• Premiere: The Mad Dalton – Seafaring Man

    April 13, 2018 - By 

    Officially launched at Belfast’s Love & Death last night, ‘Seafaring Man’ is the new single by Belfast-based Scots-Canadian singer-songwriter Peter Sumadh AKA The Mad Dalton. Taken from his forthcoming debut album, Open Season – which will be released in June following a successful pledge campaign – it’s another full-bodied slice of wistful Americana that, rather than getting ensnared in the images and memories of the past, aims two eyes firmly on the horizon. Open Season is launched at Belfast’s Black Box on June 14. Have a first listen (and look at Chris Molloy’s video) below.

  • Stream: Arvo Party – Liberté

    April 12, 2018 - By 

    It came as no surprise to us when we discovered that Herb Magee aka Arvo Party was nominated for last year’s Northern Ireland Music Prize. In his review of the Belfast-based producer and musician’s self-titled debut album, Cathal McBride said, “With great Irish electronic acts like Solar Bears and Adultrock having called it a day within the last year, Magee sounds more than ready to take up the mantle they’ve left behind.” Seven months on, Magee continues to uphold this promise in style. A masterfully propulsive six minutes of electronica blurring sonic lines via late 1990s trance worships, simmering ambience surges,…

  • Watch: Eraser TV – (1-800 COAST 2 COAST)

    April 13, 2018 - By 

    Modern Classic is the logically-titled sequel to last year’s Buzzfeed Depression Quiz from self-aware Limerick indie rockers Eraser TV, one of the exciting DIY acts to emerge from the city in the past year. Their second EP once more plays upon the tense, gently experimental discordance underlying in their breezy, occasionally loungy lo-fi indie rock as frontman Cian McGuirk pines throughout, channeling some Pavement circa Crooked Rain wistful reflection on the wonderful ‘Season 2’. Drawing from the everything-is-commercial-bliss vaporwave aesthetic, they’ve just released a video for for ‘(1-800) COAST 2 COAST’. Seeping the liquescent chorus of decades gone by, it’s a hepped-up, psych-tinged take on what Sonic Youth were doing around Evol.…

  • Stream: Meltybrains? – Horizon

    April 9, 2018 - By 

    Remember Dublin experimental maestros Meltybrains? Good – you should. Right up there with the country’s most singular sonic propositions, the five-piece have returned with their first new material in 18 months via ‘Horizon’. Unsurprisingly, it kicks several shades of ass. Starting on a slithering pattern evoking St. Vincent’s ‘Rattlesnake’, the track bursts into full-blown cosmic-tech-metal bombast in ways only Meltybrains? can conjure. And that’s just taking into consideration the first 30 seconds. It’s a first taste of what is set to be a busy return for the band. “We’ve been very busy recently, for the past year and a half we’ve been recording loads…

  • Premiere: Just Mustard – Pigs

    April 6, 2018 - By 

    Fast becoming favourites of ours here at The Thin Air, Dundalk five-piece Just Mustard fully caught our attention in September last year with the release of ‘Tainted’, a track we said was “made for soundtracking solitary, stoned night walks reflecting on what needs to be done.” Taken from their forthcoming debut album, Wednesday, new single ‘Pigs’ is another step up. A soporific meld of blissed-out textures and noise-soaked squalls, it taps right into that exact feeling that creeps in at great small Irish festival around the early evening. You know the one we’re talking about. According to the band, with Wednesday they have…

  • Fears: h_always

    April 6, 2018 - By 

    Content note: Suicide & self harm.  Under the Fears moniker, Constance Keane hasn’t ever shied from making music that challenges pervasive feelings of anxiety, just as her previous outlet, the sonically-opposing M(h)aol, used primal, abrasive noise-punk as its own vehicle to address greater issues. And, as with anyone who holds complete autonomy over their creativity, it’s often assumed that it’s just one aspect of someone in tune with themselves. By her own admission, Constance has worked hard to accept, utilise, and channel that into a busy and fulfilling professional & artistic life. However, following a traumatic event in Autumn 2017, Constance fell into a suicidal state, and following several trips to A&E, she was admitted to a psychiatric…

  • EP Premiere: Ghost Office – Desire Lines

    April 6, 2018 - By 

    Almost certainly Belfast’s most promising post-punk prospect, Ghost Office, have just made available their second EP, Desire Lines. With new bassist Carl Small in tow and new material to be unveiled in coming months showing further songwriting spark, Desire Lines is just the beginning of what will be Ghost Office’s defining year so far. With each cut an under 3 minute short burst of undistilled creative flourish, throbbing bass & jagged Fender attack the band – both live and on record – bursts with vitality, while the confluence of musical & literary influences conjure acts like Parquet Courts and Protomartr‘s knowing self-loathing, lent broader purview with vocals from former-bassist MK Maguire, and…

  • Tethers – Skinwalker

    April 4, 2018 - By 

    Lisburn-based post-hardcore outfit Tethers are set to release their debut EP Skinwalker via Swallow Song Records. While retaining the kind of pop inclination that made Biffy Clyro household names, the trio channel Derry’s Jetplane Landing, and mathier elements of the post-hardcore sound – the likes of which made Faraquet such an incredibly instinctive, yet compositionally complex outfit. Recorded by Chris Ryan, the EP gets its title from a term in Navajo folklore that denotes a shape-shifting witch, which they’re re-envisioning as ‘a future slang for artificially-enhanced humanoids’, an aspect of the band’s outlook, which – in a way that would please Philip K Dick, Neil Gaiman or Warren Ellis…

  • Stream: Gnarkats – Enigma

    March 30, 2018 - By 

    Belfast three-piece Gnarkats recently teamed up with Paul Mahon of the Answer to record a new track, ‘Enigma’. Released this week, the single is a starry-eyed burst of gazey alt-indie with a lyrical undercurrent of feeling isolated in toxic relationships. Speaking of the recording said, “Paul was amazing to work with, he loved the songs and we all got on really well. He put so much effort in to our music, had great suggestions and got the best performances out of us. We are very proud of the two tracks we worked on with him and it was truly a dream come true for [guitarist] Jordan…

  • Premiere: Brash Isaac – If

    March 30, 2018 - By 

    Set for release on April 7 to coincide with Pop Up’s 3 bands, 3 Cities, 3 Singles tour in Derry, ‘If…’ by Belfast-based, Andrew Cameron-fronted Brash Isaac is a delicately-woven yet impassioned single confronting ambivalence and self-realisation. Recorded at SubZero Studios with Michael McCluskey, Cameron said of the track: It’s a slight departure to what we’ve done before and doesn’t rely heavily on a lot of instrumentation or production. We’ve stripped it back to the sound of a four piece band playing their parts together in a room, and we feel that’s how this track works best It’s a song that tackles feelings of dread and anxiety, addressing the…