• Premiere: Horse – Dragging

    January 27, 2016 - By 

    Ahead of their appearance at Cork’s Quarter Block Party next Saturday, sludge/hardcore four-piece Horse, led by ex-members of local hardcore outfits Terriers and Ghost of Medina, have unveiled their taut, tense video for new single ‘Dragging’, premiering here on The Thin Air. A thundering, downcast beast of a tune, its weight and heaviness is accentuated by crisp, polished production from Cork desk stalwart Eamonn Coleman, and accompanied by a blink-and-you’ll miss it procession of performance and found imagery courtesy of director Rob O’Halloran. Sharing the tiny, window-facing stage of North Main Street’s BDSM bar with an eclectic line-out, including Dublin grungers Bitch Falcon, Paddy…

  • Deep Down South: A Changing of the Guard

    June 10, 2015 - By 

    Cork metal and hardcore has been a scene that this column has attempted to shine a light on in recent times, owing to a complete lack of exposure elsewhere that completely overlooks a rich vein of talent and substance. It is this community your writer came from, and identifies strongly with. And last Sunday saw a changing of the guard, as two influential bands called it a day in a packed, heaving, sweating Fred Zeppelin’s. [r]evolution of a sun, active for most of their thirteen-year span in one form or another, brought a heft to their negative hardcore, aided by…

  • Deep Down South: (Almost) A Half-Year Review (Of Sorts)

    June 1, 2015 - By 

    Because it’s a slow news week, and your writer is a laptop-dwelling beardo still in thrall to his most base of blogger-nerd urges, this week’s Bank Holiday installment of Deep Down South is every music pedant’s favourite – the half-year review. I’m well aware we’re only just into month six of 2015 (and this column) as of today, but it’s been a hella-busy few months, and a wee bit of stocktake is more than called for. We started the year with the promise of the Quarter Block Party, a DIY arts festival co-organised by the Makeshift Ensemble and promoters the…

  • Deep Down South: A Round-Up, More YESEquality Gigs and a Big Weekend

    May 18, 2015 - By 

    ANNOUNCEMENTS, REMINDERS AND SUCH: While concentrating on the various nooks and crannies of Cork City’s multifaceted scene, this column does sometimes miss the major announcements. Our reasoning is that DIY shows do need the support and a specific platform, and most of the big festivals and events are already sorted for national press. However, we’d be completely remiss if we didn’t serve as somewhat of a reminder of what’s going on around town, especially with tonnes of stuff on the way. Adding to our coverage of the Sounds from a Safe Harbour, 100/1 and other fests in recent weeks, here’s a…

  • Deep Down South: Safe Harbours, Young Wonder and Old Rock Docs

    May 10, 2015 - By 

    ANNOUNCEMENTS AND SUCH The big news as last week’s column was finishing up was the announcement of another brand-new festival to be added to Cork’s ever-expanding portfolio of annual events, with the announcement of Sounds from a Safe Harbour, ‘a festival of music, art and conversation’ running September 17th to 20th around the city. Curated by The National guitarist Bryce Dessner, the festival represents another immense opportunity to showcase the city’s strengths to a wider audience, following the good buzz and recent pick-up in events and crowds that’s happened this year. Yon blurb: Sounds from a Safe Harbour is a…

  • Deep Down South: Would Bes, Double Stars, and Limerick-Related Besiegements

    April 6, 2015 - By 

    Ireland is full to bursting of stories from its musical fringes. The Would Be’s have one of the most distinct in contemporary music; infamously turning down 14 major labels (remember when there were fourteen of those?) to follow up their debut single, praised alike by John Peel and Morrissey. Over twenty years later, brandishing a requisite amount of new tunes, the Would Be’s are back, having been coaxed out of retirement by rock scribe Tony Clayton-Lea. Cork label FIFA last week released their new single ‘Bittersweet’, backed up with a legendary John Peel Session in its entirety, and April 18th…

  • Deep Down South: Terriers – Let’s Hear It For The Boys (Album Premiere)

    March 23, 2015 - By 

    In a special two-part edition of Deep Down South this week, we kick off by exclusively premiering the brand-new record from Cork post-hardcore hunks Terriers, ahead of its release on April 4th at the Cork Community Print Shop, with Hope is Noise and Chameleon Fields in support. Since coming together in 2011, the four-piece have slowly become one of the fixtures of Cork’s gigging picture, marrying post-hardcore heaviosity and classic-rock accessibility with bro-dude humour and a sunny, indie-friendly disposition. Debut EP Girl, I’m Gon’ Do Right By You, released in 2012, showcases this blend at its infancy, boasting mathy instrumental…

  • Deep Down South: Affirmations and a Few More Gigs, There, Lads

    March 8, 2015 - By 

    To be quite frank, your writer is still recovering from an excellent few bouts of sleep deprivation on the trot, so a short one it is this week, before another gig-news binge next week. Deal? Okay. Saturday night saw about five or six majorly important shows happening in town at once. That hasn’t happened in a really long time. To be quite frank, the gig-going public was a little small until recently to be pulling in multiple directions, and if you’d told your writer this time last year that five shows in one night would do well, he’d have told…

  • Deep Down South: Few Gigs There, Lads

    January 26, 2015 - By 

    Irish metal has been having a few years of exponential growth, with the rise of all-dayers like The Siege of Limerick and bands like Primordial, Murdock and Coldwar representing the island’s riff community on the world stage, and quality stuff materialising from the woodwork everywhere, from Ilenkus and Kawtiks to veterans like For Ruin and Mael Mordha. But at the forefront of all this has been Limerick prog-metal monoliths Shardborne, coming to the Cork Community Print Shop this Saturday care of PYRE Promotions, with Ealadha and Mannequin Republic in tow. Launching upcoming LP ‘Living Bridges’, the instrumental quartet’s combination of…

  • Deep Down South: More Block Party, Doin’ Pana, and a Bail of Riffs

    January 19, 2015 - By 

    Quarter and the Makeshift Ensemble‘s Block Party last week announced the newest additions to their Block Party festival, happening across North and South Main Streets on February 6 to 8. Added to the multidisciplinary arts weekend’s lineup are psych heavyweights The Altered Hours, shoegaze outfit Elastic Sleep (pictured), as well as Tandem Felix and Fierce Mild. Irish Times journo Jim Carroll brings his Banter series to The Vision Centre @ St. Peter’s on the Saturday. The first session – Inside the Miracle of Sound – will see Jim speaking to Cork musician Gavin Dunne about getting his start in the business,…