• Facilitating Connection: An Interview With Fears

    December 15, 2020 - By 

    We can almost count on one hands the acts who’ve truly pushed against boundaries and thrived in the most challenging year for creatives in modern history. One such person is Constance Keane, who – aside from recently reuniting feminist punk act M(h)aol – has started her own record label (TULLE), made some of the most interactive underground radio shows in Ireland, performed several live sets, released single ‘two_’ with top-notch remixes, and today she rounds her year out with the release of ‘tonnta’. The song and video have already started to gain global traction, with plays on KCRW and NTS, and had a bespoke Dublin-wide scavenger hunt for a PR campaign, complete…

  • Video Premiere: Arthuritis – Left Over Seas

    January 31, 2020 - By 

    Experimental electronic auteur Arthuritis has released his first new music of 2020, the jarringly spacious, let claustrophobic second single from his new Ornament of the World EP, ‘Left Over Seas’. The masterfully edited 3D-animated blend of the real and digital was created by Aodhagán O Riabhaigh, accompanying Arthuritis’ mesmerisingly glitch-laden work to a tee. Continuing on the conversation opened in the abstract anti-capitalistic satire of previous single ‘Condo‘, Arthur says “the single deals with the separation in our society between those in corporate business/celebrities/etc and the average person and how either could easily be in each others position. I like to try to see from other perspectives,…

  • Watch: Shrug Life – You’re Such a Good Looking Woman

    October 29, 2019 - By 

    It’s true. Indeed, it’s positively ironclad: there is no show like a Joe show, but Shrug Life, we reckon, give him a run for his money. Yes, Dublin’s most incisive and impossibly earworming indie-leaning trio are back with a cover of ‘You’re Such a Good Looking Woman’, the Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood-penned song that the one, the only Joseph Francis Robert “Joe” Dolan made his own back in 1970. Now, I know what you’re thinking: on paper, this probably shouldn’t work. But we’re not talking about paper here, are we? No – we are referring, in fact, to the medium of song.…

  • Video Premiere: Jake Regan – Unfair

    September 25, 2019 - By 

    When Jake Regan‘s debut single ‘Over It’ came out, we said he’d “instantly staked his claim as one of the country’s most promising and distinctive songwriting voices”, and new double A-side ‘Unfair / Stay’ compounds that fact – with the former’s video out today. It’s a perfect 3 minute, scuzzed-out power-pop song about the would-be artist’s reality crash-landing that deftly navigates the tightrope between sincere & pointedly self-aware. Based on the oh-so-relatable D.I.Y. artist’s perspective, Regan tells us more: “The song came from frustration at the stratospheric recent success of the Fontaines, and the weird flurry of identical bands that followed them. There are so many angry young men…

  • Video Premiere: Not I – Please, No Kindness, Please

    August 15, 2019 - By 

    Being a consistently arresting two-piece is no easy task – not least when the majority mines along the garage-blues-punk spectrum with little deviation. Dublin duo Not I – formerly Nervvs – take a hard left into something far more sophisticated by virtue of their grasp of minimalism, and seemingly telepathic interplay between vocalist/guitarist Thomas O’Reilly & drummer Ian Meagher. The title track of their debut album is an immediate primer for the band, O’Reilly’s sardonic, kitchen sink worldview screams for meaning in the mundane; “It’s a song about the struggle to make art and not get lost in the swamp of the day-to-day, resolving with an…

  • Watch: Ten Ton Slug – Hunting Ground

    August 6, 2019 - By 

    Galway sludge metal quartet Ten Ton Slug have long been masterfully crafting some of the finest riff-led, crushing metal on the island and with international slots amassing, their debut album is set for release next year. The first single to be taken from the LP – and their first release since 2017’s Blood and Slime – is the  ‘Hunting Ground’, and if its sonic pulverisation is anything to go by, 2020 looks to further galvanise the band’s status. The single was recorded & produced by Ciaran Culhane, and its occultist, paranoia-inducing video was filmed at Cavan’s stately See House, directed and edited by Pádraig Conaty. Check out more on…

  • Watch: Tandem Felix – Nightclub (I Sold My Soul To The Devil)

    July 25, 2019 - By 

    Perennial TTA faves and Americana songwriting masters Tandem Felix are back with their first single in two years, ‘Nightclub (I Sold My Soul To The Devil)’. Pristine slide parts and curveballing synth moments accompany the “tale of a boy who makes a Faustian pact; exchanging his soul for the means to spend every remaining night inside a grotty club”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the band have one-upped themselves once more – ‘Nightclub’ offers a clarity of vision and progression of their country-informed storytelling, exciting us for what’s to come on their long-awaited debut album, Rom-Com. Songwriter David Tapley had this to say of the song: “Over three nights, over three…

  • Video Premiere: Fears – Fabric

    April 19, 2019 - By 

    A few weeks back, we described ‘Fabric’, the latest single from minimalist electronic pop artist Fears, as “an unfurling, self-produced tale of entanglement and escape that finds the Belfast/Dublin musician and producer at her most emphatic to date”. It’s the first collaboration of the year for Constance Keane, who continues down the audio-visual path with the same complete level of authorship that led to support vision justifiably supported by Moving On Music’s – NI’s foremost exponents of culturally vital music – Emerging Artist Programme. The visual component to ‘Fabric’ was directed by Daniel Butler, who had this to say of their partnership on the short film: “The idea came from a…

  • Watch: Robocobra Quartet – You’ll Wade

    May 1, 2018 - By 

    Very few things excite us more than the prospect of new music from (by far) one of Ireland’s difficult, and genuine, pioneers, Robocobra Quartet. Ahead of second album, Plays Hard To Get, out on May 25th, the band have just released their video for ‘You’ll Wade’. We’ve already covered the song – “Culminating in a cry of “Everything is old news” before petering out in a plume of funereal ambience, its recording and composition distils the band’s ongoing, masterfully unconventional approach” – but the video’s conceit is strong enough to warrant another visit. Shot by Colin Armstrong & edited by Robocobra leader Chris Ryan, it’s…

  • Watch: Feather Beds – Headache Dreams

    April 17, 2018 - By 

    Dublin’s Michael Orange AKA Feather Beds‘ 2017 album Blooming was a record we described as “a addictive, warm listen. Perfect to accompany blustery autumn walks as the evenings draw in, or to course through the room as you unwind by a fireplace.” Now, over half a year later and as we enter into the summer months with torrents of water under the bridge since, it feels apt to reflect on an album that, while understated, remains a rich, valuable and enticing listen that reveals its intricacy more with each play through. With the sharing of a new video for LP track ‘Headache Dreams’,…