• Sound of Belfast Programme Launched

    September 27, 2016 - By 

    Promising “live gigs, music industry, awards, learning and community” the programme for this year’s Sound of Belfast was launched earlier this afternoon at Belfast’s Oh Yeah Centre. The nominal successor to Belfast Music Week, the 10 day annual festival is, according to Oh Yeah Music Centre CEO Charlotte Dryden, “a celebration of a great music city impressing audiences with new sounds, providing youth and community with access, encouraging participation through workshops and discussing the sector with industry and artists”. With highlights including Malojian’s This Is Nowhere album launch at the MAC, Robyn G Shiels’ ‘If I Were Thy Demon’ single…

  • Album Premiere: windings – Be Honest and Fear Not

    September 27, 2016 - By 

    It takes a certain amount of gall to open an album with a 7 minute epic culminating in an arena-seeking, solo-drenched crescendo. But in the case of much-loved Limerick alt/folk five-piece windings that gall is something far more akin to collective poise and confidence on ‘Ambivalence Blues’, the lead track from their wonderfully-realised fourth studio album, Be Honest and Fear Not. Four years on from the release of the band’s sublime, Choice Prize-nominated I Am Not The Crow, this new record – recorded at Attica Studios in Donegal with Villagers’ Tommy McLaughlin – bursts forth with the band’s “modus operandi in 2016: if you are…

  • Video Premiere: No Monster Club – Do The Mess Around

    September 23, 2016 - By 

    In case you missed the memo, Dublin’s No Monster Club are catchier than velcro with a cold.  They’re catchier than Avian flu on the 212 to Derry from Belfast on a Friday afternoon. They’re catchier than Brian Wilson spinning a whole stack of Ty Segall records back-to-back for eternity, ad infinitum. You get the picture. With its synopsis of “en route to the big gig, the boys cross paths with a peculiar stranger…” the Bobby Aherne-fronted outfit’s latest visual extravaganza is a veritable feast for the senses. The track itself is one of four new songs on the 7″ EP Where Did You…

  • Inbound: FONDA

    September 23, 2016 - By 

    FONDA are the sound of power pop having grown older and that bit more cynical: imagine Big Star replacing tickets to the dance with overpriced bars and the inevitable morning-after introspection. There’s a sense of displacement and longing that characterises the band’s music, a possible result of the group’s varying backgrounds, with band members Liam O’Connor, Laura Kelly and Patrick Burke hailing from Limerick, Galway and Glasgow respectively. The trio have been performing together since 2015, releasing debut EP Social Services that August. It’s four songs tackled everyday ennui with assured understatement, both in O’Connor’s lyrics and baritone delivery, and…

  • Watch: Meltybrains? – Know My Name

    September 23, 2016 - By 

    Still very much one of the country’s most singular sonic propositions, Dublin five-piece Meltybrains? have returned with ‘Know My Name’, a new track featuring their trademark blend of warped electronic textures and auto-tune sprinkled harmonies. The track is the first single to be taken from the band’s upcoming Kiss Yourself EP, which is released on November 18. Meltybrains? play the following dates in October and November: 01/10/16: Nelliefreds – Dingle 07/10/16: Billie Byrnes – Kilkenny 08/10/16: Connolly’s of Leap – Cork 15/10/16: Roisín Dubh – Galway 31/10/16: KEX Hostel – Reykjavik (Iceland) 05/11/16: Loft – Reykjavik (Iceland) 11/11/16: Eagle Inn – Manchester (UK) 12/11/16: Legain –…

  • Stream: Rejjie Snow – D.R.U.G.S

    September 21, 2016 - By 

    Doubling up as his first release since signing to Lyor Cohen’s 300 Entertainment (home to Fetty Wap, Young Thug et al) Rejjie Snow is streaming his stellar, subtly euphoric new single, ‘D.R.U.G.S’. Featuring a laid-back Rahki-produced beat, it’s a typically slick, blip-heavy three-minutes from the fast-rising Dublin rapper and the lead single from his forthcoming – and long-awaited – debut album.

  • Stream: Shrug Life – Your Body

    September 22, 2016 - By 

    We in the Republic don’t like to talk about the big things, and if our history of women’s rights is anything to go by, we especially don’t like to talk about the big things that involve women. As Dublin gears up for Saturday’s March For Choice, jangle poppers Shrug Life have decided to celebrate the event with their latest single, the 8th amendment baiting ‘Your Body’. Leaving subtly and nuance at the door, the trio launch into their polemic with the jugular strike of the track’s opening line: “Your body is not your body/ It’s the property of church and state”.…

  • Watch: Paul Finan – Clouds

    September 19, 2016 - By 

    Melding pitch-shifting, underwater ambience reminiscent of Mica Levi’s Under The Skin soundtrack with The Radio Dept-esque city somnambulism and sparse guitar lines in the vein of Vincent Gallo and early Tortoise, ‘Clouds’ by Wicklow composer/producer Paul Finan is a perfectly inspired audio-visual traipse far beyond with no intention of return. Finan said, “This is a song about changing ones perspective. Changing the script or the lens. There is far more out their than our senses perceive. I like that. So much more to know. This is a quick visual I put to the song, but there is a short film in the pipeline inspired…

  • Chemistry, Friendship and Respect: An Interview With Redneck Manifesto

    September 18, 2016 - By 

    Ahead of their only show of 2016 at Debarra’s as part of Clonakilty International Guitar Festival on Sunday, September 18, Cathal McBride talks to Matthew Bolger of Dublin instrumental heroes The Redneck Manifesto about new material, the importance of friendship to the band’s dynamic, failed attempts at writing over the internet and what the future holds in store. Hi guys. How’s the new material coming along? The new material is coming together very quickly at the moment. We’ve written 6 new songs in the last 4 months. It’s really amazing to get back in a room with everyone again. We really missed playing together and…

  • EP Stream: Hvmmingbyrd – Know My Name

    September 19, 2016 - By 

    Counting Cocteau Twins, Portishead, Wilson Phillips, Lorde and the Staves amongst their key influences Kildare/Dublin duo Deborah Byrne and Suzette Das AKA Hvmmingbyrd originally started out as a folk-based quintet back in 2013. The confident culmination of their steady and steadily impressive evolution to a self-described “harmonic alt-pop duo”, their new EP, Know My Name, is a polished, hook-laden affair that sees the duo’s weaving vocal interplay dance above carefully-composed, FM-friendly electronic pop passages. Where it’s occasionally a shortcoming for certain acts of their ilk, Byrne and Das ensure simplicity and melodic linearity are at the root of each track on offer here.