• Premiere: Charles Hurts – Living Under Lockdown

    June 26, 2020 - By 

    Though there have been many reunions and recommencements in Irish music since we launched back in May 2013, none have demanded our attention more than the long-awaited return of Charles Hurts. A solo moniker of Belfast musician Philip Quinn aka Gross Net, who is also a one-third of Grave Goods and guitarist with the currently inactive Girls Names, ‘Living Under Lockdown’ arrives eight years on from his last Charles Hurts release (Blue Valentine, a stellar split with Hello Translinks? on CF/Recs). Taken from forthcoming three-track EP Squashed, which is released on July 3, it’s a typically phantasmal effort from Quinn, and a wonderfully balmy rumination…

  • Irish Tracks of the Week – June 5th

    June 5, 2020 - By 

    It should come as no surprise that many of the tracks featured this week are directly donating to, or released in strong support of various bail funds and charities like MASI and Black Lives Matter. And seeing as Bandcamp are once more waiving their fees today, buying music – not simply streaming it – is what it’s all about. MuRli – Til The Wheels Drop Off Till The Wheels Fall Off by MuRli Fears – two_ (Kobina Remix) two_ remixes by Fears The Last Sound – Beamed Beamed by The Last Sound Plaice – Such Sweet Release Planar En Plain Air by Plaice…

  • Girls Names Release ‘Demos: 2009​-​2012’

    June 5, 2020 - By 

    For ten years, Belfast’s Girls Names consistently underscored their status as one of the country’s best bands. From 2010’s You Should Know By Now to what would become their feature-length swansong, 2018’s Stains on Silence, Cathal Cully and co. made music that, unlike so many contemporary bands, warranted the albeit loose descriptor post-punk. Having disbanded last year, the band have briefly re-emerged to release Demos: 2009​-​2012. Over 37 tracks, it’s a fascinating, true-to-life release, documenting the creative process of a band whose sound wonderfully evolved over the years. As posthumous, feature-length curios go, this one is worth delving into. “I hear the walls of each…

  • Girls Names – Stains on Silence

    June 26, 2018 - By 

    The fourth Girls Names full length has been a long time coming. A little under three years isn’t such a big gap between albums these days in an increasingly part-time industry, but recording updates were coming thick and fast from the Belfast band some time ago before seeming to dry up. As it turns out, an initial mix of the album was finished long ago before being shelved for 6 months and then ultimately aborted. The band then began reworking the material, taking it apart and rebuilding it with new edits and recordings. This drawn out process, as well as…

  • Stream: Girls Names – Karoline

    April 27, 2018 - By 

    Belfast’s Girls Names are sitting on one of the Irish albums of the year. Set for release on June 15 via Tough Love, Stains on Silence finds the three-piece at their most vital and experimental to date. Recorded in various locations including Belfast’s Start Together Studio with Ben McAuley, Cully’s home and the band’s practice space, spontaneous creation, cut-up techniques and self-editing took centre-stage for the first time. “We started tearing the material apart and rebuilding, re-editing and re-recording different parts in my home in early Autumn last year,” says frontman Cathal Cully. “When we got them to a place we were happier…

  • Girls Names – Stains on Silence

    March 26, 2018 - By 

    It stands to reason that many vital albums come critically close to never being made. The eight-track upshot of doubt, upheaval and financial strain, Stains on Silence by Girls Names is one such release. Following 2015’s Arms Around a Vision, and the parting of drummer Gib Cassidy just over a year later, the Belfast band suddenly found themselves facing down a looming void. “There was a finished – and then aborted – mix of the album, which was shelved for six months,” reveals Girls Names frontman Cathal Cully. “We then took a break from all music and went back to full-time work. We chilled…

  • Girls Names Announce New Album, Belfast & Dublin Shows

    March 26, 2018 - By 

    Marking the release of their forthcoming, Tough Love-released fourth album album, Stains on Silence, Belfast three-piece Girls Names have announced new dates in Belfast and Dublin. The Cathal Cully-fronted threesome will play Belfast’s Black Box on Friday, June 15 and Whelan’s in Dublin on Saturday, June 23. Tickets for the former are £14.50 (Black Box Members £12); Dublin is €16. Tickets go on sale Wednesday, March 28 at 10am and 9am respectively. Following 2015’s blitzing Arms Around a Vision, and the parting of drummer Gib Cassidy just over a year later, Girls Names suddenly found themselves facing down a looming void. Frontman Cathal…

  • Group Zero – Structures and Light

    February 1, 2017 - By 

    With his primary project currently working on album number 4, Girls Names frontman Cathal Cully is to release his debut solo effort, Structures and Light under his Group Zero pseudonym. Released on February 17 on Touch Sensitive Records, like his bandmate Philip Quinn’s Gross Net electronic side-project, it projects the flip-side of their post-punk day-job, instead channelling the shadowy intensity along the lines of Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, without ever approaching an over-reliance on nostalgia or pastiche. As Touch Sensitive & Cully himself say: The genesis of this newly discovered musical freedom coincided with a viewing of ‘Pyramid of Light’ by Heinz Mack from the post-war Dusseldorf based…

  • Bullitt Presents: Ryan Vail [Live]

    October 13, 2016 - By 

    Belfast’s Bullitt hotel on Church Lane runs a free admission performance as part of a new series of events, kicking off with a free live show from Derry electronic musician Ryan Vail in their bar on Saturday, October 15. Combining electronic, classical & folk, amongst other genres, Vail (above) has released three EPs and a collaborative album, Sea Legs, with Ciaran Lavery, and just released his debut album, For Every Silence, nominated for an NI Music Prize. Check out the video for ‘Wounds’ from earlier this year below. Admission is free and doors open at 8pm. DJ duties come from Girls Names‘ Cathal…

  • Gross Net – Quantitative Easing

    October 13, 2016 - By 

    Not content to solely be in arguably Ireland’s finest post-punk act, Philip Quinn of Girls Names releases his debut album, Quantitative Easing under the Gross Net moniker on November 25. Starting out alongside Autumns’ Christian Donaghey as a guitar, bass & drum machine combo, they released their eponymous debut cassette in 2014. Donaghey departed, and Quinn followed up earlier this year with the even better, dark, Berlin techno-tinged Outstanding Debt; it’s brimming, poetically enough, with the kind of satirical econofear channelled by the likes of Cabaret Voltaire & Throbbing Gristle in the Thatcher era. If you’d like to get further under Gross Net’s nihilist skin, check out our recent…