• Four Irish Acts set to play London St. Patrick’s Day Show

    March 14, 2018 - By 

    In the kind of lineup we’d kill for back home, London is lucky enough to bear witness to a St. Patrick’s Day celebration that we’d hold our watch to, packed with fiercely singular hibernophiles & noteable outsiders. It’s the first edition of the national stereotype-subverting Cushty Gamut, and takes place at New River Studios, Ground Floor Unit E on the Eade Road. Five live acts perform in the main venue, comprising four of our own who’ve made the trip across the pond. They are: Cork cosmische, drone voyagers Percolator – who released our Irish album of the 2017, Sestra. Dublin noise rock quartet Hands Up Who Wants To Die, who’ve returned recently with new frontman Rory O’Brien…

  • EP Stream: The Altered Hours – On My Tongue

    March 9, 2018 - By 

    Two years on from the release of their triumphant debut album, In Heat Not Sorry, Cork five-piece The Altered Hours‘ brand of snaking, crepuscular psych-rock sounds more more singular and vital than ever. Released via Art for Blind/Penske Recordings on 12″ vinyl and digital, the band’s new EP, On My Tongue, is an equal parts murky and prismatic four-track re-affirmation of something we have have always maintained: the Altered Hours are not merely one of the country’s very best bands, they continue to push headlong into a masterfully dazed realm all their very own. Stream the EP in full via Bandcamp below. On My Tongue by…

  • Album Premiere: Zombie Picnic – Rise of a New Ideology

    March 9, 2018 - By 

    Progressive instrumental post-rock four piece Zombie Picnic release their new album, Rise of a New Ideology today. This follows up on the Limerick outfit’s 2016 debut LP, A Suburb of Earth, and is available on a limited run 12″ vinyl through Bandcamp and Burning Shed. Ideologically, it’s an ambitious work that’s inspired by political figures & commentators, and the most respected names in science fiction literature. As with acts like King Crimson, the finest progressive bands are unconfined by the box in which modern prog rock & post-rock artists find themselves trapped; Zombie Picnic’s sound is imbued with the kind of exploratory, trippy experimentalism found in classic psychedelic & space rock that’s been dragged forward a millennia,…

  • Stream: Orchid Collective – Winter’s Pass

    March 7, 2018 - By 

    Marking the onset of Spring from a long Winter, Dublin-based indie-folk quartet Orchid Collective‘s latest single, ‘Winter’s Pass’ could hardly have come at a better time. While retaining the serene, atmospheric sound they’ve been developing over the past few years through the harmony-led influence of Fleet Foxes, there’s an evolution in its composition that has, in our view, defined it as the outfit’s best work to date. A product of home recording, as opposed to more produced previous releases, ‘Winter’s Pass’ has a substantially more organic quality, without sounding in any way lo-fi. In any case, it’s a sparse and measured arrangement that subtly utilises the kind of electronic manipulation that’s seen folk music’s contemporisation in recent years, in…

  • Stream: Cherym – Take It Back

    March 5, 2018 - By 

    If you’re not already familiar with Derry threesome Cherym, you will be soon. Hannah Richardson, Nyree Porter and Lauren Kelly – who we featured as one of our 18 for ’18 acts at the start of the year – will release their debut EP, Mouth Breathers, in April. Doubling up as their debut single, the release’s lead single ‘Take It Back’ is a catchy-as-all-hell burst of punked-out noise-pop that demands an instant second listen. Take it Back by Cherym

  • Stream: The Sunshine Factory – Exploding Head/Negative Light

    March 5, 2018 - By 

    One of our must-watch Irish acts for 2018, Cork five-piece The Sunshine Factory have been on a major roll recently. Having released Cruelest Animal, their four-track EP of first-rate slow-burning neo-psych, back in November, the band are back with a killer double-single, ‘Exploding Head’ and ‘Negative Light’. Recorded by Chris Somers live in Cork’s Crane Lane on October 30 last year, the new tracks – released via their DIY label Sunshine Cult and produced by Mark Waldron-Hyden from the band – present a masterfully claustrophobic brace of urgent, hazed-out sounds from the fast-rising Cork quintet. Negative Light/Exploding head by The Sunshine Factory

  • Exclusive Track-by-Track: Paddy Hanna – Frankly, I Mutate

    March 2, 2018 - By 

    As we see it, the release of Frankly, I Mutate by Dublin’s Paddy Hanna today is something every single person with the slightest interest in Irish music should stop and pay attention to. Hanna is no flash-in-the-pan sycophant. He hasn’t came up the Liffey in a dingy sponsored by Smirnoff. He hasn’t got by on the coat-tails of more talented music-making peers. He is the coat-tails. Paddy Hanna understands the craft, and the hidden trials that later manifest as a single turn of phrase in a single song. His brand of confessionalism has never opted for the easy way out, either. It takes the scenic…

  • Premiere: Ferals – Brendan Rodgers

    March 2, 2018 - By 

    Counting Foals, Biffy Clyro and the North Coast’s finest And So I Watch You From Afar as their main influences, Belfast-based quartet Ferals  are an act that is spurred on by – and openly nods to – the scene for inspiration. “Watching all our favourite local bands take themselves to heights we didn’t know were reachable in this country has totally inspired us,” the band said. “It gave us a beacon of hope that we could be successful.” Out on Zool Records, debut single ‘Brendan Rodgers’ introduces the band as an act filtering the imprint of the aforementioned influences, while pushing towards a modern,…

  • EP Premiere: Tuath – Youth

    March 3, 2018 - By 

    As we’ve said before, Letterkenny’s Tuath are one of the most genuine purveyors of hepped-up psychedelia on this island, with band leader Robert Mulhern having, as we’ve said before, drawing a consistent thematic throughline throughout the band’s extensive output; one that’s about questioning accepted ideals, organised ideology, and what it means to be, if anything. Once more, they effuse their worldview with a half-maniacal cackle, half-nihilistic-shrug, helped along by its kitchen sink absurdist imagery. Since midway through last year, they’ve been drip-feeding singles from their latest EP, Youth, which we’re delighted to exclusively premiere here today, on its day of release. It’s launched upstairs at Galway’s Roisin Dubh tonight,…

  • Premiere: Somadrone – Juniper & Lamplight

    March 1, 2018 - By 

    The second single from his forthcoming sixth studio album, Wellpark Avenue, Juniper & Lamplight by Neil O’Connor AKA Somadrone is a sublime, genre-warping reworking of Simon and Garfunkel’s 1969 song, ‘For Emily Where I May Find Her’. According to O’Connor, what began as a simple reworking, soon turned into a fully orchestrated soundscape where simple electronics weave to and fro. Referencing acts like Scott Walker and Air, harpsichords drive the instrumentation into a lush and psychedelic pool of sounds. Wellpark Avenue is out on April 10. Have a first look at the suitably cosmic visuals for the single below.