• Track Record: Just Mustard

    May 31, 2018 - By 

    In this special installment of Track Record all five members of  Just Mustard select two records each to discuss, from Sufjan Stevens to Aphex Twin. Mags Godflesh – Post Self Inspired by the dreary urban landscapes of Birmingham, Godflesh are the band who pioneered the fusion of industrial and heavy metal together into a dsytopian whole. It was upon hearing their 1989 seminal classic masterpiece ‘Streetcleaner’ that enamoured me with their music and though I do not yet own it on record, their 2017 album ‘Post Self’ is arguably just as powerful. Post Self is an outstanding achievement in that…

  • Stream: Hunk – Precipice

    November 7, 2013 - By 

    Dublin lo-fi rock duo Sundara O’Higgins and Niamh Hegarty AKA Hunk have unveiled a brand new track, ‘Precipice’. Taken from their forthcoming debut EP, Fledgling – set for release on November 22 – the track is a wonderfully fully-formed effort with swathes of nocturnal noise, slightly off-kilter harmonies and a general air of Grass Widow about it (far from a bad thing in our book). Stream the track via Soundcloud below.

  • Inbound: The Last Generation

    September 30, 2013 - By 

    Having released their terrific second EP Torann earlier this month, Mid-Ulster hard-rock four-piece The Last Generation have all but announced their arrival as one of the country’s most exciting and interesting riff-fuelled acts. Ahead of the Belfast launch of their latest release, we speak to the band’s lead guitarist Stephen O’Hagan about the band’s steady and well-deserved ascent. Hi Stephen. First off, could you tell us how you got together and about the early period of the band? We started the band around two years ago while still attending secondary school in Maghera. We where still very much cutting our teeth as musicians –…

  • Before Machines announce split

    September 12, 2013 - By 

    Having released their superb debut album, Tundra, at the start of the year, Belfast indie-rock four-piece Before Machines have announced that they are to part was after a final Belfast show next month. The band released the following statement: “On October 2nd, Before Machines will play Limelight 2. This will be our last performance. A few weeks ago the two Dans (Dan Larkin, Dan Black) announced their intentions to leave the band, confirming what we had all been feeling in our hearts for some time – that Before Machines are over. The release of the Tundra album earlier this year was…

  • REM: The First Cut is The Deepest – True Love Never Dies

    August 20, 2013 - By 

    I have always had the theory that one doesn’t always just ‘discover’ bands. Often it can be a two-way street, that a band can come along and ‘get’ you at the right time and place and it is such a seismic event, that one will never recover or forget about it. The Smiths came to me shortly after my father died. A family friend took me to see them in concert and that was ‘IT’. I dedicated my teen years to them and in return, their musical output was, in a weird way, a comfort. Some of the subtleties of…

  • Gateways To Paradise – How REM Gave Me A Music Collection

    August 19, 2013 - By 

    I was 13, living in Antrim, and it felt like the entire world was very, very far away. But then I would pick up my Walkman, slot in a copy of Fables of the Reconstruction or Out of Time, and find myself in an exotic world, a place of mystery and magic, a place where the kudzu vine spread over everything, and nights were spent by the railway line, watching the trains. To that 13 year old boy, REM were more than a lifeline; they were a life. As the years went by, my love of REM would fluctuate, their 21st century missteps leading…

  • Download: Yazuka – Insane Plight In Plain Sight

    July 2, 2013 - By 

    Seven years after it was recorded, sadly missed Belfast-based noise rock band Yakuza have released their second studio album, Insane Plight In Plain Sight. Recorded in band’s hometown of Coalisland and mixed in Portland, Oregon’s Jackpot! Studios the following year, it features the album’s original eleven songs and the three tracks that make up the band’s live EP Ride The Bible, recorded at BBC’s Blackstaff Studios in Belfast. A wonderfully unremitting slab of veering, coursing, incendiary noise rock, download the release for £3 or stream below now. All proceeds go to the Parkinsons research charity. Insane Plight in Plain Sight by…