• Sean Being – DEIS

    January 22, 2021 - By 

    Opening with a sharp downpour of prickling synth tones and electrical disturbance, Dublin artist Sean Being’s DEIS wastes little time setting a chilly and discomfited tone, oh so fitting of the EP’s December 28th release date.   If the end of the year was already characterised by damp post-holiday ennui and a cruel and unusual tendency to take stock and pick over our many and varied personal failings, the caustic pall cast by 2020’s concurrent dumpster infernos certainly helped make it all the bleaker this time around. The extended state of emergency and protracted isolation that many of us have become intimately…

  • Frog of Earth – Frog of Earth

    January 23, 2021 - By 

    Part of the wherethetimegoes label, experimental electronic artist Frog of Earth wants to lead you on a journey down the Other rabbit hole: one built from synth keys and effects knobs, and which is as much about the fall as it is about the landing. Frog of Earth, a mystical self-titled record, comes accompanied by a cryptic paragraph, which adds little context, but adds a deep sense of atmosphere to the listening experience. It describes the humble frog as it ponders its environment, overcomes panic in the face of a moving world, and examines the waterways and reeds that make…

  • David Donohoe / David Lacey – Noctules

    January 18, 2021 - By 

    When discussing the merits of canonical composers, the electroacoustic pioneer and arch pessimist Iannis Xenakis declared, “I don’t think music ought to be pleasant all the time. Profound music is never like that. No really great music is tender”. A contentious statement it may be, but with Noctules David Donohoe and David Lacey have made a worthy argument in its favour. Recorded in the summer of 2020, and unveiled in November via Cork tape label Fort Evil Fruit, Noctules trades in the unease of these grim times. Comprising four interlocking compositions, the album is fused together with the ever-present tics and…

  • The Avalanches – We Will Always Love You 

    December 21, 2020 - By 

    On We Will Always Love You, The Avalanches are like voiceless orchestra conductors, sharply gesturing their batons into the air as they direct hundreds of samples,  infectious rhythms and towering vocals into pristinely constructed tracks.  There were 16 years between the Australian outfit’s previous albums: the psychedelic hip-hop classic Since I Left You (2000) and the buoyant Wildflower (2016). It spoke to the monumental effort required to create and clear these sample-filled records. On this, their third album, the duo diverges from its predecessors in tone, structure and sound. Four years after their last album, The Avalanches have found a…

  • Neil Brogan – Weird Year

    December 16, 2020 - By 

    It was only this summer that Belfast jangle pop trio Sea Pinks announced they were calling it quits after ten years, but frontman Neil Brogan has wasted no time in readying solo material, with debut Life Itself already appearing a mere month after his old band’s final EP Crocuses. Not that it should have come as any surprise. During their decade long run, Sea Pinks were always one of the most reliably prolific bands in the country, pumping out an impressive seven albums in that time on Brogan’s own CF Records, initially as the frontman’s bedroom recording project while drumming in…

  • Various Artists – A Litany of Failures Vol. III

    December 8, 2020 - By 

    All the way back in 2016, cassette label Little L Records put out a nice little four way split cassette featuring four of the best DIY bands from right across Ireland – Shrug Life and That Snaake from Dublin, Junk Drawer from Belfast and Oh Boland from Galway. Self-deprecatingly titled ‘A Litany of Failures’, what could have been a fairly low key release gained what felt like a higher level of importance thanks to a series of launch gigs in each band’s home city. Two years later, those involved decided to up the ante considerably – ‘A Litany of Failures…

  • Myles Manley – Cometh The Softies

    November 27, 2020 - By 

    Myles Manley’s new album has been a long time coming. After a series of EPs earlier in the decade, along with ironically titled compilation Greatest Hits 2012-13, the last few years have only seen occasional singles emerge from the hive, though his live shows have promised plenty, with a string of new songs and a sterling three piece band lineup completed by Chris Barry and Solamh Kelly – the former expertly juggling guitar, bass and keys, while the latter takes his place as one of the country’s most impressive drummers, full of jerky, jazz-inflected rhythms across a kit that even…

  • Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou – May Our Chambers Be Full

    November 25, 2020 - By 

    On paper, a collaborative album by a singer-songwriter and a sludge metal band seems unusual. To those in the know, however, it makes complete, perfect sense. Neither featured act on May Our Chambers Be Full are strangers to collaboration; Emma Ruth Rundle has been a member of experimental bands the Nocturnes, Red Sparowes and Marriages, and provided backing vocals on Thrice’s 2018 album Palms, while Thou have released a litany of split 7” and EPs with various peers, and in 2015 released You, Whom I Have Always Hated a collaborative full-length album with fellow doom merchants, The Body. More to the…

  • PUP – This Place Sucks Ass EP

    November 24, 2020 - By 

    At the beginning of 2020, Canadian pop-punks PUP were in the midst of a promotional tour for their breakthrough 2019 album,  Morbid Stuff. That album’s mix of hook-filled anthems and passionate torrents of self-deprecation made it one of the year’s best punk albums, being met with universal critical praise and a new legion of fans on both sides of the Atlantic. With the advent of COVID-19, the perennially on-the-road band no doubt found themselves at a loose end as the as the live entertainment industry came screeching to a halt. And thus, we get This Place Sucks Ass. Comprising one brand…

  • Paddy Hanna – The Hill

    November 11, 2020 - By 

      Paddy Hanna is not someone to sit still. Nor is he someone who likes to be predictable. The Dublin-based songwriter’s sophomore album, Frankly, I Mutate, was not only a masterclass in retro-flecked, baroque pop, but, with the beauty of retrospect, was a clear blueprint of his personal mantra.  For his third album, released on Strange Brew (Autre Monde, Squarehead, Slow Place Like Home), Paddy notches up the experimentation, whisking away Girl Band’s Adam Faulkner and Daniel Fox, as well as Daniel Fitzpatrick (Badhands, The Mighty Stef) to west Cork. “We lost ourselves on the Hill, Daniel, Daniel, Adam and…