• Watch: Girls Names – Reticence

    The cover stars of our final magazine issue of 2015, Girls Names have recently returned from yet another successful trek across Europe, touring their seriously accomplished new album, Arms Around a Vision. Aside from a show planned at Belfast’s Black Box on December 19, the Cathal Cully-fronted band will lay low until the New Year before setting off on another European mini-tour, culminating in three Irish dates and SXSW 2016. Tiding us over until then, the band have unveiled the Matthew Reed-directed video for ‘Reticence’, a highlight from their aforementioned third studio album in four years. Mirroring the song’s turbid bent and clanging power,…

  • Watch: Myles Manley – Slip Into The Sea

    A nonpareil artist very much operating on his own creative axis, Myles Manley positively inveigled us back in 2012 with his self-titled debut EP. In the three years since, he has maintained that power to intrigue and ensnare with a trickle of releases including mini-album More Songs, released back in February. The latest single to be released from that, the somnambulant ‘Slip Into The Sea’ is both the closer and our personal favourite track from that release, conjuring a submersing netherworld that Manley can lay claim to as czar. Directed, film and edited by Michael Higgins, watch the video for Slip into the Sea and check out upcoming Myles Manley tour dates supporting…

  • Watch: Wizards Of Firetop Mountain – Ain’t Gonna Lose

    Some bands – and some considerably better than others of their ilk – are well and truly compelled by the riff. Having recently melted the face of your writer supporting Japanese psych gurus Acid Mother’s Temple at Belfast’s Voodoo recently, Dublin rockers Wizards of Firetop Mountain are one such act. Set to launch their self-titled debut album at Dublin’s Bello Bar tomorrow (Friday, November 27) night, the band are comprised of members of some of the city’s finest pioneering underground bands including Zom, No Spill Blood, Dread Soverign and others. At the epicentre of seismic, hat-tipping craft is a combined worship of the…

  • Watch: Good Friend – The Return of Fionn & The Fianna

    Currently based in Newcastle, North Coast alt-punk three-piece Good Friend have grown in leaps and bounds over the last couple of years. Having spent 2015 recording their forthcoming debut album, Ride The Storm, the Adam Carroll-fronted band have just re-emerged with ‘The Return of Fionn & The Fianna’, an equally urgent and anthemic new track that features on compilation Paper + Plastick; Welcome to the UK. Re-adapting stories from Irish Mythology to a contemporary context, it’s a strong and purposeful cut hinting at promising things for Ride The Storm. Check out the video for the track below.

  • Watch: Sea Pinks – Depth of Field

    First shared last month – just over a year on from the release of the stellar Dreaming Tracks – we reckoned ‘Depth of Field’ by Belfast three-piece Sea Pinks was “yet another masterfully sanguine slice of melancholia from the Neil Brogan-fronted band, relating ambivalence and doubt in ways they mastered many moons ago.” Now the track – one of our favourite Sea Pinks’ tracks to date – has a video, which you can check out below. Sea Pinks’ new album, Soft Days, will be released via CF Records on January 8.

  • Premiere: VerseChorusVerse & David Lyttle – Have Some Soul

    Sticking to your guns and carving out your own path has many payoffs, least of all when it’s rewarded with some much-warranted recognition. Released via Lyte Records on Friday, Say & Do by North Coast singer-songwriter/ex-And So I Watch You From Afar guitarist Tony Wright AKA VerseChorusVerse and jazz maestro/drummer extraordinaire David Lyttle is a wonderfully instinctive and stripped-back collaboration that has seen the pair climb the charts this week, namely currently at 24 in the UK singer-songwriter charts, 28 in the UK new releases and no. 19 in the Irish charts. In an age when of varyingly soul-destroying, blitzkrieg-like PR campaigns, the duo’s…

  • Watch: Rachael Boyd – Esoteric Path (Live)

    Released in tandem with the single itself, Belfast contemporary/electronic musician Rachael Boyd has unveiled a live video of her performing ‘Esoteric Path’, a wonderfully woven post-classical mesh of piano, strings and enveloping rhythmic patterns. Written, performed and produced entirely by Boyd, it’s yet another brilliantly arranged and becalming effort from the artist, who last caught our attention back in February with live, four-track release Recordings.  As well as the studio and live video versions of the track, Belfast-based producer James Bruce AKA OAKS has also offered up an impressive remix of the track. Stream it along with the original and watch the…

  • Stream: Vogelbat – Miw (feat. Sad Mermaid)

    Evoking the likes of Arca and FKA Twigs in equal measure, Berlin-based Kilkenny producer David Sheenan AKA Vogelbat has unveiled a brilliantly burrowing new track, ‘Miw’. Featuring masterfully warped vocals courtesy of singer-songwriter Sad Mermaid – also based in the German capital – it serves as a strong introduction for newcomers to Sheenan’s aesthetic, in which “100% of [his] music created on a laptop with no external MIDI plugins, solid state synths or traditional instruments (as they “all reside [back] in Ireland”). Stream the track via Soundcloud below.

  • Stream: The Mad Dalton – The Little Belfry

    Recorded with the likes of Michael Mormecha of Mojo Fury and Jonny Woods of R51 – and launched in style on the Belfast Barge at the weekend – The Little Belfry is the debut EP from Belfast-based singer-songwriter Peter Sumadh AKA The Mad Dalton. A five-track release of ruminating, Americana-tinged folk in the vein of Wilco, Pedro The Lion, Sparklehorse and Ron Sexsmith, it’s a wonderfully-realised release bursting with carefully-crafted pathos and soul. Here’s hoping release number two from Sumadh – an artist of Scots/Canadian heritage – doesn’t incur quite as long a gestation period. Stream/download The Little Belfry below. The Little…

  • Watch: Candice Gordon – Smoke in the Air

    With vocals evoking the likes of Anna Calvi and Grace Slick to Nico and PJ Harvey, Berlin-based Dublin artist Candice Gordon fuses garage, psych and rock with classical and jazz influences in an irresistible brume of quasi-Gothic space. Set for release via Proper Octopus Records on Friday, November 13, her new single ‘Smoke In The Air’ personifies that elemental majesty in a haze of repetitive, mantric glory. Creative by Gordon with cameras courtesy of No Name Media & Valquire Veljkovic, watch the video for the single below.