• Gig(s) of the week: Desert Hearts, Record Store Day & More

    A year into our existence – hey, it’s been fun – we’ve decided that it’s both wise and opportune that we started expanding out horizons when it comes to our regular “gig of the week”. Ireland is a relatively big-ass country (the technical description for you, there), after all; one single show, exceptional as it might be, is simply not worth singling out at the expense of similarly awesome prospects in different areas across the city. And it is upon which note that we arrive, rather comfortably, at this week’s gig(s) of the week. The return of Desert Hearts Standing just…

  • Watch: Desert Hearts – Heavy Hangs The Head

    Directed by Niall Savage, Belfast quartet Desert Hearts have unveiled the video to their forthcoming single ‘Heavy Hangs The Head’. Taken from the band’s 3rd album, Enturbulation = No Challenge, the track has been released with new b-side ‘Just To Say’. Set for release at the start of September, you can pre-order the single here. Watch the video below.

  • Desert Hearts – Enturbulation = No Challenge

    “The opposite of harmonious, cooperative, respectful, calm, serene, disciplined”. A process of “agitating or disturbing”. As anyone who’s ever seen them can confirm, such words could serve as a neat description of Desert Hearts. They are, in fact, taken from the the Wiktionary definition of ‘Enturbulation’, a word coined by L. Ron Hubbard, used primarily by Scientologists and which, now, finds itself gracing the title of the new Desert Hearts album. One of the fundamental practices of Scientology is ‘auditing’, a procedure through which the individual revisits the traumas of the past as a means of elevating them to a…

  • The Tell Tale-Hearts: Desert Hearts

    Seven years since they last released an album, Desert Hearts return, vision undimmed and armed with a magnificent new record. And, as Francis Jones discovers, the passing of time has not tamed them. I’m sitting downstairs in Voodoo bar in Belfast awaiting the arrival of Desert Hearts. I’m here to interview them about their new album, Enturbulation=No Challenge. The last – and only previous – time I interviewed this band was back in 2006, around the release of their second album, Hotsy Totsy Nagasaki. My memories of that evening are not altogether pleasant. Drummer Chris Heaney had recently departed the…