Her debut release via London’s Fire Records, and her third album overall, Head Above The Water finds Galway’s Brigid Mae Power at their peak of her powers. Recorded at analogue studio The Green Door in Glasgow, from boundlessly earworming opener ‘On A City Night’ to the release’s closing title track, it makes for a perfectly escapist 45 minutes of first-rate cosmic folk from one of the country’s most distinctive songwriting voices. Head Above The Water by Brigid Mae Power
Following on from the video premiere last week, Al Finnerty of Guilty Optics – under the guise of Hey Jigsaw – releases his debut album today on Waffler Records. A departure from the aggressive ouput of his previous groups, Finnerty has called in the corners to feature guest vocals from Ciaran Smith of Crayonsmith / Nome King, Conor Deasy of Tomorrow, Niamh Buckley and trumpets from Dave Prendergast of Glimmermen to round out this nostalgia-tinged atmospheric record, full of melodic nods to the likes of Pinback, The Sea & Cake and June of 44. Of the album title, Hey Jigsaw says: ‘Who’s your dark master?’…
Last May, we premiered the rapt and immersive ‘A Simulation of Here’ by Irish sound designer and musician Steve Fanagan aka Department of Forever. The closing track from his sublime album, Unseen Pictures, it hit home and then some. One year on, Fanagan’s sublime soundscapes can be heard in Normal People, the TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s best-selling novel of the same name. New release Flickering Light contains four of those tracks and a couple more. “The original recordings for this release were improvised on a piano one night in late 2018, when I was living in a house share in London, before…
As prolific and idiosyncratic as they come, Belfast synthwave artist Alpha Chrome Yayo has spent the last couple of years exploring a whole heap of sonic terrain. Taking in After Dinner Cigar, Komorebi, Twirl, Choke, Grangeweird with fellow Belfast conspirator Danny Madigan and more, he’s long been a surefire bet for curveballing, genre-mutating, one-man retromancy. Which conveniently brings us to 19th Hole, ACY’s latest and arguably greatest LP to date. Across 15 tracks, the “virtual soundtrack to a golf-game that never was” promises (and fully delivers on) chillwave grooves, robot rap, crunchy chip and hot FM funk. As the main man succinctly put…
Luminously captured in its eponymous, sixteen-track LP, Laurie Shaw’s new side-project, Foolish Mortal, is a blitzing, fuzzed-out traipse through the inner and outer recesses of Shaw’s musical mind. Conjuring everyone from White Fence and Black Lips, to The Wipers and our Lord and Saviour, Ty Segall, it’s a heady, genre-mangling feat of garage rock mastery from the prolific Cork-based Wirral artist. Out now via the brilliant Sunshine Cult Records, you can stream the album in full below. While you’re at it, pop along to Plugd in Cork on Saturday, December 22 to catch Foolish Mortal alongside Mikron and Perish.
We’ve been big fans of Trick Mist here at TTA for quite some time. We first became aware of him back when he lived in Manchester, after he released the lush, dark single ‘Crumbs Abound’. Since, he has travelled across India and South-East Asia, before ending up back to Ireland and relocating to Cork to write his debut LP Both Ends. Released today (30th November) via Dundalk’s Pizza Pizza Records, this LP serves as the culmination of two years’ work, incorporating his trademark violin manipulations with electronic and organic soundscapes. In October, he released the video for album track ‘Abroad In The…
Having re-emerged back in March after a three year hiatus, Dublin five-piece SPIES have released their long-awaited debut album, Constancy. From single and cascading alt-pop anthem-in-the-making ‘Ho Chi Minh’ to slow-burning closing lament ‘Love is a Dream’, via three other first-rate singles, ‘Young Dad’, ‘Broadstone’ and ‘Uriah’, it’s an assured return from a band who have well and truly hit their stride. According to singer Michael Broderick, the album primarily revolves around change and transformation: “Our attempts to remain constant in an environment that is inevitably transforming. I wanted the songs to journey through a process of coping (and not…
From Black Bones’ remix of ‘Pursuit by Group Zero and David Holmes’ Mosaic OST to Documenta’s stellar Lady With The Ring EP, Belfast imprint Touch Sensitive have delivered another all killer year in releases. Their fourth and final release of the year, Sentience & Sapience by Belfast producer Ai Messiah offers up something yet more compelling. A self-proclaimed “soundtrack for gutted metropolises, virtual sanctuaries and utopian enclaves”, the album – which was inspired by the outlandish prophecies of tech guru Ray Kurzwell – confidently veers between fourth world-leaning tapestries, balmy kosmische and panoramic new-age across seventeen tracks. Officially out on Friday, the album will be launched…
Belfast’s Blue Whale have long been something of a sonic law unto themselves. Big words and no mistake, but if you’ve managed to catch them wield what their very own brand of what the Quietus have called the band’s ilk of “chaotic, yet controlled experimental rock”, you’ll know that the high praise is justified. Six years on from their debut three-track release – and countless awe-inspiring live shows later – the quartet launch their exceptional debut album, Process, at Belfast’s Menagerie tonight (Friday, November 9). Over ten tracks, it’s a release that contorts the confines of instrumentalism, all while distilling the band’s singular brand of…
When Belfast musician and producer Herb Magee AKA Arvo Party unveiled his self-titled debut album last July, we quickly learnt that we were dealing with something pretty special. Having previously established himself as a formidable one-fourth of erstwhile Belfast alt-rock heroes LaFaro, and later with GOONS, it made for a feature-length curveball from a musician who has seemingly, and rather quietly, mastered a whole different palette of sound. The dancefloor nocturnalism of ‘Grube’ hit home hard. The widescreen ambience of ‘Thirty Five’ was a spectral tidal of ambience on mute. ‘Null Set’, meanwhile, proved an unravelling eight-minute centrepiece, and a track that continues to…