• Premiere: Elaine Malone – No Blood

    March 30, 2018 - By 

    Musically recalling some of Tim Buckley’s airy jazz inclinations, and the gently percussive Weltschmerz of Nick Drake, Elaine Malone‘s new single cranks tension between folk music as a vehicle for aural pleasure and folk music as a vessel for crushingly human storytelling. It’s fitting then, that this Good Friday marks the release of the vital ‘No Blood’. That ‘No Blood’ was written & recorded long before Wednesday’s Laganside Court verdict, and the fact its trenchancy of its sentiment is in no danger of fading any time in the near future is a testament to our need to collectively address & confront these issues that pervade every level…

  • Women Are The New Men – Elaine Malone of HEX

    March 7, 2018 - By 

    When I told my friend Donal O’Gara I was writing this piece, he came out with the most incredible sentence, ‘Women are the new men’. He’s not wrong. Starting tonight, March 8th on International Women’s Day there will be a four day Weekender, based in the Roundy, Cork. Each day there will be an Artist’s Market, followed by live music, performance art, poetry and some of the towns finest brunch and night-time Djs. The project has a dual purpose, promoting female artists and raising funds for the Rape Crisis Centre in Cork. The event has been a collaborative effort of…

  • Classic Album: Bark Psychosis – Hex

    February 14, 2014 - By 

    You’re familiar with post-rock, right? Long, usually instrumental tracks that start off quiet and pretty, build slowly then BOOM – erupt into cathartic crescendo, before tailing off with a swooning little coda. That’s post-rock. Beautiful and yes, intense, but formulaic; “alternative” muzak safe enough to accompany football highlights, teen melodramas and Sir David Attenborough whispering feverishly over infra-red footage of rutting beasts. Let’s rewind back to 1994. Mojo hack (and subsequent alt-music historian) Simon Reynolds slips the promo from a new British band into his stereo and presses play. The sounds which ooze from his speakers are alien – an…