Search Results for: "no monster club"

  • 16 For ’16: Paddy Hanna

    Fifteen hugely promising, genre-spanning Irish acts down, we conclude our annual Ones to Watch feature with Dublin’s Paddy Hanna. Words by Cathal McBride. Photo: Mark Earley. Following his 2014 debut album Leafy Stilleto on Popical Island and a pair of strong 2015 singles, Dublin’s Paddy Hanna is on an upward trajectory that shows no sign of faltering any time soon. A string of Irish support dates with Girl Band last year with his backing band, including No Monster Club’s Bobby Aherne, has only helped to raise his profile further. Swapping his old band Grand Pocket Orchestra’s lo-fi art pop for…

  • Stream: No Monster Club – Sion

    Set to feature on his eleventh album, I Feel Magic, next month, Dublin lo-fi wizard Bobby Aherne AKA No Monster Club is streaming ‘Sion’, a track recalling an unexpectedly fun Swiss traipse. “I came up with all of the composite parts during the Carnaval parade in Sion, Switzerland last Valentine’s Day,” Aherne said. “The next day, I stitched them all together into a rough, drunken Jack Torrance demo in the ancient and creepy Hotel Europa (where Verdi used to live and Napoleon once stayed) in Ferrara, Italy. The lyrics came later.” Effortlessly earworming and almost boyishly candid in its poise and delivery, it’s exactly the…

  • The Thin Air’s Top 50 Irish Releases of 2015 (40-31)

    Following on from Monday’s first installment, we continue our countdown of our Top 50 Irish Releases of 2015, featuring glorious returns, new-fangled heroes. Go here to check out 50-41. 40. Lakker – Tundra “You should listen to it loudly, and try to get swept away by it.” So aptly concluded Pitchfork’s review of Tundra, the second album – and debut R&S full-length release – from Berlin-based Dublin electronic duo Lakker in a decade. Released back in May, it proved an immersive ten-track release inspired by No U-Turn Records, Arvo Part, Merzbow and early Human League. Now that’s a dinner party we’d pay good money to…

  • Watch: No Monster Club – Lemonade

    Set to play Popical Island’s jam-packed All-Dayer on Saturday, December 19, Bobby Aherne’s No Monster Club have unveiled the video for their new single ‘ Lemonade’. Lifted from his forthcoming eleventh (yes, eleventh) album I Feel Magic, the track – helped along very nicely by Aherne’s accompanying video – is an equal parts bobbing and burrowing slice of art-pop worthy of many repeated listens. The PR say it “bask[s] in a strange, newfound intersection of Future Islands, Talking Heads and early Flaming Lips” and we’re not even remotely inclined to disagree. I Feel Magic is released via Popical Island on February 5.…

  • Popical Island All-Dayer 5

    With more acts to be announced (deep breath) Squarehead, Skelocrats, Lie Ins, Ginnels, No Monster Club, Walpurgis Family, The Number 1s and Me and My Dog will congregate for the common good AKA celebrating Dublin collective and label Popical Island’s grand fifth All-Dayer upstairs in Whelans on Saturday, December 19. And true to title, things will kick off at the sprightly hour of 3pm and wrap up around 11pm. Entry is a measly €10. Go here for the show’s Facebook event page.

  • Girl Band w/ Paddy Hanna @ Roisin Dubh, Galway

    It’s been almost a year to the day since Girl Band played the Roisín Dubh. At that point the band had just released their seminal single ‘De Bom Bom’ and plans for an album were in a mere germination stage, the only thing that they knew for certain was that they would record it themselves and that it would be out in 2015. This being less than a week after the release of the massively anticipated LP Holding Hands With Jamie then, excitement levels are through the roof to see how the year has impacted the most innovative and exhilarating…

  • Girl Band @ Bar Sub, Belfast

    Most of the recent reviews for their full length debut Holding Hands With Jamie have said the same thing: no other band sounds like Girl Band. And it’s true. Sure, there are echoes of noise-rock, post-punk, krautrock and techno but they’re mixed together in such a way that no label can accurately capture the enthralling racket this Dublin quartet makes, while frontman Dara Kiely sings, speaks, shouts and screams surreal non-sequiturs over the top, sounding like the Irish lovechild of Steve Albini and Mark E Smith. While Kiely’s lyrics, when audible, initially appear to be hilariously odd – packed full…

  • Strange Brew Summer Shindig #11 @ Roisin Dubh, Galway

    It’s still relatively early in the evening on the Thursday of the Galway Races, July 30. I’m walking through the town which is flooded will ill-fitting suits and headwear that ranges from patch caps to multi-coloured shapes that defy the laws of physics. It’s mayhem. It’s loud. There’s a man with curry sauce all over his shirt shouting at a seagull and there’s a bunch of lads singing (read: bellowing) ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’. Despite the sense of mania of it all, it’s hard to not find it all just to be a lot of fun. People have come in…

  • Monday Mixtape: Bobby Aherne (No Monster Club)

    “What kind of music are you into?” The dreaded question that, for many years, sent shivers down my spine, stopped me in my tracks and put a blank Fr. Dougal McGuire stare into my eyes. You might think that somebody who actually makes music has both the perfect response and riposte to this, assuming that one’s personal tuneage is both a distillation of their essence as well as a full-length mirror of their own tastes (incidentally reflecting back the sheer amount of plagiarism at work). Sadly, unless you decide to sit down the quizmaster and force them to endure one’s…