• Premiere: Careerist – Slasher

    August 26, 2019 - By 

    Doubling up as their first offering as Careerist, the Belfast threesome formerly known as Hot Cops strike a confident tone on ‘Slasher’. The lead single taken from their forthcoming debut album Weird Hill (which is set for release on 12″ vinyl and DSP via Dundalk’s Pizza Pizza Records on November 15th) it’s a typically slick and Malkmus-esque mid-tempo gem from the Carl Eccles-fronted band. Featuring Eccles as an overworked athlete (and more), Hannah Schierbeek’s video – which is below – seals the deal.  

  • Watch: THVS – Palisades

    August 24, 2019 - By 

    Fast-rising Belfast heavy pop band THVS have unveiled the video to new single, ‘Palisades’. From the get-go, it’s a blistering, riff-fuelled statement of intent from the Michael Smyth-fronted trio. Taken from their forthcoming debut album Fevers, the single’s video was shot at MSI Studios and THVS HQ “on a temperate May Sunday afternoon” by Bob Logan. Check it out below. Fevers is released on October 7. THVS play Pavilion in Belfast on Friday, August 30.

  • EP Stream: Alpha Chrome Yayo – Komorebi

    August 16, 2019 - By 

    Over the last few months, Belfast-based artist and multi-instrumentalist Alpha Chrome Yayo has made a steady, increasingly prolific rise via his interstellar brand of genre-warping synthwave. Today he offers up another – considerably more ruminative – side with his new EP, Komorebi. Titled after the Japanese word referring to the phenomenon of sunbeams filtering through trees, the release – which was influenced by the likes of Terje Rypdal, Vangelis, David Shire and Ryo Fukui – is a masterfully meditative and largely ambient affair from one of the country’s most chameleonic artists. From the balmy twists and turns of its title…

  • Stream: THVS – Palisades

    August 16, 2019 - By 

    Ahead of the release of its video next week, Belfast trio THVS have just released their latest and greatest track to date, ‘Palisades’. Following on from last year’s promising three-tracker Plague Widows, it makes for a suitably emphatic three-minute blast of breakneck, riff-fuelled abandon from the self-proclaimed “heavy pop” trio. Read our recent interview with the band here and check out the single (along with a live version of ‘Neon Demons’) below. ‘Palisades’ is launched at Belfast’s Limelight 2 tomorrow (August 17th) alongside Conjecture 42 and Gas Hands. Doors are at 5pm.

  • Video Premiere: Not I – Please, No Kindness, Please

    August 15, 2019 - By 

    Being a consistently arresting two-piece is no easy task – not least when the majority mines along the garage-blues-punk spectrum with little deviation. Dublin duo Not I – formerly Nervvs – take a hard left into something far more sophisticated by virtue of their grasp of minimalism, and seemingly telepathic interplay between vocalist/guitarist Thomas O’Reilly & drummer Ian Meagher. The title track of their debut album is an immediate primer for the band, O’Reilly’s sardonic, kitchen sink worldview screams for meaning in the mundane; “It’s a song about the struggle to make art and not get lost in the swamp of the day-to-day, resolving with an…

  • Watch: MELTS – Seesaw

    August 7, 2019 - By 

    On their new single, ‘Seesaw’, Dublin five-piece MELTS hit the sweet spot between BJM-leaning, lysergic-dappled garage that pushes forward and wonderfully blissed-out psych conjuring old masters including Jefferson Airplane and Syd-era Pink Floyd. Recorded live at the Meadow by the Deaf Brothers, mixed by Rian Trench and mastered by Fergal Davis, the track – which doubles up as the band’s most inspired single effort to date – features visuals courtesy of Gavin Ovoca and the band. Delve in below. Supported by Grave Goods and Fonda, MELTS launch the single at Dublin’s Bello Bar on Friday, September 20.

  • Watch: Ten Ton Slug – Hunting Ground

    August 6, 2019 - By 

    Galway sludge metal quartet Ten Ton Slug have long been masterfully crafting some of the finest riff-led, crushing metal on the island and with international slots amassing, their debut album is set for release next year. The first single to be taken from the LP – and their first release since 2017’s Blood and Slime – is the  ‘Hunting Ground’, and if its sonic pulverisation is anything to go by, 2020 looks to further galvanise the band’s status. The single was recorded & produced by Ciaran Culhane, and its occultist, paranoia-inducing video was filmed at Cavan’s stately See House, directed and edited by Pádraig Conaty. Check out more on…

  • Stream: Sorbet – Born Purple feat. Mícheál Keating

    August 2, 2019 - By 

    One of Irish music’s bona fide polymaths, Chris Ryan – Robocobra Quartet leader and Hot Cops, Just Mustard & Hunkpapa producer – has unveiled his new collaborative project. Aptly titled Sorbet, it offers a fresh palette to a string of musicians upon which they can “write tangentially from their usual process to avoid creeping burnout.” As masterfully understated as you’d hope from its creators, Sorbet’s first iteration is a subtly brooding piece which unfurls with repeat listens. Ryan’s distorted, at-times claustrophobic beats, muted piano, lay  by an incredible falsetto-heavy vocal performance from Mícheál Keating, frontman of Limerick experimental alternative trio Bleeding Heart Pigeons. Mícheál said of his lyrical approach: “The imagery in the verse comes…

  • Video Premiere: Van Panther – The Cutters

    August 14, 2019 - By 

    With each act imprinting its own singular identity with the backing of a supportive community operating completely in tandem, we’ve already waxed lyrical on how the fecund Limerick music scene is Ireland’s musical petri dish. Van Panther are one such act, marrying technicolour pop immediacy with jagged post-punk revivalism. New single ‘The Cutters’ is as tight-knit and pristinely crafted without losing the warm, lo-fi charm of its predecessors, and is taken from forthcoming EP Overcast, following up on 2016’s Café van Hemel and 2017’s Hark! The EP was played by, recorded & produced by band founder Kieran Ralph. “Musically, the song is basically a look at the meld between guitar-based music and…

  • Premiere: The Rackets – 1-2 FU/Dead Rebel

    July 31, 2019 - By 

    For whatever combination of reasons, Belfast has peerless form for producing first-rate garage bands. From Them and The Wheels back in the 1960s right up to The Groundlings, The Dreads and others in the present era, the city has always reliably churned out bands wielding straight-up rock ‘n’ roll like it’s no one’s business. In the day of our Lord  John Dwyer, you need not look much further than The Rackets. A suitably elusive outfit, with an ever-revolving line-up, the band currently operate as a three-piece of Sunglasses After Dark’s Ryan Fitzsimmons, frontwoman Aileen McKenna aka This Ship Argo and the downright legendary Chappy of the aforementioned The Groundlings…