• Still Open Wide: Catching Up With The Altered Hours

    February 7, 2024 - By 

    Ahead of playing The Spirit Store in Dundalk tomorrow night – and Dublin & Limerick next month – we chat with Cathal MacGabhann of Cork psych-rock heroes The Altered Hours about their luminous journey & highly-anticipated next phase Go here to buy tickets to the Altered Hours and Alice Robinson at The Spirit Store as part of Collide Hi Cathal. When I interviewed you guys back in 2013, you had a very level-headed – and honestly very refreshing – conception of “success”. You said “Money, popularity and recognition I have no problem with. I really feel that if just one…

  • First Acts Announced For Another Love Story 2022

    July 16, 2021 - By 

    Consistently one of Ireland’s most well-curated festivals, Another Love Story has announced the first selection of artists set to play next year’s edition. The 2022 edition is set to return to the rolling meadows and cosy corners of Killyon Manor, Co. Meath, on August 19th-21st, and the first names seem a positive indicator for the kind of tastefully-selected eclecticism typically on display at the festival. Set to play are legendary Manchester selector, event creator & personality Luke Una, emerging Irish composer & singer-songwriter Rachael Lavelle, Berghain regular Barker, Choice Prize nominee Niamh Regan, live electronics from Leipzig’s Map.Ache, and Cork psych outfit The Altered Hours. Tickets are on sale now and available here, priced…

  • Irish Tracks of the Week – July 2nd

    July 2, 2021 - By 

    It’s been another big week for new Irish music, with tracks and albums coming from all over the country from emerging artists and established favorites. Dig into new releases from the Altered Hours, Aonair, Villagers, Maria Kelly, Zizou, Erica Cody and more. The Altered Hours – Radiant Wound Radiant Wound by The Altered Hours Aonair – Your Man Your Man by Aonair John Francis Flynn – My Son Tim Villagers – So Simpatico Maria Kelly – Good Enough Zizou – Piecemeal Pieces zizou band · Piecemeal Pieces Cubs – River of Amber​/​Frozen Waterfall River of Amber/Frozen Waterfall by Cubs Rónán…

  • Irish Tracks of the Week – May 14

    May 14, 2021 - By 

    It’s been another stellar week for new releases in every corner of the island. Delve into the best of the lot, featuring Whozyerman?, Documenta, AILSHA, The Altered Hours, Dani Larkin and more. Whozyerman? – All The Time To Kill Documenta – Silverwood The Altered Hours – All Amnesia AILSHA – FBOY Dani Larkin – The Red (Maca’s Return) Carrie Baxter w/ Jack T Charles – I Wasn’t Looking For You All Tvvins – Something Special Four Nights – Not This Time Clare Sands, Steve Cooney & Tommy Sands – Abair Liom Do Rúin Scattered Ashes – Parallel Lines EP

  • Watch: The Altered Hours – All Amnesia

    May 12, 2021 - By 

    If you are in any way au fait with TTA, you’ll know our time for Cork psych heroes The Altered Hours is pretty much untold. Whether consistently pushing forward in the studio or killing it live, the band has been a vital presence in Irish music over the last few years. Indeed, if this Inbound piece from eight (!) years ago is anything to go by, we’ve been smitten with the band for a while now. Last month brought the news that the band are once more setting out their stall as stalwarts of the scene, both in Cork and further…

  • Dig Early: An Interview with Sligo’s Art For Blind Records

    July 14, 2016 - By 

    For over a decade, Art for Blind Records has been a home for underground, DIY and subversive music and zines of many stripes, both as a label functioning from wherever its composite parts are at a given time, and a series of stalls and shops that have followed them. As the duo prepare to release the debut EP from Cork noisemaker ELLLL and just off the release of the Altered Hours’ first 12″, Mike McGrath-Bryan speaks to Dany and Edel from Art for Blind about the label, its place(s), the people around it, and the future. Art for Blind doesn’t…

  • Deep Down South: Mag Launch, Busy Town, Streaming Sounds

    March 2, 2015 - By 

    After last week’s column promising more music and such didn’t materialise, this week’s is a wee bit of a catch-up. However – plug, plug, plug! – we’ll kick off by putting in a shout for our Cork launch on Saturday at the Crane Lane for the mag. Issue 5 of the mag (the cover pictured) features a full-length piece on the Altered Hours, from their beginnings and debut release ‘Downstream’, to their upcoming album and time in Berlin. We’ll also have an Inbound on Leeside multi-piece groove ensemble Shookrah, among so, so much more, and it’ll be available exclusively at…

  • Quarter Block Party 2015

    February 11, 2015 - By 

    FRIDAY The excitement is palpable throughout the city’s creative communities in the run-up to the Block Party, and even before your writer gets to his relatively late start on proceedings, word filters through that the Structures and Strategies meeting will lead to more events in its vein, a forum for local creatives to air ideas and exchange thoughts. People’s gears are grinding already, it seems. We’re waiting outside the Gate Cinema for a few minutes and the small group outside is already conjecturing about what they’ll see out of charismatic American performer Kate McGrew (below), as well as plotting and…

  • Deep Down South: Like Light to a Fuse

    February 9, 2015 - By 

    Cork City has been a fuse waiting to be lit. All this time, exciting, inimitable, indomitable people, have been creating, and facilitating, providing space, trying, and failing, learning, and improving, and resolving to do better. Coming together, helping each other. This weekend was a light to that fuse. The Quarter Block Party didn’t just meet or even exceed expectations, it utterly transcended them. A huge and varied multimedia programme, spanning music, art, theatre, discussion and good vibes, it delivered on all fronts. There’ll be a review with all the details and critique either tomorrow or Wednesday, and your writer will…

  • Watch: Elastic Sleep – Slip

    November 25, 2014 - By 

    Cork dream-pop quintet Elastic Sleep have just unveiled the video for new single, ‘Slip’, following their debut EP, Leave You, which came out in April; and with fellow shoegazers The Altered Hours also hailing from the county, it seems to be fast-becoming a minor hotbed for all things psychedelic. ‘Slip’ – released through Big Tea Records as the second of their Winter Trio of singles – is available now from iTunes and Bandcamp for just £1. Watch the video below: