• Watch: Katie Kim – Salt

    August 22, 2016 - By 

    Ahead of its release on Friday, October 14, Waterford artist Katie Kim has unveiled a Sean Zissou-directed promo video offering a curious behind the scenes look at the making of her forthcoming album, Salt. Encircling ever-thick like a flourishing curl of mist, its accompanying track evokes everything from William Basinski’s starker works, early Labradford and the that landscape of loss so masterfully soundtracked by the likes of Aidan Baker, Tim Hecker and Stars of The Lid (who play Cork’s Triskel on Saturday, October 8).

  • Stream: Count Vaseline – They Stood Up/Silver Drugs

    August 22, 2016 - By 

    It wouldn’t an overstatement to say when Dublin’s The Mighty Stef called it a day back in May we lost one of the country’s most loved bands. But, with the dust having settled on that chapter, the band’s main man Stefan Murphy has re-emerged with ‘They Stood Up/Silver Drugs’, two tracks that will be given away to those order his forthcoming debut album as Count Vaseline. Written, performed, produced, edited and mastered by Murphy with assistance from Gerritt Hessler and Peter Furgiuele, Yo No Soy Marinero  is, according to the Count Vaseline Bandcamp page accompanying the release “a complex dream in which The Count wishes for…

  • Stream: Slomatics – Rat Chariot

    August 22, 2016 - By 

    With their admirable aim of crushing everything in sight with their monumentally heavy – surprisingly bassist-less – brand of sludge-doom, Belfast trio Slomatics will release their fifth studio album, Future Echo Returns, via Black Bow Records on September 2. The latest reveal of what to expect from that (and it’s safe to say no chins are likely to be rubbed) ‘Rat Chariot’ – featuring vocals from ex-Conan bassist/vocalist Phil Coumbe – bears all the alchemical traits of their flattening, fuzzed out craft. Ear-drum batteringly brilliant stuff. David Majury from the band said, “This was one of the first songs we wrote for Future Echo Returns and in…

  • Watch: Majia Sofia – Stains

    August 19, 2016 - By 

    In Novemeber of last year, Galway native and then London based musician Maija Sofia released her captivatingly stark The Sugar Sea EP, a collection of four icy, brittle folk tunes with a lo-fi crispness purveying throughout. Having since relocated to Dublin, the songwriter this week revealed the brand new video for ‘Stains’. Directed by Ciarán O’Brien, the video shows Sofia on an overcast Sandymount beach, the natural greyness of the early morning scene complimenting the lyrical and musical themes of the song which she has described as confronting “. . . the universal feelings of inadequacy and insecurity that come with being in a…

  • Stream: Extra Fox – Ain’t That The Way

    August 9, 2016 - By 

    Dublin producer Neil Adams AKA Extra Fox was last on our radar back in February with ‘Lunar Float’, a spectral single we called “nigh on onomatopoetic”. With a rare live show expected to be announced over the next while, Adams has returned with the equally strong ‘Ain’t That The Way’, a brilliantly bobbing slice of electro-pop that, by virtue of its restrained, gradually layered repetition, burrows its way inside very nicely indeed.

  • Watch: FONDA – Dreaming

    August 4, 2016 - By 

    Few things can compete with that fuzzy feeling you get discovering a band – particularly one close to home – that just instantly tick all the boxes and hit home on first listen. A three-piece garage band from Limerick, Galway and Glasgow, FONDA are one of those bands. Having drawn comparisons to the likes of Crystal Stilts and the Go Betweens, the three-piece recorded their debut EP, Social Services with So Cow’s Brian Kelly last Summer. Now they’re back with ‘Dreaming’, a wonderful, perfectly understated new single that wields hard truths and major-minor chord transitions with a knack normally reserved for acts that have been around the…

  • EP Stream: Dott – Beverly Baldwin

    August 3, 2016 - By 

    Long-time TTA favourites, Dott first appeared on our radar back in January of 2012 via a demo of ‘Leave Tonight’. Four years a bit on, the Galway garage-pop quartet are back with a four-track EP distilling exactly what has kept us firmly interested in their trajectory to date. Set for release via NYC’s Mirror Universe Tapes on Friday, Beverly Baldwin was written and recorded by Anna and Evan of the band during a year spent in Toronto following their marriage in 2015. Titled after the part of Toronto where they recorded the EP in their tiny apartment, the release marries subtle…

  • Inbound: Slouch

    August 2, 2016 - By 

    Perhaps it’s just us, but we’re noticing a serious – and welcome – islandwide resurgence on the scuzzy alternative rock front as of late, with Dublin way ahead of the pack. This month, it’s young trio Slouch, who come from Knocklyon, on the outskirts of the city, just before the mountains – and they sound like it. They released their debut EP, Feminine Elbows, last year, which boasts the sound of a desert contained within a garage in the ‘burbs. They’re carried with the just-loose-enough, gut-led rhythmic swagger of Physical Graffiti-era Zeppelin with the influences of a subsequent three decades…

  • 10 Years of CF Records

    July 29, 2016 - By 

    Sea Pinks‘ main man and CF Records founder Neil Brogan reflects upon 10  years of the Belfast-based independent record label. Ten years ago I was living in London and at something of a loose end. In my boredom I thought it might be fun to start up a label. This was in the distant era of Myspace supremacy. It seems quaint to think of it now but it was the first time DIY bands and labels from all over the place started to connect online and for a brief moment it felt kind of liberating. I was excessively shy about my…

  • Inbound: Lauren Bird

    July 21, 2016 - By 

    Hailing from Strabane in County Tyrone, Lauren Bird is is an artist steadily making a name for herself within the Irish singer-songwriter scene. In May 2014 Bird – or McGeogh to the family postman – uploaded her self-titled debut EP onto Bandcamp, and within two days it had hit the number one spot on the site’s acoustic chart. Bird’s affiliation with the world of music began after she took up the viola aged 7, and from there she gravitated toward the guitar, piano, drums, bass and finally the ukulele. It’s the latter instrument that is the main focus of her…