• Video Premiere: Malojian – Ambulance Song

    The highly-anticipated follow-up to last year’s Steve Albini-produced This Is Nowhere, Let Your Weirdness Carry You Home by Malojian was partly recorded in a lighthouse off the coast of Northern Ireland. Speaking of the release, the band’s main man Stephen Scullion said, “A few months ago the British Film Institute and Northern Ireland screen contacted me to see if I’d be interested in playing a gig at a coastal location, with coastal-themed visuals from their archive to be used as a backdrop. This sounded very cool to me and the more I thought about it, I began to get really into the…

  • Watch: Malojian – Some New Bones

    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…

  • Watch: ‘Document: A Film About Malojian’

    If there’s one thing we could all take from Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s 2004 Metallica film Some Kind of Monster it’s that fly-on-the-wall, “in-the-studio” documentaries can – given the wrong variables – capture a very unique kind of tension and uncomfortable atmosphere. Something of the polar opposite of that (in more ways that one) Colm Laverty’s exceptional Document: A Film About Malojian captures a band whose chemistry and compatibility as a unit is, in itself, endearing, entertaining and hugely watchable. Featuring the Stevie Scullion-fronted band recording their exquisite third studio album This Is Nowhere with the towering Steve Albini at his Chicago studio…

  • Video Premiere: Malojian – This Is Nowhere (Aren’t You Lonely)

    The title track from the band’s stellar, Steve Albini-produced, Northern Ireland Music Prize-nominated third album, ‘This Is Nowhere’ by Malojian confines within its three and a half minutes precisely what has always enthralled us when it comes to the Belfast band’s craft. As with many of the tracks on This Is Nowhere – which is available to buy now via Kilkenny’s mighty Rollercoaster Records – this is music that is born when the soul seeks solace through song in a world that doesn’t always reciprocate the simple hopes and wishes of good people. Featuring footage shot both at home, but mainly at Albini’s Electrical…

  • Far From Nowhere: An Interview With Malojian

    Having released Southlands last year to critical acclaim, Malojian’s subsequent announcement that they’d be jetting off to Chicago to record the follow-up, This Is Nowhere, with the illustrious Steve Albini was just cause for much excitement within the NI music community. Now, on the cusp of its release, we pinned down Stevie Scullion – Malojian’s driving force – to get the scoop on recording with Albini, the writing of the new album, and more. Words by Aaron Drain. Photos by Colm Laverty Catch Malojian at the following Irish shows over the next three months. October 7: The Fat Gherkin (Solo…

  • Video Premiere: Malojian – I’ll Be Alright

    Featuring footage of the Stevie Scullion-fronted band recording their forthcoming new album, This Is Nowhere, with Steve Albini in Chicago early this year, the video for ‘I’ll Be Alright’ by Malojian captures a band very much in their element. Also featuring Joe McGurgan on bass and Michael Mormecha (also of Mojo Fury et al.) on drums, their journey was fully captured by Belfast-based photographer and The Thin Air contributor Colm Laverty; make sure to keep an eye out for the full-length reveal of that soon. The lead track from This Is Nowhere, ‘I’ll Be Alright’ is Malojian at their sharpest. With beautiful harmonies…

  • An Aural Aurora: Northern Lights on Tour

    With words from Aaron Drain and photos by Colm Laverty and Mickey Rooney in Belfast and Limavady, we go on tour with Northern Irish folk collaboration tour Northern Nights AKA Matt McGinn, Ben Glover and Stevie Scullion. Black Box, Belfast The hottest, sunniest, most welcome day of the year so far and it’s an afternoon of thoroughbred local music that’ll prove the final piece in this most glorious of puzzles. The turnout is overwhelming – a sold-out show for the boys making up ‘Northern Lights’ is a particularly poignant factor given that this afternoon will not only be the penultimate CQAF show, but the…

  • An Interview with Northern Lights: Ben Glover, Malojian and Matt McGinn

    Under the collective guise of Northern Lights, three of the North’s very finest singer-songwriters in Ben Glover, Stevie Scullion AKA Malojian (pictured) and Matt McGinn are gearing up for the second half of their touring dates right across the country. Each unto their own a revelatory craftsman of folk and Americana, their teaming up is most definitely an inspired proposition. Ahead of more dates at the start May (see below), Caolan Coleman chats to the threesome about the birth and impetus of the Northern Lights project, their individual trajectories and endeavours, as well as their plans for 2016. Wednesday, May 4: Roe Valley Arts Centre,…

  • Premiere: Malojian – Crease of Your Smile

    Having released one of our favourite Irish albums of the year in Southlands back in May, it’d be something of an understatement to say Lurgan singer-songwriter Stevie Scullion AKA Malojian has had a busy and quite brilliant year. As well as being nominated for the 2015 NI Music Prize, Scullion has keep us on eager toes with the steady release of three singles, the equally sublime ‘Bathtub Blues’, ‘No Alibis’ and ‘Communion Girls’, over the last nine months. The fourth and final of the year, the masterfully meditative lullaby folk of ‘Crease of Your Smile’ might well be our favourite of the lot, a…