• EP Premiere: Bouts – Unlearn

    February 29, 2016 - By 

    Self-described as a “pop-grunge noise rock band with an inherent, unashamed attachment to big pop hooks” Dublin indie rock quartet Bouts have well and truly lived up to that explication over the last few years. Having fully arrived with their stupendous debut album Nothing Good Gets Away back in 2013, today marks the release of a five-track EP that sees their craft as downright convincing as ever, in spite of two members living overseas. Recorded at various points in 2015, at no point during the process where all members present together – a fact that both underlines the studio efforts of John Murphy and Shane…

  • Stream: Extra Fox – Lunar Float

    February 26, 2016 - By 

    Having premiered his subtly euphoric single ‘Palm of Gold’ back in November (stream it here) Dublin’s Neil Adams AKA Extra Fox has returned with nigh on onomatopoeic new track, ‘Lunar Float’. A drifting, typically synth-driven effort full of mellow restraint, it induces a netherworld of loose, burrowing oblivion over three and a half minutes. Stream/download ‘Lunar Float’ via Soundcloud below.

  • Watch: Patrick Freeman – POWER

    February 26, 2016 - By 

    Dublin based musician Patrick Freeman‘s 2015 album Cherry Blossom Fall was a terrific debut. Recorded at Big Skin HQ in Cork where Waterford natives O Emperor have been operating from for the past couple of years, there is a similar sound permeating through his music; a blend of folk and psych rock with sprinklings of surfy Beach Boys elements there to make the whole experience all quite dreamy. Not to mention vocals that were very subtly touched up with distortion or phasers to add even more intrigue to already deft lyrics that veer on the tongue-in-cheek side. Even more tongue-in-cheek still is…

  • Daithi – Tribes EP

    February 25, 2016 - By 

    With each passing release in the past couple of years, Galway based electronic producer Daithi has showcased a gradual but very definite increase in competency, confidence and determination in the music he is making; overtly melodic and bubbly electronica that has never failed at being colourful. The fault with his releases up to this point however always seemed to lie in his reliance on letting the equipment claim almost total ownership of the music. While the tracks were always evidently loaded with talent and careful construction, there was often too much of a feeling that the artist was clamouring for…

  • Watch: Ryan Vail – Wounds

    February 24, 2016 - By 

    Dropped when we were at crazy peak deadline for the latest issue of our magazine three weeks ago, we’ve been all but waking up in cold sweats in the middle of the night, terribly shame-ridden and sunken of pallor having missed the chance to share our thoughts on ‘Wounds’ by Derry’s Ryan Vail. Set to release his long-awaited debut album, For Every Silence, this Spring, Vail’s balmy, synth-laden electronica has long ensured his rightful ranking as one of our favourite Irish acts; each release betraying a confidence and command of his craft that always hinted at something sensational in the making. Essentially confirming that fact, ‘Wounds’ is classic Vail but with…

  • Video Premiere: Left With Pictures – Terra Firma

    February 22, 2016 - By 

    Having made fans out of BBC 6 Music’s Gideon Coe and Lauren Laverne amongst others, the music of London orchestral pop ensemble Left With Pictures is an exquisite proposition. Belying the classically-trained trio’s command of contemplative, layered textures, upon which vocals dance and harmonies entwine, their new single ‘Terra Firma’ summons a wall of gently swelling strings, ghostly church-pew background vocals and a gorgeous looped keyboard motif, evoking the quiet sanctity of Wild Beasts at their most ruminating. Taken from the band’s forthcoming album Afterlife – set for release on April 29 – have yourself an exclusive first peek at the video for the track, made by Jonathan…

  • Stream: Badlands – Echo

    February 22, 2016 - By 

    Badlands started off life as a duo, releasing an EP entitled Battles Within in 2012, before eventually becoming the solo project of Malmö-based musician and producer Catharina Jaunviksna. Things were quiet for a while after that first EP, but picked up last year as she began to air new material while touring in Ireland with Somadrone. Then everyone’s attention snapped back to Badlands when she dropped the first new single ‘Caramisou’, five and a half minutes of swooping synth-rush crafted into a soaring, widescreen soundscape. Her latest single, ‘Echo’, is a continuation of that streak. ‘Echo’, is an exercise in split…

  • Stream: VOXX – Glamour Puss

    February 22, 2016 - By 

    The wonderfully camp late 90s Bowie homage Velvet Goldmine credited Oscar Wilde as the original glam rock alien, so it seems appropriate that after the Star Man’s passing another Dubliner seems determined to pick up the flamboyant rock n roll flame. Enter VOXX frontman Conor Thornton, whose look channels so many androgynous rock legends he appears like the product of one of 70s Mick Jagger’s especially wild orgies. Debut single ‘Glamour Puss’ is an assuredly cocky introduction to the band: featuring a fabulously filthy Josh Homme-worthy riff, the band pile on T-Rex handclaps and sleazy piano to take the track into gloriously trashy retro nirvana. Thornton’s…

  • Watch: Everything Shook – Bed Stain

    February 21, 2016 - By 

    Almost a year on from the release of their debut EP, Argento Nights, Dublin experimental electronic trio Everything Shook have returned with new single ‘Bed Stain’. Propelled by warping, skittering synth lines and chopping rhythms, the track – recorded and mixed at 6611 Studios in Brooklyn, New York -finds Robyn Bromfield, Jessica Kennedy and Áine Stapleton in dauntless spirits, both audibly and visually. A song about “mistakes, regret and the morning after the night before”, the video for the track – directed by the band – “unfolds between two locations, juxtaposing sombre scenes of the morning with flashbacks of disenchantment, discord…

  • No Monster Club – I Feel Magic

    February 19, 2016 - By 

    Magic conjures up images of David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear, David Blaine looking off-his-face with an eye drawn on his palm and saying ‘Shazam’ into a GMTV camera or even an uncle asking you to pick a card, any card, from a messily shuffled deck. In Ireland ‘I feel magic’ is a way of saying that we’re doing brilliantly. That we’re absolutely flying. On top of our game. Although there seems to be more than a hint of irony in that title here on Bobby Aherne’s twelfth release under the No Monster Club banner. He maintains the nursery rhyme-esque beats but gone are the…