• Album stream: SPIES – Constancy

    November 27, 2018 - By 

    Having re-emerged back in March after a three year hiatus, Dublin five-piece SPIES have released their long-awaited debut album, Constancy. From single and cascading alt-pop anthem-in-the-making ‘Ho Chi Minh’ to slow-burning closing lament ‘Love is a Dream’, via three other first-rate singles, ‘Young Dad’, ‘Broadstone’ and ‘Uriah’, it’s an assured return from a band who have well and truly hit their stride. According to singer Michael Broderick, the album primarily revolves around change and transformation: “Our attempts to remain constant in an environment that is inevitably transforming. I wanted the songs to journey through a process of coping (and not…

  • Goth Girl / Queer Fuck – Wish You Were Here

    November 26, 2018 - By 

    The first release on new Belfast-based label Love Will Bury Us is a statement. Optimistically titled Wish You Were Here, it’s a digital & cassette collaboration from Canadian noise artists Queer Fuck and Goth Girl. Devastating, corrupted and immeasurably intense, Wish You Were Here is a forty minute machine noise opus created initially by Queer Fuck – responsible for its majority of screeching – in two twenty minute drum sessions, that were then heavily edited and augmented to sound “like the chattering death rattle of a super computer from the 50’s”. Goth Girl’s wall of screeching turn the release into a blunt object, and is encapsulated in art by Queer Fuck. Nick Tooms,…

  • Arthuritis – I’m Great

    November 23, 2018 - By 

    Pan-dimensional (Cork) experimental electronic artist Arthuritis is set to release his sprawling fourth album, I’m Great through KantCope on tape & digitally next week via Bandcamp. Following up on the supremely-titled Neglected Ambient Shirts Vol. 1 and The Worst Of, alongside Arvo Party II, it’s as texturally-rich an Irish album we’ve heard this year. It’s presentation belies the presence of a real vibe here, and like that artist, it deserves to be taken much more seriously than its name & presentation suggests. In Arthur’s own words, it’s “a collection threaded together by themes of confusion and isolation”. An eclectic collection, and an internalised world in itself, where…

  • Dublin Art Book Fair 2018: Art and Architecture

    November 22, 2018 - By 

    Today sees the launch of this year’s Dublin Art Book Fair in Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. This is the 8th edition of Ireland’s only art book fair and is supported by the Dublin UNESCO City of Literature initiative and the Arts Council of Ireland. The theme for the fair is ‘Art and Architecture’, with a special focus on ‘Uncovering Libraries and Collections’, highlighting the important role these institutions can play in our lives. As well as the fair itself, a series of events will take place during the week including children’s tours, craft making and guest speakers. The fair kicks off today and…

  • Preview: Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids

    November 22, 2018 - By 

    For some people, genius is a bottomless well that flows from within and permeates everything it touches. Like our first co-presented show with Moving On Music back in October – Peter Brotzmann’s Full Blast – we’re delighted to bring an artist to the Belfast, who, despite decades between his inaugural cultural moment and now, continues to create music of astonishing relevance. Idris Ackamoor is a saxophonist, sometime keytarist & artistic director of afro-jazz ensemble The Pyramids. An Angel Fell by Idris Ackamoor and the Pyramids The Pyramids were founded in the early 70s through Antioch College as part of Cecil Taylor’s Black Music Ensemble. Embarking on the kind of pilgrimage that’s the stuff of musical…

  • Cuttin’ Heads Collective 3rd Birthday Weekender

    November 9, 2018 - By 

    Over the last three years, Cork’s Cuttin’ Heads Collective have flown the flag for hip-hop – both homegrown and further flung – like none other. A team comprising fifteen producers, DJs, designers, breakers and rappers, they have played a broad, and increasingly vital role in promoting all things hip-hop, beats and turntablism. This weekend, the collective celebrate their third birthday with an unmissable two-day event assembling some exceptional talent. On Saturday (November 10) The Poor Relation will play host a DJ set from UK turntablist and producer Touchy Subject, the high energy live finger drumming of Germany’s Clockwerk, and Limerick-based scratch master and experimental hip-hop producer…

  • HALFTONE 2018 Launch

    October 31, 2018 - By 

    Tonight sees the launch of the 2018 edition of HALFTONE print fair in The Library Project in Dublin’s Temple Bar. Running for just over two weeks, HALFTONE features over 70 artists with a mixture of photography, screen printing and multi-media works. There are pieces to suit a wide variety of budgets, and the works are from a broad range of emerging and established artists, including Shane Lynam, Roisin White and Jordan McQuaid. The fair kicks off tonight at 6pm and runs until November 18th, you can browse the artists featured online here.

  • EP Premiere: Son Zept – Q2B

    October 19, 2018 - By 

    Liam McCartan, AKA Son Zept, releases his debut today, and it’s one of the most exciting, forward-thinking electronic releases to emerge from here in some time. Parallels could be drawn with the likes of Autechre or Aphex Twin from an experimental standpoint, as his Q2B EP reveals McCartan as a true polymath, where concern with ideology is tantamount to creating limitless club potential. Brimming with atmosphere punctuated by his dense ‘polypatternism’, the Q2B EP is a work of deconstructed club music that alludes to the memory-triggering aspects of techno, noise, trance, power-ambient and industrial, often falling into umbrella of electroacoustic composition. We’ll have a full interview with Son Zept in the coming…

  • EP Premiere: Sweat Threats – Sweet Treats

    October 12, 2018 - By 

    We’ve been fans of the righteous post-punk party music of Sweat Threats since they reared their heads at the start of 2018 – and most recently last month’s ‘Suffocate‘ – and today, we’re delighted to lay down on a platter assorted Sweet Treats, the debut EP from the London-based Irish pairing of Niall Jackson (Bouts/Swimmers Jackson) and Matthew Sutton (It was All a Bit Black and White/Tayne) – recently joined by drummer Lucy Brown. Very much in line with their modus operandi, Sweet Treats is a six track earworm infestation, filled with that Death From Above, Idles & Fucked Up strain of insurgent punk that links hips to brains. Written around themes…

  • EP Premiere: Porphyry – Wounded, White Light

    October 26, 2018 - By 

    The term folktronica is just a touch reductionist for what the Derry-born, now Berlin-based Porphyry is doing. While in a more superficial sense, he could be described as an outsider Villagers, nothing in Ireland is attempting to achieve what Daryl Martin has with new EP, Wounded, White Light.  We loved his previous, self-described ‘maximalist’ Ursa Minor/Coming Home EP, not least for managing “the unenviable job of being boldly unpigeonholeable as art, and deeply personal, without approaching any level of bloated grandiosity”. Through minimalistic methods, however, the same result has been reached once more, with effortless finesse. Its cleansing, organic, seemingly breathing compositions weave unexpected synth textures into alternately piano & guitar-led freak-folk-meets-Robbie Basho-ian primitivism. Across its four tracks,…