• Irish Tracks of the Week – August 28th

    From the sledgehammer riffing of Shifting, electronics of Son Zept and Marcus Woods, indie-pop returns by Æ MAK, Catalan and We Cut Corners, to arguably Ireland’s most exciting rising hip-hop star in Denise Chaila, check out this week’s round-up of best new Irish music. Denise Chaila – Holy Grail Son Zept – Lush Lab B by Son Zept Æ MAK – I Dance In The Kitchen (feat. Seba Safe) Shifting – Big Ed It Was Good by Shifting SENU – Jetlag 2 Catalan – Fortune We Cut Corners – Muscle Memory Muscle Memory EP by We Cut Corners Marcus Woods – Repose Tactics Maria Doyle Kennedy – Keeps…

  • Forbidden Fruit 2019 – Day One

    It’s about two in the afternoon and the sun is peeking out from behind a blanket of clouds to kiss the grounds of Kilmainham with intermittent drops of light and heat. The first few punters are entering the fields surrounding Ireland’s Museum of Modern Art for Forbidden Fruit, a weekend festival that showcases local and international talent for thousands amongst the idyllic surroundings of the IMMA grounds. Opening up the festival on the District Stage is a local artist: April, an RnB-inspired singer-songwriter from County Kildare. Being the first act of the weekend is always a daunting task, it is…

  • This Month In Irish Music: January

    In the first of a new regular series, Colin Gannon rounds up the very best Irish tracks released of the month just gone, featuring SOAK, Arvo Party, ELLL, Problem Patterns, James Joys, Sister Ghost, Gadget & The Cloud , Maria Somerville and more. Problem Patterns — Allegedly In a month where the R&B musician R. Kelly—after painfully long years of swerving accountability for persistent, unsettling claims of heinous abuses—may finally have his day of reckoning in a court, new Belfast-based feminist punk group Problem Patterns’ snarling debut single, ‘Allegedly’, lands a certain potency. The word allegedly—itself a necessary adverb used in copy…

  • Marcus Woods shares fast-paced electronic cut, ‘Saturn V’

    We first became aware Marcus Woods back in 2017 around the release of his polychrome via the ever elusive Wooden Spoons imprint. The now tape exclusive EP of self-proclaimed ‘Chill Trash’ was a fine introduction to the Dublin producer whose atmospheric, lo-fi beats have seen him evolving to be one of the country’s most sought after young producers. Last October, he released his debut digital album, demo, which you can check out here. Now, the 18-year-old beatmaker is embarking on his 2019 release schedule, launching proceedings with the fast-paced and percussive electronics of ‘Saturn V’. Shared via his own Burner Records, the track is named after…

  • Stream: Marcus Woods – Frequency

    Clondalkin’s Marcus Woods – Ryan Cullen to his mates – is a 17 year old beatmaker who has coined his own genre: The charmingly self-deprecative “Chill Trash”. Modest, lo-fi hip hop beats combed with dusty melodies and plumes of mood make up the bulk of his limited output to date, with his dreamy for you mixtape having landed just six months ago. Cullen’s use of light sampling and a sincere sense of bedroom production value creates a sort of melancholy that is worth relishing in. He is set to release his next tape polychrome on November 24 via Wooden Spoons (the same bunch who put out one…