• Album Stream: Regret Will Come – Regret Will Come

    February 13, 2019 - By 

    We didn’t know about this until yesterday, but thanks to a rare bit of social algorithmic fortune, we’re sharing with you the new, self-titled album from lo-fi bedroom indie project Regret Will Come. At times a catch-all Bandcamp postcard of a solitary bedroom life unlived in the vein of early (Sandy) Alex G – see: ‘Tainaka’ – and at times vulnerably discordant and slowcore – there’s Duster all over ‘Akari’ – it was seemingly made to fit on the dynamic shelves of Exploding In Sound Records or some other unheard-of indie label out in the American midwest. Regret Will Come is comprised solely of Co. Monaghan auteur Fintan Gallagher, who writes, plays and…

  • 19 for ’19: Lemoncello

    February 12, 2019 - By 

    We continue 19 for ‘19 – our feature looking at nineteen Irish acts that we’re convinced are going places in 2019 – with Maynooth alternative folk duo Lemoncello. Photo by Joe Laverty A duo who formed while studying music and languages in Maynooth University, Laura Quirke and Claire Kinsella aka Lemoncello have carved out a unique, increasingly compelling niche in Irish alternative folk over the last five years. As well as helping to found the Common Grounds Collective – a group dedicated to building a network of musicians of all disciplines and giving them “a platform to create and showcase…

  • Watch: Landless – Via Extasia (Live at St Joseph’s Church)

    February 11, 2019 - By 

    If you’ve managed to catch them live recently, you’ll know that Dublin/Belfast-based vocal quartet Ruth Clinton, Meabh Meir, Sinead Lynch and Lily Power AKA Landless are a force to be reckoned with. Last week, the foursome effortlessly brought Belfast’s Sunflower to instant pin-drop silence. Hosted by the Sunflower Folk Club, it marked the first date of the foursome’s current run of Irish dates, which also took in Cork’s Quarter Block Party yesterday. A highlight from the foursome’s stellar debut album, Bleaching Bones, ‘Via Extasia’ reveals the wonderfully daedal arc and flow of the quartet’s traditional craft. It’s something that’s doubly on display on Joe…

  • Premiere: Mob Wife – Captain Care A Lot & Hellsong

    February 8, 2019 - By 

    Following the release of debut single ‘Warm Water’ in August, Belfast’s Mob Wife are back with new double A-side Captain Care A Lot / Hellsong. Recorded by Chris Ryan at Start Together Studios, with striking artwork by Billy Woods, the release strikes a midpoint between the dissonant fury of Metz or Unwound, and the melodic vulnerability of Pile. A contrasting couplet, ‘Captain Care A Lot’ continuing down the narrative & noise-ridden path of twentysomething angst and confusion laid by ‘Warm Water’, sardonically chronicling mass depersonalisation as a result of social media. ‘Hellsong’ is a more inward-looking exploration of disintegration, through the maelstrom of substance abuse, isolation and depression; in eschewing the…

  • Premiere: Alpha Chrome Yayo – Breakfast In Daytona

    February 7, 2019 - By 

    It’s not every day, but every once in a while, a track will land in our inbox that just instinctively makes us want to punch the air. A textbook case in point is the new single from newfangled Belfast producer and musician Alpha Chrome Yayo. Bursting at the seams with pure-cut throwback goodness, ‘Breakfast in Daytona’ is a synth-soaked, SEGA-leaning gem from an artist who set out to chart the “excitement of one day at a sun-bleached race-track”. The musician put it best when he said, “Waking up with the drivers, crew members and spectators, this synth-wave single starts hazy and hopeful,…

  • 19 for ’19: Rebekah Fitch

    February 6, 2019 - By 

    Though it’s not always easy to pinpoint why, some artists seem simply fated for big things. Of the myriad alt-pop acts that Ireland has produced over the last few years, the fast-moving upward trajectory of Belfast-based artist Rebekah Fitch is no such mystery. Drawing from influences spanning the likes of Björk and Portishead, to Sia and Stevie Nicks, Fitch has, over the last couple of years, emerged as something of a world-beating proposition. Having been nominated for the Contender Award at last year’s prestigious Northern Ireland Music Prize, her self-produced material to date – not least recent single, the emphatic ‘Need…

  • Premiere: TAU – Craw

    February 6, 2019 - By 

    TAU is the collective project of Berlin-based Irishman Shaun Mulrooney, an artist who refers to his psych-soaked, genre-mangling experimentalism as “medicine music”. It’s a term that fits well: also member of Dead Skeletons and Berlin Kraut conjurers Camera, Mulrooney’s sorcerous craft as TAU – which is strongly influenced by his interest in what lies beyond both the eye and the veil – carries with it a strong and slow-burning anagogic air. New single ‘Craw’ is a potent case in point. Featuring a sublime video, co-directed with Kyle Ferguson (who also filmed and edited the accompaniment), it’s a song that traces the dense…

  • Premiere: Ferals – The Low

    February 5, 2019 - By 

    The island of Ireland has always batted out out of its league when it comes to riff-fuelled post-rock. Right up there with the acts flying the flag in the North right now is Belfast-based threesome Ferals. Listing Foals, Biffy Clyro, Deftones and North Coast instrumental machine And So I Watch You From Afar as their main influences, the Zool Records-affiliated band have re-emerged with their new single, ‘The Low’. Doubling up as the band’s strongest single effort to date – and accompanied with a suitably emphatic video – the song strikes a fist-clenched mid-point between low-end riff slinging, gang vocals…

  • This Month In Irish Music: January

    January 31, 2019 - By 

    In the first of a new regular series, Colin Gannon rounds up the very best Irish tracks released of the month just gone, featuring SOAK, Arvo Party, ELLL, Problem Patterns, James Joys, Sister Ghost, Gadget & The Cloud , Maria Somerville and more. Problem Patterns — Allegedly In a month where the R&B musician R. Kelly—after painfully long years of swerving accountability for persistent, unsettling claims of heinous abuses—may finally have his day of reckoning in a court, new Belfast-based feminist punk group Problem Patterns’ snarling debut single, ‘Allegedly’, lands a certain potency. The word allegedly—itself a necessary adverb used in copy…

  • Album Premiere: Empire Circus – Tí

    January 31, 2019 - By 

    Dublin quartet Empire Circus are a band whose accessible, yet eclectic indie-pop craft bears the imprint of influences including Wilco, Beck, The War on Drugs, R.E.M. and even early Peter Gabriel (always a plus in our eyes Founded in 2012, their self-titled debut album – which was released in September of 2013 – confined within its twelve tracks real promise, and an FM-leaning, carefully-crafted sound that hinted at something more substantial with the passing of time and the creative maturation that accompanies that. Tomorrow (February 1) the band release its long-awaited follow-up, Tí. And sure enough, it’s a cohesive and accomplished release that trims Empire…