irish music sector. The organisation is spearheaded by six women who are heavily involved with and working in music in NI; Aine Cronin-McCartney (Artist Manager, Journalist), Ciara McMullan (Music Photographer), Hannah Richardson (Musician), Jo Wright (Artist Manager, Music Development), Katie Richardson (Musician, Composer, Facilitator) and Francesca O’Connor (Artist Manager, PR). The announcement of the initiative came alongside the following statement: “As individuals, we felt that there was a lack of recognition, respect and support for minority voices working in…

  • Watch: SORBET – Birth (My First Day)

    September 16, 2020 - By 

    Ahead of the release of his debut solo EP, Life Variations this Friday, producer/songwriter/vocalist – and bandleader with Robocobra Quartet – Chris Ryan, AKA SORBET has lifted the cloche on the video for opening track ‘Birth (My First Day)’, which conjures the all-too-real sensation of impostor syndrome. Directed by Dominic Curran with AR motion graphics by Fabiano Benetton, the piece is a magic-realism expression of the singular, otherworldly feeling of the writing alone through his period of home-studio isolation. The seed of Life Variations grew from meditations upon two piano chords to which Ryan was repeatedly and profoundly drawn. Each of its three tracks takes this notion and explores cyclical threads and progression through key stages…

  • Stream: Captain A – Dark Matter Mariner

    August 10, 2020 - By 

    Galway’s Captain A has shared his second new track of the summer, ‘Dark Matter Mariner’. The shadowy instrumental, as eerie and vast as its title suggests, follows July’s ‘Meaning Obscure’, and finds Captain A continuing his ventures away from psych rock and gnarled folk into the world of electronic music. Where 2019’s ‘Dog In The Woods’ was tender and inward-looking, ‘Dark Matter Mariner’ confronts much loftier subject matter, but with a similarly poignant sense of isolation. “It is the soundtrack to the first voyages made by humans into the realms of dark matter and dark energy,” he explains. Drifting, muffled…

  • Bing & Ruth – Species

    July 27, 2020 - By 

    It is that time of the year, when the sun beams with underestimated intensity and humidity creeps upward, smearing the world with a thin veneer of moisture. Everything keeps ratcheting up, it gets harder to think, harder to focus, harder to breathe almost. Cognitive space is required, something to give your brain enough room to remain active and alert but not so much as it gets overwhelmed in this delicate atmosphere. What you need is some sweet, laid back Vibey Synth Shit, or VSS. It’s an umbrella term. It encompasses a vast array of sub-genres and ideologies from film soundtracks,…

  • Nadine Shah – Kitchen Sink

    July 9, 2020 - By 

      Nadine Shah’s 2017 release, Holiday Destination seethed with fiery indignation and deep despair as the artist reckoned with the inhuman horror of the Syrian refugee crisis. Her remarkable follow up sees the Tyneside musician turning her lens inward and focuses her incisive attentions on more personal, but no less political, frustrations. Taking aim at everyday racism, feckless men and, most pointedly, the concept of identity and the weighty societal expectations that go with it, Kitchen Sink delivers some of Shah’s most keenly observed performances to date. These songs push Shah’s macabre sound into exhilarating new terrain, oozing dark glamour…