• Premiere: Sun Mahshene – This Girl I Know

    May 31, 2019 - By 

    Is it towering, climactic psychgaze you’re after? Dublin’s Sun Mahshene has you covered. Out today, ‘This Girl I Know’ is the third single from their forthcoming debut album Contradictions and Tales of Fiction, set for release later this summer through Reckless Records. Its three guitars forging an impenetrable wall of sound, the song oozes Ride-worthy euphoria and the midtempo-swagger of Oasis at their most clamorous – think ‘Columbia’ via Creation Records at the end of a Danny Boyle film – helped in no small part by its production at Darklands Audio, Dublin. You can catch Sun Mahshene play The Thomas House on June 21 with Galants, or at Electric…

  • the arts column: June 4th

    June 4, 2019 - By 

    This week sees a host of exhibitions opening across the island of Ireland, with shows in Belfast, Cork, Navan and Dublin; as well as the launch of this year’s Belfast Photo Festival. We’ve details of some of the festival’s highlights below, along with information on four openings happening nationwide. As always, if you have an event, talk, exhibition, or would like to recommend one please get in touch via aidan[at]thethinair.net Exhibition Opening | Platform Arts, Belfast This Thursday (June 6th) sees the opening of a new collaborative exhibition in Belfast’s Platform Arts. Titled Bedeck, the show features the works of David Lunney and Eleanor McCaughey, two artists who…

  • Irish musicians to speak on mental health panel in Dublin this weekend

    May 23, 2019 - By 

    A number of Irish musicians will be speaking about career-related mental health issues at the Mind YourSelf: Mental Health & Music event in Dublin’s Tara Building this Saturday, 25th May. Westport native Maria Kelly and Dublin’s Paddy Hanna, will be among the musicians coming together to speak on the importance of looking after one’s mental health in music industry careers’. The Mind YourSelf panel, hosted by Selfmade, will look at the factors affecting the mental health of artists and how these manifest, as well as the importance of open discussions, self-care, access to support and the need for positive cultural and…

  • Video Premiere: The Elephant Room – Juniper and Pine

    May 31, 2019 - By 

    Dublin-based indie-noise outfit The Elephant Room are one of a select number of DIY artists in Ireland assimilating a broad range of influences from the 60s through to the present year with complete seamlessness. We’re pleased to be premiering their sprawling new single ‘Juniper & Pine’, complete with the band’s self-made video. The song itself is an almost ten minute marriage of experimental noisecraft and lo-fi pop that somehow never outstays its welcome as ekes out new levels of its conceptual framework. Easing in with a Laurel Canyon-indebted neo-psych groove, its lysergic-soaked corners quickly darken into a clamorous sonic ego-death parallel, before returning to consensus reality as something familiar, yet altered.…

  • Video Premiere: Grave Goods – Source

    May 16, 2019 - By 

    Ahead of only their third show to date, supporting Beak> this Saturday, May 18 at Whelan’s, tri-city post-punk trio Grave Goods have kindly given us a first recorded glimpse of their visceral power. ‘Source’ is the first release from a session filmed by experimental filmmaking platform IMPATV, which records & broadcasts the heavier side of DIY, experimental & underground culture. Featuring members of Pins, Girls Names and September Girls, ‘Source’ forgoes the brooding atmospheres & jangle of the aforementioned in favour of primal urgency. More than delivering on the promise of its constituent parts, Sarah Grimes & Phil Quinn’s Girl Band-recalling rhythmic syncopation lay claustrophobic, anxious loops between which Lois MacDonald’s buzzsaw guitar finds voids to…

  • the arts column: PhotoIreland Special

    May 2, 2019 - By 

    This week sees the launch of this year’s PhotoIreland Festival, with the official opening taking place tonight, May 2nd,at 6pm in their Temple Bar hub: The Library Project. This year is the tenth anniversary of the festival, and to celebrate we’ve a special edition of the arts column focusing on the festival’s extensive programme of events, talks, exhibitions and general celebration of photography in Ireland. Festival Launch Party | Thursday, May 2nd @ The Library Project Tonight from 6pm (PhotoIreland patrons get a sneak peak a few hours earlier at 4pm) the festival kicks off in the foundation’s Temple Bar hub:…

  • Oranges – Hey Zeus

    March 21, 2019 - By 

    Last December, we premiered first single ‘The Way You Look’ by Dublin three-piece Oranges. We said it “recalled the abrasive, minimalist alchemy of The Fall”. The following single, ‘Upside Upside’ was a “skeletal post-punk riposte that, in its simmering climb and surging climax”. Taken from their forthcoming debut album Hey Zeus, they’re both firm hints at something special. A bare-bones approach has been applied to the entire process of Hey Zeus, which saw band members Gavin Duffy, Mici Durnin and Ed Kelly spit the LP out live in six hours with renowned engineer Stephen Quinn in a room on North Frederick Lane, Dublin, with only two of its eleven segments passing…

  • the arts column: March 12th

    March 12, 2019 - By 

    In this week’s edition of the arts column we’ve details of exhibitions that are opening and closing around the country, a pair of residencies and an application deadline. As always, if you have an event, talk, exhibition, or would like to recommend one please get in touch via aidan[at]thethinair.net Exhibition | Eamonn Doyle @ RHA Gallery, Dublin Opening this Thursday, March 14th in Dublin’s RHA Gallery is a new exhibition featuring the work of Eamonn Doyle. The eponymous show is born out of Doyle’s new book titled Made in Dublin, which features images from the artist’s first three books: i, ON and End, as well as previously…

  • Premiere: Angular Hank – I Don’t Always Like You

    March 14, 2019 - By 

    It’s been a pretty sweet year for idiosyncratic Irish indie rock thus far – look no further than releases from Hot Cops, Postcard Versions & Larry for that – and another name you can add to that heap is Dublin-based quartet Angular Hank. Having only played a handful of shows to date, debut single ‘I Don’t Always Like You’ seeps into the signature Popical Island-style Dublin bedroom jangle that comes pre-loaded with chorus pedals, with a wonderfully human baritone vocal from Mathieu Doogan. Kicking back with dissonance at the hint of a melody getting too cosy like its protagonist does at showing too much vulnerability, the single is a…