• Brand New Friend – Seatbelts For Aeroplanes

    April 24, 2018 - By 

    Unless you’ve been living under a rock up north, you might have heard about the crest of a wave atop which Brand New Friend have been surfing for the past couple of years. Hype was high based on their live shows even ahead of the release of their almost dangerously-earworming debut EP, American Wives, back in 2016. Fronted by the impossibly charming sibling duo of Castlerock-born Taylor & Lauren Johnson, the band’s brand of starry-eyed, harmony-driven indie-pop is on full display on their forthcoming debut album, Seatbelts For Airplanes.  Johnson’s confessional lyrics allude to the unspoken things in relationships, the nature of overthinking and self-doubt – shaped by the purity of a youthful mind and the Brand New Friend…

  • The Wood Burning Savages – Stability

    April 23, 2018 - By 

    This Friday, April 27, a debut album that’s long been one of NI’s most anticipated, The Wood Burning Savages finally sees its release. Between its effervescent indie rock and vitriol-turned-punk-anthem, the quartet are seemingly set to posit themselves as spiritual and sonic successors to the proudly socialist, alternative punk torch long-carried by the Manic Street Preachers. Debut LP Stability was produced by Start Together’s Rocky O’Reilly and mastered by Robin Schmidt. Derry-born frontman Paul Connolly has the following to say on the release of the album: “A collection of songs about a working class furious at years of empty promises from billionaire Tory MPs who have no…

  • Premiere: The Mad Dalton – Seafaring Man

    April 13, 2018 - By 

    Officially launched at Belfast’s Love & Death last night, ‘Seafaring Man’ is the new single by Belfast-based Scots-Canadian singer-songwriter Peter Sumadh AKA The Mad Dalton. Taken from his forthcoming debut album, Open Season – which will be released in June following a successful pledge campaign – it’s another full-bodied slice of wistful Americana that, rather than getting ensnared in the images and memories of the past, aims two eyes firmly on the horizon. Open Season is launched at Belfast’s Black Box on June 14. Have a first listen (and look at Chris Molloy’s video) below.

  • Stream: Arvo Party – Liberté

    April 12, 2018 - By 

    It came as no surprise to us when we discovered that Herb Magee aka Arvo Party was nominated for last year’s Northern Ireland Music Prize. In his review of the Belfast-based producer and musician’s self-titled debut album, Cathal McBride said, “With great Irish electronic acts like Solar Bears and Adultrock having called it a day within the last year, Magee sounds more than ready to take up the mantle they’ve left behind.” Seven months on, Magee continues to uphold this promise in style. A masterfully propulsive six minutes of electronica blurring sonic lines via late 1990s trance worships, simmering ambience surges,…

  • Watch: Eraser TV – (1-800 COAST 2 COAST)

    April 13, 2018 - By 

    Modern Classic is the logically-titled sequel to last year’s Buzzfeed Depression Quiz from self-aware Limerick indie rockers Eraser TV, one of the exciting DIY acts to emerge from the city in the past year. Their second EP once more plays upon the tense, gently experimental discordance underlying in their breezy, occasionally loungy lo-fi indie rock as frontman Cian McGuirk pines throughout, channeling some Pavement circa Crooked Rain wistful reflection on the wonderful ‘Season 2’. Drawing from the everything-is-commercial-bliss vaporwave aesthetic, they’ve just released a video for for ‘(1-800) COAST 2 COAST’. Seeping the liquescent chorus of decades gone by, it’s a hepped-up, psych-tinged take on what Sonic Youth were doing around Evol.…

  • Stream: Meltybrains? – Horizon

    April 9, 2018 - By 

    Remember Dublin experimental maestros Meltybrains? Good – you should. Right up there with the country’s most singular sonic propositions, the five-piece have returned with their first new material in 18 months via ‘Horizon’. Unsurprisingly, it kicks several shades of ass. Starting on a slithering pattern evoking St. Vincent’s ‘Rattlesnake’, the track bursts into full-blown cosmic-tech-metal bombast in ways only Meltybrains? can conjure. And that’s just taking into consideration the first 30 seconds. It’s a first taste of what is set to be a busy return for the band. “We’ve been very busy recently, for the past year and a half we’ve been recording loads…

  • Premiere: Just Mustard – Pigs

    April 6, 2018 - By 

    Fast becoming favourites of ours here at The Thin Air, Dundalk five-piece Just Mustard fully caught our attention in September last year with the release of ‘Tainted’, a track we said was “made for soundtracking solitary, stoned night walks reflecting on what needs to be done.” Taken from their forthcoming debut album, Wednesday, new single ‘Pigs’ is another step up. A soporific meld of blissed-out textures and noise-soaked squalls, it taps right into that exact feeling that creeps in at great small Irish festival around the early evening. You know the one we’re talking about. According to the band, with Wednesday they have…

  • Stream: Lambing Season – Holywood and Girls

    April 6, 2018 - By 

    A self-proclaimed “journey from fear of the unknown, fear of change, fear of commitment to joyous absolution” ‘Holywood and Girls is the new single from Belfast band Lambing Season. Following on from the release of last December’s ‘Memory and the Flood’, the track – which was recorded by Ben McAuley at Belfast’s Start Together Studios and will feature on their forthcoming album The Quickening – unfurls from soothing, Quarterstick Records-esque jangle to reveal a band equally adept at emotionally-charged, harmony-driven pop-rock balladry and jagged alt-rock experimentalism. Nowadays, it’s tricky carving out a niche in this particularly sonic realm – for…

  • Stream: Robocobra Quartet – You’ll Wade

    April 5, 2018 - By 

    The second single taken from their forthcoming second album, Plays Hard To Get, ‘You’ll Wade’ by Robocobra Quartet finds the Belfast band at the peak of their powers. Culminating in a cry of “Everything is old news” before petering out in a plume of funereal ambience, its recording and composition distils the band’s ongoing, masterfully unconventional approach. Frontman Chris Ryan explains, “During writing it was clear that ‘You’ll Wade’ was meant to have a massive ambience shift half way through the song. To get this we recorded both halves of the song separately with a different sounding drum kit and even a…

  • Stream: Aislinn Logan – Spree

    April 5, 2018 - By 

    London-based Belfast singer-songwriter Aislinn Logan has released a new single, ‘Spree’. Marking a tonal and compositional shift from previous singles, it’s a strong, markedly well-produced effort from the artist. Logan said of the track, “The music I’m making just now is certainly a shift from what came before, but for me I feel like I’m getting closer to the thing I wanted to make when I started. It’s definitely becoming more aligned with the music I listen to – it’s a bit more committal. I don’t really listen to that much folk music now; I used to – big time,…