• Album Premiere: Alpha Chrome Yayo – Twirl

    December 6, 2019 - By 

    To say that it’s been a busy 2019 for Belfast’s Alpha Chrome Yayo would be something of an understatement. The one-man, full-blown synthwave whizz has very kindly drip-fed us a string of masterfully shapeshifting releases, from Lithobreakin‘ and Malediction Boulevard, to Komorebi and After Dinner Cigar last month. And what better way to round off 2019 than with Twirl, ACY’s new, ten-track album? This is the part where we normally wax lyrical about a release but, in this instance, we’ll happily defer to the artist, who sums up the release as so: With a sound-palette straight out of the Encarta era, it’s…

  • Premiere: Casavettes – Imposter Syndrome

    December 4, 2019 - By 

    DIY LK‘s resident emos-in-chief Casavettes round out a year that’s seen them tour the length of the land on the back of their debut album, Senselessness. One of the most prolific acts in the most prolific music city on the island, they’re back with new single ‘Imposter Syndrome’ – a 2nd wave homage which firmly posits them as potentially the finest of their ilk in Ireland. Like Senselessness, the single was engineered and produced by Mícheál Keating of Bleeding Heart Pigeons. Artwork comes from Eilis Mahon (Girlfriend/icebear). Frontman Diarmuid Ó Sé told us more about how the track came together: “I started writing it directly after the album…

  • Premiere: Ghost Office – Cereal Café

    December 5, 2019 - By 

    Belfast post-punk trio Ghost Office are set to release their effervescent, jerking new single ‘Cereal Café’ tomorrow, December 6th. Their first release since 2018’s excellent ‘Here Come The Elders!‘, it was written in a half hour frenzy, voicing, through Stewart Lee-tinged wordplay, drummer/vocalist Richard Bailie’s dismay at realising, finally, “that they have opened a cereal cafe in London, selling all the milks.” Almond milk, regular milk, and so on. ‘Cereal Café’ is their “grand anti-gentrification anthem”. “Listeners will perhaps question whether they are several years too late, especially considering the flagrant gentrification of the Ormeau Road area of Belfast [“Catch it,before the gentrifiers come“, as the Guardian recently, tardily ordered],…

  • Video Premiere: Extravision – Our City

    November 27, 2019 - By 

    You may recall, at the start of the year, we featured Dublin’s Extravision in 19 for ’19, our series profiling nineteen genre-spanning Irish acts that we had high hopes for the year ahead. And sure enough, the trio have well and truly into gear. Comprising members of Sissy, Surge and No Spill Blood, the band’s new single, ‘Our City’ is an equal parts searing and celebratory overture to Dublin. Recorded with Daniel Fox of Girl Band at Sonic Studios, it calls out and stares down the runaway bureaucracy of the city’s landlords and hotel developers with fist-clenched aplomb. Ahead of new releases coming in the…

  • Split EP Premiere: Mob Wife / Cruiser

    November 27, 2019 - By 

    It’s easy for bands to serve up those oft. espoused platitudes about the value of “co-operation in the music scene”, but to be pro-active in that is another matter entirely. Gladly, we’re seeing that attitude start to spread, with the latest in the trend being two of the most exciting DIY, guitar-driven bands on the island coming together for a split EP release. Mob Wife/Cruiser features, unsurprisingly, two tracks each from Belfast trio Mob Wife and Limerick quartet Cruiser, conceived of in early 2019. Both with their own singular imprint, Mob Wife and Cruiser share the emotionally-charged influence of 90s post-hardcore and fist-clenched modern indie rock & punk sensibility, as well…

  • Album Premiere: Eoin Dolan – Commander of Sapiens

    November 22, 2019 - By 

    On his third full-length LP, Commander of Sapiens, Galway musician Eoin Dolan underscores his status as one of the country’s finest songwriters. Conjuring everyone from Animal Collective to the Beach Boys, songs like ‘Microship Visions’ and ‘Sheena’ meld starry-eyed harmonies and cosmic wanderlust with masterfully woozy refrains and sublime melancholia to deliver nine tracks of first-rate, surf-influenced sci-fi pop. Released in proud association with Galway-based collective Citóg and featuring long term collaborators Conor Deasy (guitar), James Casserly (drums) and Adam Sheeran (bass), the album wonderfully veers between themes including environmental destruction, mass consumerism and human cybernetics. Surely you’re sold by now? Stream it…

  • Spilt Milk Festival 2019

    November 21, 2019 - By 

    The brainchild of one of the country’s finest imprints, Art For Blind, Split Milk is a brand new audio-visual festival in Sligo. Bringing together national and international artists to perform and exhibit in intimate venues across Sligo Town alongside emerging local artists, the three-day festival will take place across November 22-24. And the festival’s inaugural line-up is quite something. Including several TTA favourites, Percolator, Landless (pictured), Aoife Nessa Frances, Katie Geraldine O’Neill, Problem Patterns, Ensemble Economique, Jusme ft. Farid Williams, Gulpt, BB84, Dult, Spekulativ Fiktion, Rachael Lavelle, Diarmuid McDiarmada and Marge Bouvier will perform across the weekend. Better yet, there will be film…

  • 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…

  • Album Stream: Careerist – Weird Hill

    November 15, 2019 - By 

    It’s been a long, weird (sorry) trip up to this point, but the debut album for Belfast’s slickest indie rock trio Careerist (fka Hot Cops) is upon us. Weird Hill‘s nine tracks manage to slink through any number of influences and curveballs without losing coherence, clocking in at just under a half-hour. The wry smirk of Pavement can be glanced through buoyant, Deerhunter-sized melodies and slaloming Spaghetti Western guitar work, while the trio’s distinct, jerking sense of otherness remains consistent throughout. The LP was recorded & produced by Robocobra Quartet’s Chris Ryan, who does justice to the band’s reputation as one of Ireland’s tightest, most…

  • Stream: Hales Lake – Pro-Strife

    November 11, 2019 - By 

    Comprising Shane Crosson, Girlfriend’s Sophie Dunne, Jamie O’Suiligh and Ryan McClelland, Hales Lake have played a string of stellar shows in Dublin, Belfast and Limerick this year. Impassioned and curveballing, the have been sets introducing a quartet who, right off the bat, are staking a claim with a sound melding alternative and emo with ‘gazey textures and a fist-clenched noise-rock sensibility. Look no further than debut single, ‘Pro-Strife’, which you can stream below. Speaking about the track, the band offered up the mini-manifesto of sorts, reflecting on how cross-country issues has helped bolster island-wide solidarity in the creative community of which…