• Sun Araw – Rock Sutra

    May 14, 2020 - By 

    Some music can act as a time capsule. Just think back to the last time you listened to a song you hadn’t heard in a while, and the forgotten associations that hang faintly by the periphery lit up. Other music, however, seems to come pre-loaded with such memories, evoking a feeling so strongly you could almost forget that you had never actually experienced it. The work of Cameron Stallone, a.k.a. Sun Araw, often explores such ideas: what Burial is to a 5am walk through south London boroughs, Sun Araw is to the last July sunset while spaced out on a…

  • Arvo Party – Devotions

    May 12, 2020 - By 

    Space truly is at a premium right now. Overnight it became a commodity almost more valuable than gold; a resource which should never be a resource. Yet here we are. From the air bubbles in our sourdough starter kits to distancing ourselves from the bountiful overnight epidemiologists on social media, obsessively we are seeking the sweet release it brings . Mercifully, Belfast-based musician and producer Arvo Party – real name Herb Magee – has delivered true audio escapism in this surprise ambient album, Devotions. Preceding a full length set to land in June, Devotions is Magee’s deepest exploration into the…

  • Angular Hank – Brand New Angle

    May 6, 2020 - By 

    Angular Hank have no shortage of weapons in their arsenal.  Three songwriters, four lead vocalists and a stack of talent. Formed in the summer of 2018, the Dublin based quartet comprise of Diarmuid O’Connor, Samuel Doogan, Mathieu Doogan and Ronan Boland: four guys who represent the indie rock equivalent of Total Football, swapping duties from song to song with ease and equal ability.   Recorded over a seven-month period in Crumlin while living together, Brand New Angle lays out ten breezy accessible tunes infused with self-effacing humour and wit. Making their bones by gigging around the Dublin scene for a year…

  • Shrug Life – Maybe You’re The Punchline

    April 28, 2020 - By 

    It’s strange how an unprecedented large scale pandemic can lend some records a greater level of significance. Obviously when Shrug Life were recording their second album, Maybe You’re The Punchline, they could not have foreseen that the entire global economy would have stopped and we’d all be trapped in our houses facing existential threats in the form of an invisible killer. We’ve left with an ever increasing uncertainty about what the hell happens next. Society is essentially being rebooted and there’s no telling what shape things might come back in. Then there are Danny Carroll’s words, these twitchy anxiety riddled tomes…

  • Queef – Presence

    April 18, 2020 - By 

    There’s a curious video of a live performance from Queef (the collaborative project of Laney Mannion and Claire Guerin) performing at the Monk and the Nun festival in 2016. In a forest clearing, Mannion and Guerin hang chimes and bells from the branches, balance kalimbas on tree stumps, and feedback sounds of the natural world through portable amplifiers. It gives the impression of some middle ground between a biological field study and a meditative retreat: an exploration into the minutiae of the smallest, most familiar sounds that surround us. And through their album Presence, they attempt to bring this soft-eared…

  • Rising Damp – Petrol Factory

    April 22, 2020 - By 

    So what exactly is punk? It’s a question that probably goes back at least as far as when The Damned released ‘New Rose’, and tends to get easily muddied in issues of purity and pretension. It was addressed again recently through a tongue-in-cheek, classroom-style approach on Declan Synnott’s  Ain’t You on Dublin Digital Radio. While following along with specially prepared Powerpoint slides and track selections from artists as diverse as Special Interest, Rites of Spring, and Dustin the Turkey (!), Mr.Synnott and his class mused on the punk credentials of various topics. And while there were occasional unambiguous declarations (cats:…

  • Shabaka and the Ancestors – We Are Sent Here By History

    March 30, 2020 - By 

    In a recent article for The Outline, “Don’t leave jazz to the jazz guys”, writer Shuja Haider laments on the fact that jazz has, in the eyes of many music lovers, been co-opted by a certain superficial and off-putting fan – the “jazz guy”. Given that the depth of jazz history makes exploration an intimidating prospect, it’s perhaps not all too surprising  that many of its most noticeable modern listeners have hesitated to dip beyond shallow, well-trodden edges. For those looking for a shot of adrenaline before diving fully into its vast, exhilarating waters, however, one could do much worse…

  • David Keenan – The Beginner’s Guide To Bravery

    March 9, 2020 - By 

    In the past few years, every town and every genre in Ireland has seen great new talent rising, each pushing the boundaries of what’s to be expected from its scene. While this means the bar is continuously being raised,  and no matter what your tastes might be, there’s an Irish act for it, ready to prove their mettle. But while a rock n’ roll renaissance occurs in the kitchen, and the techno and hip-hop scenes flourish in the basement, in the attic David Keenan quietly tunes his strings, ready to raise the aforementioned bar.  After a string of noted singles…

  • Gil Scott-Heron & Makaya McCraven – We’re New Again

    February 26, 2020 - By 

    It says a lot about the enduring quality of both Gil Scott Heron and his final album, I’m New Here, that in the ten years since he passed, we’re still talking and analysing that final broadcast, trying to find even more depth hidden between the silences. When that album was first pitched in 2006, Heron had recently been released from Rikers Prison with no real prospects on the horizon. When he died six years later, he was back on a career-high with his legacy firmly galvanised and a final transmission that stands a towering monument to his lyrical dexterity, genius,…

  • Claire O’Brien – The Hollow

    February 22, 2020 - By 

      Folk music is an oral tradition: a passing down from generation to generation of not just songs, but tales and memories also. But does this definition hold up when discussing more modern incarnations of folk sounds, especially those of so-called “freak folk” or artists tagged with the New Weird label? At their best, these soft, subtly-psychedelic sounds evoke a different kind of memory, a collective natural memory passed down through the trees, the soil, and the wind. Such thoughts come to mind while listening to Claire O’Brien’s The Hollow, the latest gem from Glasgow-via-Kilkenny label, Moot Tapes.  The majority…