• Video Premiere: Carried By Waves – Resonation Day

    April 21, 2016 - By 

    Cork based producer Ronan McCann AKA Carried By Waves releases his second LP Resolute this Friday 22nd of April.  Following on from his 2012 debut full length Softly Held Together the producer and multi-instrumentalist take spacious, colourful electronics and post-rock elements aplenty and continues to create a sound that could be best compared to the likes of Aereogramme and God Is An Astronaut but which holds enough individually and heart to stand steadfast and confident. To coincide with the album’s release, the producer has debuted the video for leading track Resonation Day. With its orbiting guitars and cinematic pianos and keys the track’s instrumentation is very reminiscent of…

  • Stream: Colour Canyon – Home

    April 20, 2016 - By 

    Michelle Considine & Harry Bookless of Dublin indie pop outfit Little xs for Eyes have unveiled ‘Home’, their first original single under the name Colour Canyon. ‘Home’ follows their Record Store Gay cover of ‘Open Your Heart‘ by The Human League, with the duo having been working on new original material in the months since. The synths are very much in soft focus on this dusk-emulating slice of ’80s disco-pop, with swirling, verb-drenched vocals that would make Elizabeth Fraser envious. ‘Home’ is out now. Stream it below:

  • Stream: El Grey – My Names A, Your Names Zed

    April 20, 2016 - By 

    Well this is pretty mind blowing – Bray-based singer-songwriter project El Grey has released an 18-minute stream-of-consciousness odyssey. Despite being known to be one for creating atmospheric pop soundscapes, cinematic in scope, her ambition had never reached heights of magnitude until ‘My Names A, Your Names Zed’ – available to purchase on Bandcamp. The recording was completed with no pre-production or strict composition in place beforehand, and was recorded live in one take. Much like El Grey’s process in writing – alternatively: channelling – the song, it’s one to sit back and let happen to you, as it accomplishes that feat of tapping into something deeper entirely. It’s…

  • Stream: Roisin Murphy – Mastermind

    April 19, 2016 - By 

    Having just announced her new album, Take Her Up To Monto – due for release on July 8 through Play It Again Sam – Roisin Murphy has unveiled the LP’s lead track, ‘Mastermind’. The album was recorded along with long-time collaborator Eddie Stevens, during the same sessions as its predecessor, the Choice & Mercury Prize-nominated Hairless Toys. Never one to ignore the bigger picture of her art, Murphy is also to self-direct each video from the record. Stream ‘Mastermind’ below:

  • Stream: Pleasure Beach – Magic Mountain

    April 18, 2016 - By 

    Belfast’s Pleasure Beach have had an interesting first year of life. Having garnered almost immediate attention with their debut single ‘Go’ the band were left to cut their teeth on the live circuit with eyes and ears already planted firmly on them. The five piece took to their high-profile support slots with precociousness and charm despite their sets often comprising of 50% covers. Their debut EP Dreamer to the Dawn was a dazzlingly colourful release with ‘Go’ playing on the same field as The War on Drugs and Bruce Springsteen while ‘Hayley’ was a delicate, sleepy number that radiated with an emotional “soundtrack ready” charm. The band has…

  • Watch: Zaska- Got To Go

    April 19, 2016 - By 

    Fancy a game of Countdown? Of course you do. Dublin composer and bandleader Max Zaska yesterday debuted the brand new video for his most recent release ‘Got to Go’. It’s a soulful number that shows Zaska and his troupe of supremely talented musicians continuing on the same trajectory as previous releases In Your Own Sweet Time and Different Light, crafting songs that are effortlessly accessible while still maintaining satisfying and adept jazz technicality. ‘Got To Go’ is another fine example of the joyous work of the bandleader and guitarist as he puppeteers the band in a smooth, charming dance of soul, funk, blues and…

  • Stream: Feather – Like No Other

    April 14, 2016 - By 

    The varying incarnations of Emma Garnett’s Feather project have featured casts of collaborations from multi-instrumentalist Ben ‘Bix’ McKenna (of Meltybrains?), afro-inflected musciains RiZa, iZem and Manden Express, to Come on Live Long‘s Louise Gaffney. In a similar way to her sister Loah, Garnett has been patient in her unveiling of music to the world, preferring to wait until something is as perfect and as ready as it can be before allowing it to be heard. Her latest offering, in collaboration with an eight-piece band, is the brand new single ‘Like No Other which is expected to be on an EP released…

  • Laura Gibson – Empire Builder

    April 11, 2016 - By 

    There aren’t many labels in popular music that come with as many unspoken assumptions as ‘singer-songwriter’ does. As cultural archetypes go, it’s uniquely malleable and somewhat slippery – images are conjured both of introverted Moleskine-clutching creatives & street-busking dilettantes,  haunting cafés as they wrestle with personal demons. It’s a label that could be reasonably applied to artists across a broad spectrum of creativity/popularity/influence while still retaining its diagnostic value – Nick Drake and Ben Howard are both ‘singer-songwriters’ in some sense or another. There also tends to be a smuggled expectation among listeners that the songwriting of a ‘singer-songwriter’ will…

  • Watch: Molossus – Sine, Spiky & Orcas

    April 11, 2016 - By 

    Comprised of members of The Jimmy Cake, Hands Up Who Want To Die and Percolator, Dublin five-piece Molossus – formerly Art Slug – are set to record their debut album later in the year. The self-proclaimed sound of “an owl and a bear fighting over a mason jar full of electricity”, the band have featured in the latest installment Sean Zissou’s Practice Tapes in the form of three-song video compilation of tracks ‘Sine’, ‘Spiky’ and ‘Ocras’, filmed at Guerilla Sounds. Traversing the post-rock gamut, this material sits cross-legged somewhere between Portishead, Jessamine and Slint; brilliantly brooding and yearning forth in a tangible attempt to clasp…

  • Bitchin Bajas & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties

    April 8, 2016 - By 

    The music of Will Oldham aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billie has always had a rusty quality to it, as if his songs were assembled with nuts and bolts that rattled as they moved, always slightly out of place yet somehow holding everything together. This has, by and large, lent to his previous releases having a consolatory quality, as if their rickety composition and his own quivering, fragile vocals provide some comforting projection of listeners’ most emotionally brittle, bare moments. That comforting aspect that has pervaded Oldham’s previous output has been given a far more meditative twist on his latest collaboration, one…