• Watch: Cat Palace – Real Fresh

    August 17, 2015 - By 

    “Hey, I wanna be different, so I shaved my head on both sides – I leave a little on top. You know I’m keeping it real fresh, man.” So goes the chorus to ‘Real Fresh’ by Dublin singer-songwriter David Blaney AKA Cat Palace, a self-proclaimed “devotional” artist whose hugely impressive debut self-titled debut EP quite frankly blew us away back in February. This latest single – featuring a simple yet wonderfully singular video – fuses woozy Americana with a brilliantly biting commentary on half-arsed, samey social charades. The track will also feature on a forthcoming Cat Palace EP, set for release at the beginning of September.

  • Watch: Planet Parade – Blue Sky

    August 14, 2015 - By 

    Striking a keen balance between Tame Impala, Vampire Weekend and Mac Demarco, Maynooth duo Michael Hopkins and Andrew Lloyd AKA Planet Parade have just release one of the most sublimely sun-kissed Irish singles of the Summer. Featuring Steven McCann on guitar and Graham Hopkins (assumingly a relative of Michael’s) on drums, the wonderfully throwback video – created by Brian Lloyd – just seals the deal and then some. One for the repeat button.

  • Watch: Somadrone feat. Jape – Invitation

    August 14, 2015 - By 

    The follow-up to 2013’s hugely impressive The First Wave, Dublin producer Neil O’Connor AKA Somadrone is set to release his fifth album, Oracle, on September 18. The first track to be lifted from that, ‘Invitation’ – featuring fellow Redneck Manifesto alumni Richie Egan AKA Jape – is a hugely encouraging taste as to what’s in store from the forthcoming eight track-release. Accompanied by a video courtesy of Kevin Mc Gloughlain and Leon Giblin, ‘Invitation’ is perfectly balanced between sleep and release, its opening two minutes of teasing sparseness yielding to two minutes of throbbing, mildly kaleidoscopic electronica, each bar yielding to a new detail. Stream/download the…

  • Cruising – Cruising

    August 14, 2015 - By 

    Sometimes a band name can elucidate the direction in which its songs will travel.  Cruising are a case in point, named after a book/film delving into the dark underworld of a serial killer who picks up homosexual men from the New York S&M scene to murder.  EP cover emblazoned with a black leather biker jacket, band name studded across the shoulders, and PVC leather hat a la Jesse “Boots Electric” Hughes, worn in promo photos runs with the theme. There’s more than a whisper of iconic female rockers like Joan Jett, Siouxsie Sioux and Poly Styrene.  Understandably so, given that…

  • Watch: Music For Dead Birds – English Weed

    August 10, 2015 - By 

    Having first caught our attention back in 2011 with the stellar, scuzzy lo-fi of The Pope’s Sister, Galway/Mayo “anti-folk” duo Music For Dead Birds will release a double A-Side (artwork above) later this month. One half of that release, their ruminating new track ‘English Weed’ – accompanied with a typically oblique video – conjures hooks and refrains from early/mid-Nineties lo-fi indie rock, coursing forth, aghast, hoarse and lamenting in a perfectly unpolished fashion. Best of all, it confirms Music For Dead Birds’ inimitable, acoustic-driven sound, set in motion with And Then It Rained For Seven Days back in 2009.

  • EP Premiere: Feather Beds – Ah Stop

    August 6, 2015 - By 

    Having just returned to Dublin following two years living in Quebec, Dublin producer Michael Orange AKA Feather Beds has hit the ground of his homeland running with Ah Stop, a stellar new EP was recorded “in the middle of a particularly gruelling and sub-zero winter in Montreal” back in February. An appendix of sorts to his debut album, The Skeletal System, which was released at the start of the year, the EP shows a self-described “marked shift in direction towards a more electronic feel and brings an introduction to the second full-length album, which is scheduled for release in 2016.” As just under…

  • Watch: Abandcalledboy – LA Dick

    August 5, 2015 - By 

    Any song with a main riff that evokes ‘Blindness’ by The Fall and an outro reminiscent of latter-day Tera Melos can only be a good thing in our books. Where are we going with this, you wonder? Wonder no more: Abandcalledboy have unveiled the video for their new single ‘LA Dick’, the suitably spazzed-out follow-up to their double single ‘George Best In Show/Paul Simon’s Daily Routine’, released back in March. Watch the video for the single –  created by Odhrain Soanes and Andrew Grafton – below.

  • Download: An Taobh Tuathail Vol 7

    July 22, 2015 - By 

    Not merely the finest Irish radio programme, An Taobh Tuathail on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta is nothing short of a consistently impeccable underground music institution. Presented by Cian Ó Cíobháin, the show has proven an indispensable go-to criterion for fresh, unusual and glorious sounds for innumerable listeners both across the country and throughout the world since starting way back in 1999. Eight years on from the release of its first collection, the seventh volume of ATT’s free, all-but annual compilation – featuring tracks by the likes of Orcas, Loner Deluxe, Kode9, Colleen, Rival Consoles, Nils Frahm, Sufjan Stevens and Mica Levi – is a perfect place to…

  • Stream: Replete – Day Off

    July 16, 2015 - By 

    One of our Acts to Watch in 2014, Kilkenny producer Pete Lawlor AKA Replete recently delivered two stellar sets in Belfast and Dublin, in Aether & Echo and the new-fangled Wiley Fox respectively. Having released stuff from the likes of Nphonix, Reagan Grey and Sly-One over the last couple of years, Devon imprint Shifting Peaks – purveyors of half decent bass, house and stuff” – have featured Lawlor in their new five-year retrospective compilation, Bass and Superstructure. A mere flicker at five minutes long, the galvanic ‘Day Off’ emerges from sublime washes of synth to form a fleshed-out gem of finespun, glistening House.

  • Watch: Pocket Promise – Music For The Twelfth

    July 14, 2015 - By 

    Having been on extended hiatus for a few years, Co. Tyrone band Pocket Promise remain of Ireland’s all-time truly great alt-pop bands. With some expectation suggestive of a reunion of sorts in the pipeline at some point in the future, the band have re-emerged, in some form, with the up until-now unreleased ‘Music For The Twelfth’. With its backdrop of the Northern Irish marching season, the song – over a decade old at this point – should be familiar to anyone caught the band (compised of members that went on to form Seven Summits) during their initial, country-spanning tenure of the mid-noughties. Speaking of…