• 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…

  • Stream: Girls Names – A Hunger Artist

    July 9, 2015 - By 

    Having just returned from a string of European dates, Girls Names have unveiled ‘A Hunger Artist’, the latest single to be taken from their forthcoming third album, Arms Around a Vision. Assumingly taking its title from Franz Kafka’s 1922 short story of the same name, the track – quite possibly our favourite Girls Names effort to date – sees frontman Cathal Cully confront a life lived “hand in mouth.” Elaborating, he said, “Most guitar music now is just a playground for the rich middle classes, and it’s really boring and elitist. We’re elitist in our own way, in that we’re on our own…

  • Stream: Come On Live Long – Speak Up

    June 26, 2015 - By 

    Having positively enamoured with their previous single ‘Trough’ (which we premiered back in January) Dublin’s Come On Live Long have returned with a fluttering, kaleidoscopic, seven-minute alt-pop gem, ‘Speak Up’. Recorded in August last year, the recording of the track was “an opportunity for the band to try out a new way to collaborate, adopting a different approach to communicating and arranging the piece”. We’re big fans. Stream the track below.

  • Stream: Oh Volcano – Rush Of Blood

    June 23, 2015 - By 

    Forming from the embers of General Fiasco early last year, Belfast brother duo Owen and Enda Strathern AKA Oh Volcano have consistently piqued our interest over the last couple of years with sporadic live shows and singles including ‘Oceans’ and ‘See No Evil’. Taken from their forthcoming debut, Don’t Know Love, new single ‘Rush of Blood’ goes one further, proving a very considered, wonderfully produced piece of electro-pop. Oh Volcano play their next show at Belfast’s Empire on July 3, alongside Goons, Dutch Schultz and Parapa Palace. Stream ‘Rush of Blood’ below. Artwork by Stuart Bell.

  • Watch: Niamh Murphy – We’re No Armies

    June 23, 2015 - By 

    Cork songstress Niamh Murphy AKA Foxglove is one of those artists who just instantly commands a song from the moment her vocals enter into the music. Featuring a suitably phantasmal video by David Nelligan, the beautifully elegiac, chamber-pop tale that is ‘We’re No Armies’ is a perfect example of this seemingly effortless knack in action. Photo by Emma Jervis.  

  • Watch: Night Trap – Someone Like You

    June 23, 2015 - By 

    Having delivered a stellar set at our second birthday show at Twisted Pepper back in May, Dublin duo Night Trap have unveiled some delightful throwback electro-pop in the form of ‘Someone Like You’. Propulsive in all the right places, simply grooving forth in honour of the duo’s obvious influences, the song proves uncannily earworming after a couple of listens. Seriously, give it two listens… you’ll be humming it all day. And possibly tomorrow. Night Trap launch the single with Patrick Kelleher, L/B/W and Old Moon at Dublin’s TenterHooks Gigspace on Friday night. Created by Andy Walsh, watch the video for…

  • Stream: GODHATESDISCO – Incredible Technology

    June 23, 2015 - By 

    Melding estranged spoken word meets kosmiche-tinged instrumental psych, ‘Incredible Technology’ by GODHATESDISCO gives a subtly glorious glimmer of insight of what to expect from the Dublin duo’s forthcoming album, Great Radio. Grasping for unseen lucidity, marrying malevolent electronic dissonance with pulsating bass and Motorik groove, the track blossoms and simmers before expiring in a haze of noise and the fractured words of an anonymous female voice. Great Radio is released via Little Gem Records on July 24. Go here to help fund the record.

  • Stream: Terriers – Believing The Crystal

    June 22, 2015 - By 

    Taken from their Octagon EP – released via Dutch imprint Rhythm Nation – Dublin duo Peter Ward and Ronan Downing AKA Terriers have mustered some real magic on their unravelling, seven-minute techno chugger ‘Believing The Crystal’. Evoking tripped-out, somnambulist forays in some non-descript, sweaty-walled club of yore,  the track bears the sonic fruits of the pair recently being under the learned guide of Levon Vincent for three months in Berlin. A sound move, we say. Photo by Sarah Doyle

  • Premiere: My Tribe Your Tribe – Will To Survive

    June 17, 2015 - By 

    Set to play Body & Soul at the weekend, Dublin duo My Tribe Your Tribe really caught our attention back in February with the dreamy, subtly cascading alt-electro of ‘Only a Horizon’. Going several steps further, their new single, ‘Will To Survive’, was obviously written with those imminent summer festival sets in mind. Danceable in all the first places, it looks both inward and outward, evoking the vocals of Ben Gibbard, and a musical marriage between Caribou and early Arcade Fire. ‘Will To Survive’ – produced by James Darkin at Temple Lane Studio – will be officially released on November 6.

  • Premiere: Atriums – Down By The Beeches

    June 10, 2015 - By 

    We’re not quite sure what it is but there’s mos definitely something about the sea that seems to inexplicably lure so many Irish musicians and their accompanying video directors. Of course, we’re not complaining – particularly if the video turns out to be anything as exquisite as the one for ‘Down By The Beeches’ by Dublin singer-songwiter Gavin Farrell AKA Atriums. An accompaniment of vast, powerful, wonderfully-paced force, directed by James Lawes of Bare Films, you can watch it via Vimeo below. Check out our Inbound piece on Atriums in the second issue of our physical magazine online here.