• Monday Mixtape: Son Zept

    October 19, 2020 - By 

    Recently championed and playlisted by the likes of by ourselves, The Quietus, DJ Mag and leftfield DJ par excellence Avalon Emerson, “Northern Ireland’s resident electronic compositional polymath” Liam McCartan, AKA Son Zept has just released his second mini-album of 2020, B. Today, he gives us an uncharacteristically abridged mixtape of some current favourite tracks. I tried to keep this as just a stream of thought and not cram in stuff that I’d end rambling about daft things like cheeky hauntological anti-memory sound (*ahem*). Excluded tunes from Aphex Twin + Aphex covers, Mal Waldron, Oneohtrix Point Never, Eprom, Lyra Pramuk, Pinch & Mumdance, Holly Herndon, Chassol,…

  • Premiere: IN-IS feat. Haula – Broken Ones (Ryan Vail Remix)

    September 17, 2020 - By 

    Last year’s NI Music Prize winner Ryan Vail teamed up with BAFTA-nominated film & TV composer Sheridan Tongue, AKA IN-IS to bring us a remix of the latter’s ‘Broken Ones feat. Haula’. Another characteristically panoramic blend of balmy atmospheric washes and lush synth arpeggios, Vail continues to deliver in abundance as a collaborator, remixing with the same verve and creativity as can be found across his body of solo compositional work. Of the remix, Sheridan told us: “Ryan Vail is a producer I have admired for many years. Coming from the world of film and television soundtracks, I find his ability to create an expansiveness and…

  • Watch: SORBET – Birth (My First Day)

    September 16, 2020 - By 

    Ahead of the release of his debut solo EP, Life Variations this Friday, producer/songwriter/vocalist – and bandleader with Robocobra Quartet – Chris Ryan, AKA SORBET has lifted the cloche on the video for opening track ‘Birth (My First Day)’, which conjures the all-too-real sensation of impostor syndrome. Directed by Dominic Curran with AR motion graphics by Fabiano Benetton, the piece is a magic-realism expression of the singular, otherworldly feeling of the writing alone through his period of home-studio isolation. The seed of Life Variations grew from meditations upon two piano chords to which Ryan was repeatedly and profoundly drawn. Each of its three tracks takes this notion and explores cyclical threads and progression through key stages…

  • EP Stream: Shammen Delly – The Peoples Temple OV Big Tom

    May 1, 2020 - By 

    Without a doubt our favourite hauntological, psychogeography peddler around, Donegal experimental electronic auteur Aengus Friel, AKA Shammen Delly has released his mythological magnum opus, created in the midst of lockdown. This latest heady, hazy trip-hop-influenced concoction was recorded at his own ‘Red Dunge’, inspired by country & Irish legend Big Tom‘s 70s little-known wilderness years: “This is a vivid reimagined vision of a time when Big Tom and his Mainliners were leaders of ‘The Peoples Temple’ in Monaghan back in the late 70’s and would travel around the country summoning new followers for the sacred dances around stone circles and beaches. His followers…

  • Monday Mixtape: The Bonk

    March 2, 2020 - By 

    The Bonk recently released hypnotic garage psych-jazz single ‘May Feign‘. Spanning primitive computer music to postmodern art rock, frontman (and former O Emperor member) Philip Christie takes us through some recent key influences. “These are a few tunes that I have been coming back to over the last while. Turns out I haven’t made it past the late seventies. I am not with it.” Annette Peacock – I’m The One I came across Annette Peacock’s music two or three years ago and since then it has been something I’ve come back to over and over. There is a lovely playfulness in the…

  • 10 for ’20: Son Zept

    February 7, 2020 - By 

    In the second installment of 10 for ’20 – our new series previewing ten Irish acts we’re convinced are set for great things in 2020 and beyond – Stevie Lennox introduces one of the most forward-thinking, fast-rising electronic artists, Belfast polymath Son Zept. Photo by Niall Fegan We last chatted to Liam McCartan, aka Son Zept, in 2018 when his debut Q2B EP was released in the early days of his PhD at Belfast’s Sonic Arts Research Centre. A maximalist series of curveballing deconstructed club pieces that landed in the ears of Objekt – who has been closing sets with its cuts – and Avalon…

  • Stream: Fears – Bones

    November 15, 2019 - By 

    Last year’s ‘h_always‘ came in at #3 in our 100 tracks of 2018, and following up on her excellent ‘Fabric’, Fears might have delivered her finest slice of experimental pop yet in ‘Bones’. Both the song and its fragmented visual companion are completely self-produced. The staggered, introvert’s club tune is further progression in the trajectory of an artist whose multi-faceted craft recalls the leftfield likes of Carla Dal Forno & Holly Herndon in its elevation of pop songwriting as an fully-fledged art form; understandable, given she’s one of three artists in Moving On Music’s Emerging Artists Programme 2018/19. Exploring the gradual, imperfect nature of trauma recovery, ‘Bones’ is spiritual closure…

  • Video Premiere: Arthuritis – Condo

    October 18, 2019 - By 

    The latest thing to emerge from the mind of idiosyncratic polymath Arthuritis is an avant-pop fever dream. The glitchy ‘Condo’ – the sound of a brain puttering out before completing a factory reset – is as decidedly nausea-inducing as its uncanny accompanying video, masterfully shot & edited in three hours by CLAP Media’s Colm Walsh; recalling Twin Peaks: The Return, three selves are dragged down a cold, dark back-path adorned only by barriers and wet grass. It’s a perfect example of Arty’s latest approach, which explores the relationship between rhythm & time. He tells us: “One of the main things that influenced it was I looked at a…

  • Album Stream: Mark Waldron-Hyden – Stream Segregation

    July 30, 2019 - By 

    Last month, we premiered the cavernous somnambulance of first single, ‘Did You Hide’, and today, founder of Cork-based label Sunshine Cult, and psychgaze act The Sunshine Factory, Mark Waldron-Hyden has released the debut album under his own name. Titled Stream Segregation, and out through his own label, the LP’s source material is a blend of field recording, acoustic instrumentation, synths and tape machines, and was written, recorded & produced by Waldron-Hyden. Its name came from a psychoacoustic phenomenon “in which a sequence of sounds is perceived as more than one auditory stream, each arising from a distinct acoustic source in the environment”. Mark goes on: “That’s what I wanted…

  • Premiere: Mark Waldron-Hyden – Did You Hide

    July 3, 2019 - By 

    Mark Waldron-Hyden, as a member of cosmic psych outfit The Sunshine Factory & founder of Sunshine Cult Records, has become an integral figure of Cork’s underground music community. Today, we’re pleased to premiere the first release under his own name, single ‘Did You Hide’. Lifted from his forthcoming debut album, Stream Segregation, it’s a somnambulant, sedated piece of experimental electronic music. The song marries the sparse otherworldliness of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to the cavernous ambience of Pauline Oliveros’ school of Deep Listening, while impressionistic, Thom Yorke-ian vocals draw in something recognisably – just about – of the now. ‘Did You Hide’ was written, recorded and produced by Waldron-Hyden using a mixture of field recording, acoustic instruments, synths and tape…