• Video Premiere: Shrug Life – Last Gasp Of Summer

    July 24, 2020 - By 

    A timely arrival to cushion the blow of a festival-free summer, perennial TTA favourites Shrug Life are back with the video for new single ‘Last Gasp of Summer’. The track is taken from Shrug Life’s excellent, Daniel Fox-produced second LP Maybe You’re The Punchline which came out in April, available on 12″ vinyl through Bandcamp. Typical of their vision of a DEVO-meets-Thin Lizzy world, it’s a razor-sharp incision into minutia of the make some noise Irish experience, and festival fatigue that starts to set in as one’s twenties edges closer to the finishing line, without ever straying into ‘yells at cloud’ territory. Filmed partly at Arcadian Field Festival 2019, and featuring…

  • Video Premiere: Shifting – The Bland Leading the Bland

    July 21, 2020 - By 

    A month ahead of the release of what will surely be one of Ireland’s essential punk records of 2020, Shifting have just shared with us the video for ‘The Bland Leading the Bland’. An ideal introduction to the trio, who formed in 2016, and include members of No Spill Blood & Hands Up Who Wants To Die, amongst other noisemakers par excellence. The video a sub-ninety second microcosm of their repetitious, yet spontaneous dissonance, and squalid, darkly comic worldview, conjuring everything  from Unwound to Death Grips. The second in a series of videos to accompany their debut LP, it chronicles the time Matt ‘Uncle Dad’ Hedigan…

  • Premiere: Comrade Hat – Summer of Glove

    July 14, 2020 - By 

    Derry’s resident lounge-lizard/experimental pop savant Neil Burns, AKA Comrade Hat returns today with a slinking, sun-kissed, seven minute porta-epic. A marriage of craft and intuition, journeying through louche tropicalia, psych and jazz-pop, it’s taken from his forthcoming two-volume compilation, Old Gods.  Written during an isolation-necessitated creative spree as progress on his studio album went on pause, ‘Summer of Glove’ sees an emergence of a more guitar-led, full band sound as opposed to Comrade Hat’s factory setting as bedroom producer. Burns spoke to us on the development of his forthcoming two albums, named for their spontaneous birth in fairly mysterious circumstances: “Maybe I was channeling the cautious optimism of…

  • Irish Tracks of the Week – July 10th

    July 10, 2020 - By 

    From The Bonk, Wyvern Lingo, Jehnova and Elaine Mai, to CATALAN!, luthorist, Brién and Gemma Bradley, here’s the very best Irish songs released this week, all in one place. Wyvern Lingo – Don’t Say It The Bonk – Fool Me Twice CATALAN! – Roussillon Serenade Brién – Sundriede Sundried by Brién Jehnova – All In Elaine Mai – Somewhere Else Gemma Dunleavy – Stop The Lights luthorist – kxflip Our Krypton Son – Arbor Bird Vivid Dreamer – This Is Not Living Gemma Bradley – Obsessed

  • Album Premiere: Our Krypton Son – Modern Ruins

    July 10, 2020 - By 

    Three years on from the release of his NI Music Prize-nominated second album Fleas & Diamonds, Derry singer-songwriter Chris McConaghy aka Our Krypton Son has unveiled highly-anticipated follow-up, Modern Ruins. Underscoring his status as one of the country’s most compelling songwriting voices — a singular breed of artist wielding subtlety and heart-stung harmonic sensibility as a second nature — Modern Ruins is a rare feat of the soul, marrying pure-cut candour and elegy with finely-woven song. Headed with lead single ‘White Sun’, the album unfurls across nine tracks, each as exploratory and lambent as the next. But it’s the sheer scope of…

  • Stream: The Bonk – Songs For The Mean Time Vol. 1

    July 8, 2020 - By 

    Ahead of featuring on the first episode of Live at Guerrilla Studios tomorrow night, The Bonk have gifted us a new, typically superb EP, Songs For The Mean Time Vol. 1. Three songs “about good and bad sense,” the release finds the Phil Christie-fronted collective further distil their perfectly unpigeonholeable craft down to eight odd minutes of experimental song. Though it’s never been in doubt, The Bonk’s rep as one of the country’s most forward-pushing acts has just been doubly underscored. Delve in deep below. Songs For The Mean Time Vol. 1 by The Bonk

  • Video Premiere: Vivid Dreamer – This Is Not Living

    July 9, 2020 - By 

    Something you may have missed amidst the maelstrom of new releases last Bandcamp Friday was the surprise announcement of Vivid Dreamer, a collaborative project between two of Belfast’s synth-pop creators par excellence. Today, they’re lifting the cloche on second single ‘This Is Not Living’, ahead of the release of their eponymous debut album this Sunday, July 12. Both as producers and songwriters – with the likes of Oppenheimer, Beauty Sleep, Malibu Shark Attack, Wonder Villains, amongst others – Rocky O’Reilly & Ryan McGroarty been directly or indirectly integral in the sound of no shortage of Northern Ireland’s most essential listening across the last 15-odd years. Vivid Dreamer…

  • Monday Mixtape: CATALAN!

    July 6, 2020 - By 

    In the latest installment of Monday Mixtape, Belfast-based musician Ewen Friers aka CATALAN! waxes lyrical about some of his all-time favourite songs, from WHY? and DakhaBrakha, to Orlando Weeks and Orchéstre Baka Gbiné. Los Cotopla Boyz – Me Malviaje Con Las Ganlletas Get your week started right – Los Cotopla Boyz blowing away the cobwebs, this was their debut track. I like how this is danceable and direct from the get-go but ends with that sort of proggy introspective outro, somehow it works. Orchéstre Baka Gbiné – Kopola Staying on the international voyage that is this playlist here’s a crucial track…

  • A Litany of Failures: Volume III Announced

    July 3, 2020 - By 

    Two years on from its second volume, islandwide independent music compilation series A Litany of Failures has opened pre-orders and announced the tracklisting for Volume III in the series – out Friday, October 2nd. More eclectic, and more export-ready than ever, the compilation features brand new music from 22 acts across Ireland, including the first recorded output from Fifty Years of Hair (Postcard Versions/Girl Band’s Dara Kiely), The Golden Cleric (Shrug Life/Girlfriend/That Snaake) and Grave Goods (Girls Names, Pins, September Girls), as well as many of our favourites – Robocobra Quartet, Silverbacks, Rising Damp, Percolator, Extravision and many more. With cover art by Nathanaël Roman, it will be accompanied by…

  • Live From Guerrilla Studios

    July 1, 2020 - By 

    Since launching back in 2011, Dublin’s Guerrilla Studios has become a vital hub in the landscape of independent Irish music. Situated under a bridged railway close to Dublin City Centre, it has produced myriad first-rate sounds from some of the country’s finest forward-pushing propositions. On Thursday, July 9, the studio space will play host to the very first episode of Live From Guerrilla Studios. The brainchild of two titans in Irish music, Ray Wingnut and John ‘Spud’ Murphy, it will feature performances from TTA favourites The Bonk and John Francis Flynn. Things kick off at 10pm from here. Stay tuned…