• Watch: Comrade Hat – From Lost To The River (feat. Inishowen Gospel Choir)

    March 2, 2022 - By 

    Ahead of his first Belfast show in over 3 years for Brilliant Corners Jazz Festival this Friday, 4th March at the Black Box Green Room – and another on the 11th – staple of the Northern jazz scene Neil Burns, aka Comrade Hat is back with his definitive artistic statement to date in ‘From Lost To The River’, the first single taken from his forthcoming album, Old Gods, Vol. 2, the follow up to last year’s Vol. 1. Without straying from the oneiric yearning that’s been threaded through his work so far, the single truly levels up his practice. Starting out with a locked, deep-pocket…

  • Clara Tracey Pays Tribute to Irish Stain Glass Icon Harry Clarke in New Video

    February 22, 2022 - By 

    Pizza Pizza Records’ latest signing and experimental pop auteur Clara Tracey today releases the video for her wonderful latest single ‘Harry Clarke’. The lushly-arranged Daniel Fox production puts the Fermanagh-born, Belfast-based Tracey’s layered, technically superlative vocal range at front and centre, offers fragments of the subtly subversive, highly influential Irish stain glass artist & illustrator Harry Clarke. Initially inspired by window ‘The Eve of Saint Agnes’, Clara tells us more about the song’s inception: “Stained glass windows often bring to mind biblical scenes and churches, they don’t tend to be associated with dark eroticism. While Harry Clarke did receive most of his commissions from…

  • Stream: F.R.U.I.T.Y. – U.P.S.

    July 15, 2021 - By 

    Arriving on the Belfast scene like a bucket of pink paint into white, Dan O’Rawe, aka F.R.U.I.T.Y. brings a chameleonic, singular blend of woozy, lo-fi electronica, hip-hop and experimental pop, underscored by the ingrained localised perspective of a queer person in Northern Ireland. Following up on his contributions to Bangers N’ Breakups, a darkwave cover of ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ and debut single ‘Not Quite Exceptional‘, new single ‘U.P.S.’ is the first single taken from F.R.U.I.T.Y.’s self-titled debut EP, out 5th August. It sees Tobacco & Eels-esque hazy, kaleidoscopic synth textures frame off-kilter, identity-exploring pop in the vein of Ezra Furman, Jazmin Bean…

  • Premiere: Arthur Itis – Ahead Of The Curve

    July 12, 2021 - By 

    Cork-based being Arthur Itis is back with more of his singular brand of esoteric, experimental bedroom-pop. Deconstructing any number of genres and effortlessly reanimating them in his own image in a lineage that traces lines through Beefheart, Devo, Ween and R Stevie Moore, he never fails to lean into the weirdness, even at his most accessible. Taken from his fifth LP, Occam’s Razor, earworming new single ‘Ahead of the Curve’ is no different, as Arthur’s character-inhabiting post-new wave gem marks his finest pop song yet. Set to feature appearances and contributions from Sam Clague, Altered Hours’ Cathal MacGabhann, Pretty Happy’s Abbey Blake, These Are Atoms’ Sara Leslie &…

  • Premiere: Comrade Hat – Deep Sleep

    March 29, 2021 - By 

    Shapeshifting Derry-based musical polymath Neil Burns, aka Comrade Hat has just announced details of his new album, Old Gods, Vol. 1, which is set for release on April 13. Its final single is ‘Deep Sleep’, which we’re happy to share ahead of its popping on Bandcamp. Part experimentalism, part finely honed pop songcraft, it draws upon the familiar sounds of confessional, lonesome Americana, mystique, and glistening, low-key-yet-expansive 80s-recalling spectral echoes – possibly stemming from a Canadian stint. Equally, its sense of glacial, otherly pastoralism is not unlike that of experimental, avant-pop singers like David Sylvian, Talk Talk and Mary Margaret O’Hara, with his trademark self-deprecation…

  • Fears Announces Debut Album and Releases New Single ‘vines’

    February 25, 2021 - By 

    At long last, one of TTA’s consistent favourite acts of the last few years, experimental pop artist Fears has announced the release of her debut album, Oíche, on Friday, 7th May through TULLE. Accompanying the announcement is the second single taken from it, ‘vines’. Its accompanying video was directed by Fears and shot by Colman Keane, it’s a broadening panorama that perfectly compliments the transformative single. Seamlessly weaving the ancient with the new, and the rural with the familiar, she emerges from the sea, ultimately reaching the 2500 BC Megalithic portal tomb, Ballybrack Dolmen at sunrise. “This place holds particular significance to me” Fears says. “It’s…

  • Video Premiere: Arthuritis – My Ass, Around The World

    January 27, 2021 - By 

    Cork’s answer to Sun Araw, R Stevie Moore and Ween all at once, Arthuritis straddles the brow of art at its most extreme ends. Perhaps the finest example yet of this is his latest single, the electronic wonk-pop of the rather literal ‘My Ass, Around The World’, self-produced on a four track. “I’ve been really enjoying working with tape”, he tells us. “Once it’s recorded, that’s it. If you make a mistake, it either stays in the song or I record that all over again, I love how confining it is. The ability to endlessly twiddle on a computer sort of takes some of the fun…

  • Stream: This Ship Argo – Hum

    January 15, 2021 - By 

    In recent years – and particularly in the last, thanks to Bandcamp – we’ve seen the rise of a wide net of self-produced superlative electronic artists. In the Northern Irish cul de sac, you have the increasingly world-beating Arvo Party, synthwave retromancer Alpha Chrome Yayo, and more recently, Aileen McKenna, AKA This Ship Argo has been cropping up on the radar with her singular brand of experimental electronic pop. At turns earworming, introspective and profoundly moving, TSA strikes a rare midpoint between densely-layered chamber pop, and ruminative minimalism. Her new single ‘Hum’ is out today, accompanied by alternate mixes from Arvo Party & A Cappella, following…

  • Premiere: Comrade Hat – Summer of Glove

    July 14, 2020 - By 

    Derry’s resident lounge-lizard/experimental pop savant Neil Burns, AKA Comrade Hat returns today with a slinking, sun-kissed, seven minute porta-epic. A marriage of craft and intuition, journeying through louche tropicalia, psych and jazz-pop, it’s taken from his forthcoming two-volume compilation, Old Gods.  Written during an isolation-necessitated creative spree as progress on his studio album went on pause, ‘Summer of Glove’ sees an emergence of a more guitar-led, full band sound as opposed to Comrade Hat’s factory setting as bedroom producer. Burns spoke to us on the development of his forthcoming two albums, named for their spontaneous birth in fairly mysterious circumstances: “Maybe I was channeling the cautious optimism of…

  • 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…