• Album Stream: Ai Messiah – Sentience & Sapience

    November 14, 2018 - By 

    From Black Bones’ remix of ‘Pursuit by Group Zero and David Holmes’ Mosaic OST to Documenta’s stellar Lady With The Ring EP, Belfast imprint Touch Sensitive have delivered another all killer year in releases. Their fourth and final release of the year, Sentience & Sapience by Belfast producer Ai Messiah offers up something yet more compelling. A self-proclaimed “soundtrack for gutted metropolises, virtual sanctuaries and utopian enclaves”, the album – which was inspired by the outlandish prophecies of tech guru Ray Kurzwell – confidently veers between fourth world-leaning tapestries, balmy kosmische and panoramic new-age across seventeen tracks. Officially out on Friday, the album will be launched…

  • Album Stream: Blue Whale – Process

    November 9, 2018 - By 

    Belfast’s Blue Whale have long been something of a sonic law unto themselves. Big words and no mistake, but if you’ve managed to catch them wield what their very own brand of what the Quietus have called the band’s ilk of “chaotic, yet controlled experimental rock”, you’ll know that the high praise is justified. Six years on from their debut three-track release – and countless awe-inspiring live shows later – the quartet launch their exceptional debut album, Process, at Belfast’s Menagerie tonight (Friday, November 9). Over ten tracks, it’s a release that contorts the confines of instrumentalism, all while distilling the band’s singular brand of…

  • Watch: Bouts – Love’s Lost Landings (Pt. 1)

    October 19, 2018 - By 

    Five years on from the release of their debut album, Nothing Good Gets Away, Dublin indie rock quartet Bouts resurfaced back in May with ‘Face Up’. The lead single from the band’s highly-anticipated second full-length, Flow, frontman Barry Bracken called it “a no-filter, punch the air plea for staring things down and pushing on through.” Second single ‘Love’s Lost Landings (Pt. 1)’ picks up the pace in emphatic fashion. Accompanied with visuals from Paris/London-based French photographer Gwenaëlle Trannoy (link below) it’s an equal parts slick and starry-eyed burst of indie rock from the re-emerging Irish four-piece, centreing around frontman Barry Bracken’s…

  • EP Premiere: Son Zept – Q2B

    October 19, 2018 - By 

    Liam McCartan, AKA Son Zept, releases his debut today, and it’s one of the most exciting, forward-thinking electronic releases to emerge from here in some time. Parallels could be drawn with the likes of Autechre or Aphex Twin from an experimental standpoint, as his Q2B EP reveals McCartan as a true polymath, where concern with ideology is tantamount to creating limitless club potential. Brimming with atmosphere punctuated by his dense ‘polypatternism’, the Q2B EP is a work of deconstructed club music that alludes to the memory-triggering aspects of techno, noise, trance, power-ambient and industrial, often falling into umbrella of electroacoustic composition. We’ll have a full interview with Son Zept in the coming…

  • Stream: Daithí – Lavender/Orange (feat. Tandem Felix/Sinead White)

    October 18, 2018 - By 

    Daithí has returned with not one, but two sublime new singles. It’s a collaborative one-two from the Galway-based electronic producer : featuring Dublin’s Tandem Felix, the wistful ‘Lavender’ is a stark affair marrying stoic beats, skeletal piano phrases and vocals bearing the imprint of hidden pangs. ‘Orange’, meanwhile, is an open letter penned to another about the end of a relationship. Tussling with a romantic cul-de-sac, head-on yet with subtlety, is no mean feat. For Daithí and Sinead White – whose vocals carry the single – it’s delivered with nuanced grace and earworming aplomb. Out tomorrow, stream both singles below.  

  • EP Premiere: Sweat Threats – Sweet Treats

    October 12, 2018 - By 

    We’ve been fans of the righteous post-punk party music of Sweat Threats since they reared their heads at the start of 2018 – and most recently last month’s ‘Suffocate‘ – and today, we’re delighted to lay down on a platter assorted Sweet Treats, the debut EP from the London-based Irish pairing of Niall Jackson (Bouts/Swimmers Jackson) and Matthew Sutton (It was All a Bit Black and White/Tayne) – recently joined by drummer Lucy Brown. Very much in line with their modus operandi, Sweet Treats is a six track earworm infestation, filled with that Death From Above, Idles & Fucked Up strain of insurgent punk that links hips to brains. Written around themes…

  • Watch: Glass Wings – Believe

    October 10, 2018 - By 

    Belfast artist Stephen Jones AKA Glass Wings has unveiled the video for his new single, ‘Believe’. The latest track to be taken from his forthcoming debut album, Everything and Nothing, it’s a slick and urgent blast of the fast-rising songwriter’s alt-pop craft. Hosted by Bird & Bramble, Glass Wings’ debut is officially launched at Belfast’s Black Box on October 19. You can buy and stream the single here. Have a first look at the visuals below.

  • EP Premiere: Porphyry – Wounded, White Light

    October 26, 2018 - By 

    The term folktronica is just a touch reductionist for what the Derry-born, now Berlin-based Porphyry is doing. While in a more superficial sense, he could be described as an outsider Villagers, nothing in Ireland is attempting to achieve what Daryl Martin has with new EP, Wounded, White Light.  We loved his previous, self-described ‘maximalist’ Ursa Minor/Coming Home EP, not least for managing “the unenviable job of being boldly unpigeonholeable as art, and deeply personal, without approaching any level of bloated grandiosity”. Through minimalistic methods, however, the same result has been reached once more, with effortless finesse. Its cleansing, organic, seemingly breathing compositions weave unexpected synth textures into alternately piano & guitar-led freak-folk-meets-Robbie Basho-ian primitivism. Across its four tracks,…

  • Premiere: The Dreads – Know Your Name/Desires

    October 6, 2018 - By 

    In music, good things don’t always come to those who wait. But sometimes, truisms hold weight, and biding one’s time is worth every fidgety, impatient second praying for a release. A perfect case in the point comes in the form of Belfast’s The Dreads. A band whose blend of psych, garage and rock n’ roll has made for some electrifying live shows in the past, they’re back with a new-fangled formation and two tracks that double-up as a statement of intent. Released via Belfast’s Satsumas Home Entertainments, the band’s debut double A-side, ‘Know Your Name’ and ‘Desires’, coalesce over seven…

  • Album Stream: Arvo Party – II

    October 3, 2018 - By 

    When Belfast musician and producer Herb Magee AKA Arvo Party unveiled his self-titled debut album last July, we quickly learnt that we were dealing with something pretty special. Having previously established himself as a formidable one-fourth of erstwhile Belfast alt-rock heroes LaFaro, and later with GOONS, it made for a feature-length curveball from a musician who has seemingly, and rather quietly, mastered a whole different palette of sound. The dancefloor nocturnalism of ‘Grube’ hit home hard. The widescreen ambience of ‘Thirty Five’ was a spectral tidal of ambience on mute. ‘Null Set’, meanwhile, proved an unravelling eight-minute centrepiece, and a track that continues to…