• Album Stream + Interview: Woven Skull

    October 31, 2018 - By 

    Photo: Colum O’Dwyer Back at the end of 2016, we included Leitrim experimental/psych outfit Woven Skull in our 17 for ’17 round up of acts to watch in the coming year. We like to think we were fairly on the money with the trio, who both on an individual level and as an outfit delivered dividends throughout 2017 and well into this year… Mondola player Natalia Beylis, for one, developed her breathtaking field recordings and drones project with the release of The Sunken Hum Vol 1: Field Rhythms & Drones and Scchh​.​.​.​phh. Guitarist Aonghus McEvoy, meanwhile, continued his solo and…

  • Album Premiere: The 202s – From When The Future Was Yet To Hurt Us

    March 29, 2018 - By 

    Dublin’s The 202s will release their new album From When The Future Was Yet To Hurt Us tomorrow March 30 via Difference/Repetition. With a selection of brand new cuts, previously released singles and tracks from their superb 2017 EP, Up In Thin Air, this album feels like the culmination of two years worth of gradual graft from one of Ireland’s finest, most understated acts. Having reformed in 2016 after a lengthy spell away – real life stuff, “since we last made a record, The 202s have made five human beings!” – the trio have been steadily releasing tracks in anticipation of this album and now, as it lands,…

  • Album Premiere: The Tragedy of Dr. Hannigan – Fawkes Ache

    October 27, 2017 - By 

    Having first reared its curious little head back in July via the swaggering ‘Hey Little Worried One’, The Tragedy of Dr. Hannigan is the self-proclaimed bastard child project of North Coast chameleonic rock troubadour par excellence Tony Wright and producer & multi-instrumentalist Dead Stevens AKA Deany Darko. A nine-track traipse veering into every joyous corner of swampy, soul-soaked blues and folk, the’s pair brand new debut album, Fawkes Ache, is a largely collaborative affair and features guest vocals from the likes of Donal Scullion, Anthony Toner, King Cedar and Jackie Rainey. With track titles including the masterfully worded ‘Dishing Out Hadoukens’ and…

  • Track-by-Track: Feather Beds – Blooming

    October 26, 2017 - By 

      Ahead of the release of his second album Blooming, Dublin’s Michael Orange AKA Feather Beds has been kind enough to give us a track by track rundown of the record. Set for release this Friday 27 October on Montreal-based label Moderna Records, Blooming is a dreamy alt-folk venture written and recorded when the songwriter was living in Canada. Following his debut LP in 2015, The Skeletal System, Blooming is mixed and co-produced by Stephen Shannon (Adrian Crowley, Strands) and is a dreamy, multi-layered a that evokes the likes of The Antlers and Mutual Benefit‘s Love’s Crushing Diamond in its ambient folk atmosphere, but owes just as much to the hypnotic, minimal compositions of Steve Reich and to the…

  • Album Premiere: Mark Loughrey – Treppenwitz

    October 13, 2017 - By 

    Translated roughly as ‘staircase wit’, Treppenwitz is a loaded word; an evocation of regret, of longing and succumbing to overanalysis of what could have been said. Best left to the overthinkers among us, the phenomena is the source of much of our great art, writing & comedy, and it’s something Mark Loughrey has mined and left to rumination across a breadth of the characters and worlds explored on his debut album. Whilst rooted in the wistful yearning of Nick Drake or Jeff Buckley and the kind of indie-folk that regularly wins the NI Music Prize, it’s propelled by a fearlessness to follow the creative impulse –…

  • Album Premiere: Shrug Life – ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    September 27, 2017 - By 

    Concluding his review of their debut album – the eminently-tilted ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ – just the other day, TTA’s Will Murphy said, “Shrug Life deserve to be heard. Nurture them because fuck knows we’re not going to get another group like them for a long time.” To say those words are representative of our feelings about this release would be a towering understatement. We’ve watched on with glee as the Dublin trio of guitarist/vocalist Danny Carroll, bassist Keith Broni and drummer Josh Donnelly have evolved into one of the country’s most peerlessly engaging acts over the last couple of years – something that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ confines over eleven tracks…

  • Album Premiere: Wild Rocket – Dissociation Mechanics

    July 5, 2017 - By 

    Following our stream of lead single ‘The Future Echoes‘, we’re delighted to exclusively premiere the fuzzed-out, low-end heft of Dublin quartet Wild Rocket‘s second LP, Dissociation Mechanics, released through the perennially reliable Irish independent Art for Blind on July 7. Already respected for their distinctive amalgam of groove-strewn heavy psych, sludge and space rock after debut studio album Geomagnetic Hallucinations, they’ve seemingly a complete grasp of the art of kosmische repetition. Disassociation Mechanics is an even more fully-realised and beautifully produced iteration of the band’s sound, with the album being recorded by Ireland’s Deaf Brothers – also known for their work with No Spill Blood, Alarmist and Meltybrains?. Unsurprisingly, given the monolithic sprawl of the…

  • Album Premiere: Bear Worship – WAS

    June 13, 2017 - By 

    Back in January last year, we were pleased to share ‘Our Friends’ by Dublin’s Karl Knuttel AKA Bear Worship. A track we said “evoked everything from the chamber folk balladry of Department of Eagles to the floaty dream-pop of Candy Claws” it marked the arrival of an artist with remarkable potential. Having moved to Shanghai, Barcelona and back to Dublin in the meantime, Knuttel has come good and then some on his sublime, nine-track debut album WAS. A prismatic traipse of melodically rich, compositionally ambitious alt-pop, the likes of the subtly ecstatic ‘Shimmerings’ and ‘Galapagos’ conjure the aforementioned acts, Grizzly Bear,…

  • Album Premiere: Joshua Burnside – Ephrata

    May 5, 2017 - By 

    Ever since the release of his masterfully lo-fi 2012 EP The Winding Straits (and the string of memorable local shows that accompanied that release) Joshua Burnside‘s inimitable brand of alt-folk has commanded our attention like few others. Having really made a dent a year later with the release of his stellar five-track EP If You’re Goin’ That Way, the Belfast songsmith has evolved from wistful folk contender to a fully-fledged artist whose sound incorporates electronica and first-rate experimentalism in fine fashion. The full-length culmination of that evolution, his brand new debut album Ephrata is a real triumph of the spirit. Testament to refusing to be bound…

  • Album Premiere: This Other Kingdom – Rêveur

    April 21, 2017 - By 

    Hands down one of the country’s most engaging neo-psychedelic propositions, Dublin threesome Del Kerton, Declan Dunne and Git Sweeney AKA This Other Kingdom have long struck a keen balance between hazed-out psych finesse and straight-up rock n’ roll glory. Having released their debut EP Sunlight back in 2013, and their well-received debut album Telescopic two years later, the trio are back with ‘Rêveur’, an eleven-track triumph filtering the band’s kaleidoscopic range of influences, past and present. From the lysergic strut of opener ‘Common Colours Common Sounds’ to closer ‘This is War’, the reverberations of everyone from Jefferson Airplane and Black Lips to The Doors…