• Watch: Rusangano Family – I Know You Know

    June 16, 2017 - By 

    The first single to be unveiled following the release of their Choice Music Prize-winning debut album Let The Dead Bury The Dead, Limerick-based trio Rusangano Family have just unveiled the video for ‘I Know You Know’. Directed, shot and edited by the ever-talented Bob Gallagher “in conspiracy with” some familiar faces in Naoise Roo, Linda O’Connor, Sarah Joy McDermott, Eamonn Elliot, Elaine Mai, Sam Burton, Lisa O’Flynn, Kate O’Shea, David MacNamara, Aoife O’Donoghue and Eavan Brennan, the video is a masterfully understated – yet impressively experimental – visual accompaniment to a track that ‘is about how we all face various challenges in…

  • Stream: Bicep – Aura

    June 15, 2017 - By 

    Hold the phone: London-via-Belfast electronic duo Andy Ferguson and Matt McBriar AKA Bicep are back with one almighty banger. Lifted from the pair’s forthcoming Ninja Tune-released debut album – set to drop on September 1 – ‘Aura’ is a slick, beat-heavy and brilliantly propulsive five-minute effort that aims straight for the sonic jugular.

  • Inbound: Silverbacks

    June 13, 2017 - By 

    Having just released one of our favourite Irish EPs of the year so far, Sink The Fat Moon, Dublin indie rock five-piece Silverbacks chat to Will Murphy about lo-fi aesthetic, the imprint of the 90s on their sound and their plans for the rest of the year. Your sound picks up where the likes of Pavement, The Pixies and other fuzzier 90s groups left off. What about that era appeals to you so much? Everyone in the band is drawn to guitar bands and I quite like when that’s paired with lyrics of a humorous nature. You find bands like…

  • Watch: Malojian – Some New Bones

    June 13, 2017 - By 

    Having released one of the Irish albums of last year in the Steve Albini-produced This Is Nowhere, Stevie Scullion’s Malojian have spent the last while working on its follow-up, the brilliantly-titled Let Your Weirdness Carry You Home. The lead track from that, ‘Some New Bones’ is a spirited return that marries psych-dappled textures and a Motorik groove with swaggering guitar patterns and brief passages of sublime orchestration. Adding another dimension to the release is Colm Laverty’s stellar video, which comprises archive footage from BFI’s digital archive and newly-shot footage from Malojian’s recording sessions at Rathlin East Lighthouse in February. Combined, the…

  • Album Premiere: Bear Worship – WAS

    June 13, 2017 - By 

    Back in January last year, we were pleased to share ‘Our Friends’ by Dublin’s Karl Knuttel AKA Bear Worship. A track we said “evoked everything from the chamber folk balladry of Department of Eagles to the floaty dream-pop of Candy Claws” it marked the arrival of an artist with remarkable potential. Having moved to Shanghai, Barcelona and back to Dublin in the meantime, Knuttel has come good and then some on his sublime, nine-track debut album WAS. A prismatic traipse of melodically rich, compositionally ambitious alt-pop, the likes of the subtly ecstatic ‘Shimmerings’ and ‘Galapagos’ conjure the aforementioned acts, Grizzly Bear,…

  • Stream: Rory Nellis – All I Ever Wanted Was a Chance

    June 13, 2017 - By 

    Set to headline a free Thin Air show at Lavery’s in Belfast on Thursday night, Rory Nellis remains one of our favourite solo artists from these shores. The fifth consecutive single from his forthcoming album, There Are Enough Songs In The World, ‘All I Ever Wanted Was A Chance’ is a full-band alt-pop gem that tussles with disenchantment and apathy in masterful fashion, revealing a darker yet no less incandescent shade to Nellis’ expansive musical palette.

  • Worst – MMXVII EP

    June 12, 2017 - By 

    Featuring members of Wolfbait, Woven Skull, Wild Rocket and other local noiseniks, Worst have just released their debut EP, MMXVII. The five piece are a cauldron into which pours the intuitive esoterica of krautrock, psychedelia, noise and punk. The EP was recorded in the North Strand Centre in late 2016 and mixed by Scan. Limited numbers of cassettes are available from English DIY indie label Riot Season and Swap Meat Records. MMXVII by Worst

  • Watch: Wild Rocket – The Future Echoes

    June 9, 2017 - By 

    Heft, beautiful heft. Hands down one of the country’s finest heavy psych propositions, Dublin quartet Wild Rocket have returned with the fuzzed-out, low-end, bastardised cosmic mastery of ‘The Future Echoes’. Taken from their forthcoming second studio album, Disassociation Mechanics – released via the mighty Art for Blind on July 7 – the track has a brand new (and suitably impressive) video courtesy of Thomas Parkes. Check it out below.

  • Watch: Talos – Contra

    June 7, 2017 - By 

    Having assumingly just dried off from Forbidden Fruit at the weekend, Cork artist Eoin French AKA Talos is back with another sublime audio-visual offering in the form of ‘Contra’. Featuring a video shot in Roundstone, Connemara in Co. Galway by Talos manager and collaborator Brendan Canty, the track is a blossoming burst of electro-pop that doubles up as a highlight fro French’s recently released debut album, Wild Alee. Speaking about the video, Canty said, “We wanted to explore the idea of the uncanny – finding the strange in something ordinary. Using the West of Ireland as a canvas we wanted to…

  • Sun Collective – Sun Collective

    May 30, 2017 - By 

    Lushly arranged Irish eight-piece Sun Collective release their debut album, Snarky Puppy-style, with a show at  on Saturday June 10. Led by songwriter & composer Caimin Gilmore – who plays as the double-bassist with Lisa Hannigan – they’re comprised of classical and jazz musicians from some of Ireland’s leading groups, including Crash Ensemble. Written by Gilmore and Shane Sugrue and crafted over four years at studios in London (SARM West, of Island Records & Miloca Studios), Dublin (Steve Shannon, The Hive) and Australia. The ensemble features string trio, two pianos, three high male voices, double bass & percussion, filtered through the lens…