• Premiere: Hope is Noise – From There With Love

    June 29, 2015 - By 

    Cork alt-rock/post-hardcore four-piece Hope is Noise are approaching their tenth anniversary under the name later this year, and their eighteenth (!) as a band altogether. Typical of the boys, though, they’ll not be celebrating the milestone with nostalgia, but with a brand new record, their fourth full-length and sixth overall. The first of a series of singles coming out through FIFA Records leading into the release later this year, ‘From There With Love’, sets the tone perfectly. Brooding, menacing and a short, sharp shock, it continues the band’s veer into more noise-rock territory, picking up where previous EP ‘This Used…

  • Deep Down South: Mag Launch, Busy Town, Streaming Sounds

    March 2, 2015 - By 

    After last week’s column promising more music and such didn’t materialise, this week’s is a wee bit of a catch-up. However – plug, plug, plug! – we’ll kick off by putting in a shout for our Cork launch on Saturday at the Crane Lane for the mag. Issue 5 of the mag (the cover pictured) features a full-length piece on the Altered Hours, from their beginnings and debut release ‘Downstream’, to their upcoming album and time in Berlin. We’ll also have an Inbound on Leeside multi-piece groove ensemble Shookrah, among so, so much more, and it’ll be available exclusively at…

  • Deep Down South: Like Light to a Fuse

    February 9, 2015 - By 

    Cork City has been a fuse waiting to be lit. All this time, exciting, inimitable, indomitable people, have been creating, and facilitating, providing space, trying, and failing, learning, and improving, and resolving to do better. Coming together, helping each other. This weekend was a light to that fuse. The Quarter Block Party didn’t just meet or even exceed expectations, it utterly transcended them. A huge and varied multimedia programme, spanning music, art, theatre, discussion and good vibes, it delivered on all fronts. There’ll be a review with all the details and critique either tomorrow or Wednesday, and your writer will…

  • Hope is Noise @ The Pavilion

    May 2, 2014 - By 

    In the process of getting out to this gig, venturing out on a wet Thursday night, your writer wrenches his ankle, and as a result, spends the next 20 minutes hobbling to the Pavilion, just in time to miss most of debuting Cork/Italian lads The Order of the Mess‘ power-duo noise-rock assault. Their stuff on Soundcloud paints a rough but promising picture, that of a multifaceted, but bludgeoningly weighty aural attack. They’re well-received here. Settling in for Hope is Noise getting on with setup, it’s a decent crowd that litters the bar of the Pav, especially right before a Bank…