• Album stream: Oh Boland – Spilt Milk

    September 14, 2016 - By 

    While the West of Ireland’s favourite garage-rock, sloppy pop trio Oh Boland commence their travels across America over the next three weeks, those of us at home wait with baited breath for the release of their debut LP Spilt Milk on September 30th via San Diego label Volar Records  (at long last I hear you cry!) In anticipation for the official release you can now stream the album in its entirety over on Volar Records’ Bandcamp. With lyrics rooted in boredom, apathy and vague tragedy, Niall Murphy’s vocals are playfully sardonic while the rhythm section of Eanna MacDonnchadha (bass) and Simon McDonagh (drums) keeps things…

  • Album Premiere: Glimmermen – Breakin’ Out

    June 14, 2016 - By 

    Just last month we shared ‘Bang’, the lead single from Breakin’ Out, the new album by Dublin’s Glimmermen. Calling it a “markedly more linear yet no less distinct and ear-grabbing effort from the four-piece”, it reinforced our belief that the band – whose debut EP Satellite People caught our attention back in 2012 – had something different and potentially quite vital to their collective bow. As it so happens, Breakin’ Out confirms that fact in assured fashion, each of the release’s nine tracks threading together to form an effort where the major key and quietly emphatic cogitations on the everyday meld to…

  • Album stream: Overhead, The Albatross – Learning To Growl

    May 17, 2016 - By 

    Having formed back in hazy mists of time (2009), there’s something particularly gratifying seeing Dublin instrumental six-piece Overhead, The Albatross all but swamped with acclaim following the release their long-awaited debut album, Learning To Growl. Recorded at Clique Recordings and mixed by Phillip Magee, its nine tracks burst forth in masterful triumph, touchably impassioned and perfectly restless from opener ‘Indie Rose’ right up to ‘Big River Man’, a finale that serves as an emphatic full stop. Whilst many releases of this ilk is by its very nature necessarily “cathartic” (and not always with a degree of sophistication to warrant its nascency) OTA have bypassed formulaic rubric to forge their own brand of quite vital instrumentalism that demands your attention from the off.…

  • Album stream: Land Lovers – The Rooks Have Returned

    May 13, 2016 - By 

    There’s something uncannily accurate about Dublin’s Land Lovers calling themselves “Undulating Pop”. With a craft that equally weaves and lulls with gaze-y, wave-like motion, their new album The Rooks Have Returned is a full-length earworm sweetly balanced between throwback jangle and dream-pop. Tipping its lyrical hat to everything from 1916, mortal restlessness and nostalgic reminiscence, it wears the band’s key influences of Elvis Costello, New Order and David Bowie on its proverbial sleeve, bursting forth with a level of hook-heavy songwriting that we’ve come to expect from the Irish five-piece. The Rooks Have Returned is out via the mighty Popical Island on Monday…

  • Album stream: Rusangano Family – Let The Dead Bury The Dead

    April 8, 2016 - By 

    Very few Irish acts have so comprehensively demanded our attention over the last couple of years quite like Rusangano Family. Having featured them as one of our “ones to watch” acts in our 15 For 15 feature last year and fondly recalling their unforgettable appearance to close our second birthday party at Dublin’s Twisted Pepper last May, the Limerick trio of God Knows, MuRli and mynameisjOhn have burned with a certain indomitable zeal from the very moment they set out on what has become a journey very much worth following. Now, after after a string of increasingly tenacious standalone releases, the trio have unveiled their…

  • Album stream: exmagician – Scan The Blue

    March 25, 2016 - By 

    Having delivered a blinding set as part of our Output showcase with Nialler9 back in February, Belfast’s exmagician also featured as one of our 16 For ’16 acts back in early January. Re-launching from the embers of Cashier No. 9, Danny Todd, James Smith and co. fully  command in their psych-soaked, decidedly mesmerizing indie rock realm more than ever before, a fact perfectly illuminated on their debut album, Scan The Blue, which is released via Bella Union today. Buy it here and stream it in full via Spotify below.

  • Album Stream: J Cowhie – Veil

    March 8, 2016 - By 

    Early days though it is, after just a handful of listens Veil by J Cowhie is right up there with our favourite Irish albums of the year so far. Formerly known as GOODTIME/Goodtime John, the Malmö-based, Dublin “alternative electronic experimental folk” singer-songwriter very much trades in the currency of the mystery of memory, the throes of time and the curious laws of belonging, his hushed tales – each as slow-burning, incisive and revelatory as the next – framed in a phantasmal hue of sublime, ruminating ambience. An album about loss, change and the “responsibilities that come to us all in our lives whether we…

  • Album premiere: We/Or/Me – Everything Behind Us is a Dream

    January 27, 2016 - By 

    Bahhaj Taherzadeh is the man behind the moniker We/Or/Me. Based in Chicago, the Persian-Irish musician has steadily yielded a string of self-produced releases that have drawn admiration from the likes of NPR, Vashti Bunyan, Glen Hansard, and producers Brian Deck (Nathaniel Rateliff, Iron and Wine, Modest Mouse) and Adam Selzer, producer his exceptional new album, Everything Behind Us is a Dream. Evoking the likes of Nick Drake and Hansard, his timeless, wonderfully restrained indie folk summons muted twilight wandering; each softly resonant track proving a meditation on ardor and spirit. Everything Behind Us is a Dream is released on Friday (January 29). Have an exclusive first…

  • Album stream: Allez Bartoli – Everything.Forever

    January 4, 2016 - By 

    Almost two years on from their last release, three-track EP Space is an Ocean, Belfast-based experimental electronic twosome Allez Bartoli are back with Everything.Forever, a mini-album very tidily imbued with the pair’s penchant for post-rock leaning soundscapes. DIY at its beating heart, the seven track release was recorded throughout 2014 and 2015 and further reveals AB’s reluctance to aspire to anything even remotely resembling linear imitation. Ahead of our review of the release, stream/download it now via Bandcamp. Everything.Forever by Allez Bartoli

  • Album Premiere: A Co-Present Christmas

    December 14, 2015 - By 

    Featuring the likes of i am niamh, Sleep Thieves and Laura Ann Brady, we’re very pleased to present a premiere of the inaugural A Co-Present Christmas, a first-rate, fourteen-track compilation of covers, original tracks and Christmas themed tracks from various Irish artists. To celebration the end of what they rightly have called an amazing year for Irish music (and how) The Co-Present – hands down one of our favourite radio shows in Ireland, broadcast weekly on Radiomade.ie – selected some of their favourite artists to contribute their festive songs to release. Having launched in November 2013, the Co-Present – hosted…