• Gorillaz – Humanz

    May 3, 2017 - By 

    We should all be honest and accept that this record was never going to match the expectation that preceded it. Gorillaz have been a reliable stalwart for over a decade now and their brand of politically motivated electronica and hip-hop has consistently delivered. They’ve soundtracked environmental decay, an Iraq war, and a recession and now, with a despot in the white house, it’s unsurprising that Damon Albarn chose this moment to return. What is surprising though is how limp and muddy it feels. Humanz is not the record it could be. It’s unfocused, messy and, worse still, pedestrian. A guest…

  • J Dilla – Motor City

    May 2, 2017 - By 

    If you ever want to lose yourself on a lazy Sunday just take a walk into the discography of one James Dewitt Nancy, better known as J Dilla. The producer, sometime rapper, beat maker and hip hop arbiter now has a dizzying amount of work available in the public sphere and each mixtape, album and bootleg is worth a listen. First you’d have to consider his massive contributions to The Pharcyde’s essential LabCabinCalifornia, his work with De La Soul, Q-tip and Common. Then you may choose to wade through his work with neo-soul luminaries like Erykah Badu and D’Angelo. All…

  • Slowdive – Slowdive

    May 2, 2017 - By 

    The irony is perhaps hard to avoid when describing Slowdive’s career. The five-piece did indeed go diving and sadly with much less grace than their name suggests; Their 1993 sophomore effort Souvlaki remains one of the definitive albums of the early 90’s shoegaze era, quickly followed by one of the most forgettable in Pygmalion. Languid and limp throughout, Slowdive dismantled their wall of sound not brick by brick but with a wrecking ball almost overnight. The band were soon dropped by their record label Creation only one week after Pygmalion’s release and have themselves since admitted they’d lost their energy and…

  • Daithí – Holiday Home EP

    April 28, 2017 - By 

    Daithí teased listeners as far back as last year with the first scintillating, electro-pop banger from his latest endeavour, Holiday Home. The snappy five-track release lands today and, just as that first single, ‘Falling For You feat. Sinead White’ suggested, it shows Daithí continuing his progression in maturity as a producer, providing a collection that exudes confidence. The Galway/Clare-based producer continues to craft fascinating, atmospheric tracks that cross- weave traditional Irish cultural elements with modern-day electronica. He’s managed to ramp up the sophistication on this one, continuing to transcend boundaries by inventively fusing together electronic, folk and synth elements. With…

  • Talos – Wild Alee

    April 26, 2017 - By 

    In Wild Alee, Cork’s Eoin French, AKA Talos, has created a long player of considerable depth and uncomplicated beauty. A debut-proper, the record follows on from a series of releases that only delicately hinted at the kind of multi-tonal, meticulously constructed arrangements that French, and currently his extended Talos outfit, have now harnessed in all of their charming sheen. A result indebted, no doubt, to both the fact that Wild Alee was partly written and conceived of in Reykjavik with Valgeir Sigurðsson (Sigur Rós; Bjork), as well as in Ireland under the guidance / magic touch of Ross Dowling. From the off, it’s…

  • This Other Kingdom – Rêveur

    April 24, 2017 - By 

    It’s been two years since the release of This Other Kingdom’s debut album, Telescopic. The album slotted neatly into the top 10 in both the iTunes Irish chart and earned them a reputation among the best of Ireland’s psychedelic music scene. As such, the bar was already set quite high for their 2017 follow-up, Rêveur. A sudden, invasive intro immediately sheds all and any fears of Telescopic‘s success begin merely a case of luck. ‘Common Colours//Common Sounds’ is an aggressive lament for rebellion against conformity (“This is the system to stop you from thinking”). It pulls listeners from one realm to…

  • Count Vaseline – Cascade

    April 21, 2017 - By 

    One of the more surprisingly common risky moves in music is trying to ape the Beatles. It’s a losing battle from the get-go. No matter how shit hot you think you are, you’ll never be the celestial beings known as the fab three. You could be Ringo though. With such a high risk of failure and the rewards amounting to damning praise, why bother? The correct reason is that you can use their framework to ease the listener into the right mindset. This is what Count Vaseline has done to great effect on his latest LP, Cascade. The title track…

  • Kendrick Lamar – DAMN.

    April 20, 2017 - By 

    Kendrick Lamar has a lot resting on DAMN. He is, of course, in a “good place” artistically at the moment, to say the least: he’s widely considered the greatest rapper in the game at the minute, off the back of two instant-classic albums and frequently stunning guest verses across various musical landscapes (appearing on songs from jazz bassist Thundercat, mega-producer DJ Khaled and pop-rock also-rans Maroon 5 in the past year). 2015’s To Pimp A Butterfly‘s seismic impact created fans in David Bowie and Barack Obama and enemies in the right-wing press, and found it’s single ‘Alright’ being adopted at Black Lives…

  • Lost Avenue – Best Friends

    April 20, 2017 - By 

    Derry based punk trio Lost Avenue recently unveiled their new EP Best Friends, the latest in a series of small releases that punch well above everything they’ve done before. Something about the release threatens to get lost within itself, however, thrashing violently towards an uncertain conclusion. When listening to Best Friends, it’s hard not to get the impression that the band are aiming for something that is certainly achievable, but they’ve overcooked it, using sharp conversions and sudden alterations to an unnecessarily degree. This is likely due to some combination of self-doubt and the need to appear unique in an industry where…

  • Fionn Regan – The Meetings of the Waters

    April 14, 2017 - By 

    Capturing an image that denotes a changing phase in one’s life and making that image resonate can be a laboured and often trite task for an artist. An example: about five years ago at a Bon Iver show in what was then the O2 Arena in Dublin, Justin Vernon made a passing remark about how life’s cyclical nature can be observed in the beginnings and endings of seemingly insignificant things – in his case, tubes of toothpaste. It was a nice thought, but one that perhaps felt too individualised to produce anything more than a shrug of vague acknowledgement from…