• This Month In Irish Music: January

    January 31, 2019 - By 

    In the first of a new regular series, Colin Gannon rounds up the very best Irish tracks released of the month just gone, featuring SOAK, Arvo Party, ELLL, Problem Patterns, James Joys, Sister Ghost, Gadget & The Cloud , Maria Somerville and more. Problem Patterns — Allegedly In a month where the R&B musician R. Kelly—after painfully long years of swerving accountability for persistent, unsettling claims of heinous abuses—may finally have his day of reckoning in a court, new Belfast-based feminist punk group Problem Patterns’ snarling debut single, ‘Allegedly’, lands a certain potency. The word allegedly—itself a necessary adverb used in copy…

  • 19 for ’19: Tebi Rex

    January 31, 2019 - By 

    We continue 19 for ‘19 – our feature looking at nineteen Irish acts that we’re convinced are going places in 2019 – with Maynooth alternative hip-hop duo Tebi Rex. Photo by Zoe Holman Maynooth’s hip-hop scene may not be bulging, but on the evidence of Tebi Rex’s offerings, we believe it truly homes one of Ireland’s most exciting prospects for 2019. The duo, comprised of Matt O’Baoill and Max Zanga, has swiftly attracted attention following the success of ‘Black Enough’ in 2016, with Word Up signing them to their newly launched collective. Although the collective nurtures hip-hop talent whose music…

  • 19 for ’19: Larry

    January 30, 2019 - By 

    We continue 19 for ‘19 – our feature looking at nineteen Irish acts that we’re convinced are going places in 2019 – with Dundalk lo-fi alt-rock three-piece Larry. Photo by Aaron Corr When you record an album with Steve Albini (Shellac/Rapeman /Big Black) you get a certain amount of bang for your buck – you get a solid ranking of all the vegetarian restaurants in Chicago. You get recommendations for who best to master your album, i.e. Bob Weston (Shellac). You get to see your music mixed, not only by a master engineer, but also by a World Series of…

  • 19 for ’19: Extravision

    January 28, 2019 - By 

    We continue 19 for ‘19 – our feature looking at nineteen Irish acts that we’re convinced are going places in 2019 – with Dublin post-punk threesome Extravision. Photo by Moira Reilly There is a shortage of great post-punk in the world today. While we’re a long ways away from the genre’s 1980s heyday, there are a number of contemporary bands, shrouded in darkness and the macabre, who are keeping that flame burning. One such band is Dublin’s Extravision. This three piece have successfully managed to recapture that Manchester sensibility all while infusing it with dream pop to create a woozy…

  • 19 for ’19: Porphyry

    February 1, 2019 - By 

    We continue 19 for ‘19 – our feature looking at nineteen Irish acts that we’re convinced are going places in 2019 – with Derry artist Daryl Martin AKA Porphyry. Photo by Mickey Rooney “To explore the relevance of old philosophies and the art of the past in modern music, with layers of meaning created through leitmotif, musical allegory and literary references”. It’s no stretch to call Daryl Martin a genuine polymath. Based in Derry, Porphyry – named after the Roman Neoplatonic philosopher – is a fully-formed artistic vision, executed unlike anything else in Ireland. When we first 2017 debut EP…

  • Belfast Film Festival Euro Comedy Season

    January 24, 2019 - By 

    The Belfast Film Festival’s Euro Comedy season continues this week with two eccentric, original offerings: The Man without a Past and A Town called Panic. Aki Kaurismaki’s (The Other Side of Hope) The Man Without a Past plays like a cross between the Coen brothers’ character driven, noir-influenced cinema and the dryly deadpan, surreal films of Roy Andersson. It’s also incredibly beautiful to look at, with cinematographer Timo Salminen and Kaurismaki achieving a kind of live-action Edward Hopper painting in the film’s golden lighting and the precise posing of the characters.   The plot follows M (Markku Peltola) as the…

  • 19 for ’19: Carlton Doom

    January 24, 2019 - By 

    We continue 19 for ‘19 – our feature looking at nineteen Irish acts that we’re convinced are going places in 2019 – with fast-rising Belfast producer Chris Hanna AKA Carlton Doom. Photo by Leah Carroll Though the moniker Carlton Doom might currently be unfamiliar to some, the name Chris Hanna has long been one synonymous with the forward-pushing, world-beating electronic community in Belfast city. An elemental, much-admired presence in the city, he has released a string of releases under different guises in the past. Running parallel with borderline legendary sets at showcases including AVA Festival and homegrown club institutions such as Twitch,…

  • Countersunk share video for 101 Beats Per Minute track, ‘I Only Have Eyes’

    January 23, 2019 - By 

    From August 2018 right up to the end of the year, Dublin experimental label, Countersunk, has been sharing a track a week as part of its 101 Beats Per Minute project. Featuring contributions from a wide range of Irish musicians and producers, each track in the collection is as distinct as the next, with the only brief given being that it had to be 101 bpm. The tracks themselves have been released anonymously, but among the contributors are the likes of Jape, ELLLL, Margie Jean Lewis, Somadrone and Countersunk’s own Sunken Foals AKA Dunk Murphy. The anonymity of each of the release’s…

  • 19 for ’19: Music City

    January 22, 2019 - By 

    We continue 19 for ’19 – our series profiling nineteen Irish acts that we’re certain will do great things in 2019 – with Music City, AKA Dublin power pop artist Conor Lumsden and co. Photo by Moira Reilly. There’s this curious belief that pop music is easy. It’s simple, generic and any idiot with the ability to keep time can do it. But the truth is, it’s hard. Just because you can drip paint on a canvas, doesn’t mean you’re Jackson Pollack. Similarly, just because you can put the I-V-VI-IV progression over a basic beat, doesn’t make you Paul McCartney.…

  • 19 For ‘19: Lighght

    January 17, 2019 - By 

    We continue 19 for ’19 – our month-long series profiling nineteen Irish acts that we’re certain will do great things in 2019 – with Cork producer Lightght. Photo by Silvio Severino. We first became aware of Cork experimental producer Lighght back in 2016 when he shared the bracing and multi-dimensional single, ‘What U Need’. Since, we’ve been keeping a close eye on his prolific output, which has included numerous collaborations, solo cuts and remixes of acts ranging from Jamelia to Lankum. 2018 saw the producer feature on Sesh FM’s charity compilation for Palestine as well releasing two EPs: the hectic trance inflected…