• Premiere: I Am The Cosmos – Nothing But Love

    November 17, 2017 - By 

    The follow-up to 2016’s Letting It Go 12″ single and 2013’s Monochrome LP, Dublin-based electronic duo Ross Turner and Cian Murphy AKA I Am The Cosmos are back with a new four-track EP titled ‘Nothing But Love’. Written, produced, recorded and mixed in the National Concert Hall, Dublin and scheduled for a vinyl release via the ever-reliable Art For Blind on 12″ vinyl on December 15, it’s another masterfully propulsive, slickly effort from the pair. Each track here is straight-up dancefloor fire and no mistake. Have a first listen below. Photo by Cait Fahey.

  • Watch: New Pope – Love

    November 13, 2017 - By 

    Back in January, TTA’s Cathal McBride hailed Love, the second album from Galway’s David Boland AKA New Pope. The latest single to be taken from the release, the album’s title track – which McBride said “set out Boland’s stall immediately” – is a pure distillation of what sets Boland apart from many of his tale-wielding peers. Now, comprised of footage from the 1961 anti-drug educational film Seduction of the Innocent, the track comes accompanied by visuals that mirror the trials and tribulations of the L word that Boland tussles with throughout the album. Have a peek below. Photo by Gary McCafferty

  • Premiere: Nocturnes – Humans

    November 8, 2017 - By 

    Conjuring Villagers and the emotive pulse of The Postal Service, ‘Humans’ by Sligo singer-songwriter Pearse McGloughlin AKA Nocturnes is a song that confronts “seeing out the tough times”. The project’s first release since last year’s The Soft Animal – a full-length that yielded the likes of the sublime ‘Whale Song‘ – the song strikes a subtly-affecting midpoint between balmy electronica and somnambulant ambience over four minutes. Better still, the single – which is released via Sligo imprint Bluestack Records on November 16 and launched that night alongside Aural Air and Arch Motors at Dublin’s Workman’s Club – has been released in both English and Irish language versions. A…

  • Watch: Rory Nellis – Wild

    November 6, 2017 - By 

    Unless you’ve been residing under a fairly sizable rock over the last few months, you’ll be aware that Belfast’s Rory Nellis has been releasing a series of singles from his forthcoming second album, There Are Enough Songs In The World. A brave move by anyone’s standards, but Nellis is far from your average songsmith. The final single and closing track from the album – which is launched at Belfast’s The MAC this Saturday, November 11 – ‘Wild’ feels like a fitting, deceptively ambitious crowning touch. Clocking in at just under seven minutes, it’s a masterfully unravelling tale that bursts into glorious, full-band swansonging…

  • Premiere: CATALAN! – Alive

    November 1, 2017 - By 

    Back in July we presented a first look and listen to ‘OKA’, the debut solo single from CATALAN! AKA Ewen Friers of North Coast alt-punk three-piece Axis Of. What we said of that track (“whilst certainly redolent of the subtly anthemic and nicely bombastic alt-punk of the aforementioned North Coast outfit, explores new, socially-conscious territory) could be directly applied to new single, ‘Alive’. Featuring some great visuals courtesy of Tristan Crowe and Chrissie McGlinchy, it’s a fuzzed-out and perfectly trouncing effort that will almost certainly become something of a live favourite for the project in the coming months.

  • Watch: Autumns – You’re A Right Useless Cunt Aren’t You

    November 2, 2017 - By 

    What’s your favourite song title of the year? Although we quite like ‘Dishing Out Hadoukens’ by The Tragedy of Dr. Hannigan and ‘Everyone Else (Can Fuck Off)’ by Half Forward Line, ‘You’re A Right Useless Cunt Aren’t You’ by Derry’s Christian Donaghey AKA Autumns is a worthy contender in our eyes. Taken from his recently-released Dyslexia Tracks – a pulverizing, five-track EP that comes hot on the heels of his debut album Suffocating Brothers – it’s an eight-minute traipse of rabid electronica that now comes accompanied by some suitably oppressive visuals from Belfast’s Barry Cullen.

  • Premiere: The Sunshine Factory – Seer

    November 1, 2017 - By 

    Cork, ever Ireland’s unexpected cornerstone of hazy psych, can boast another addition to the canon in the The Sunshine Factory‘s new single ‘Seer’, which we’re delighted to premiere here. This comes alongside the announcement of their debut EP proper, Cruelest Animal, the title track of which was released last year following a string of extremely promising demos and homemade recordings. Towering out of the speaker like some meta-diegetic music recorded live from a cave to soundtrack a climactic David Lynch scene – probably one of Evil Coop walking cooly away from a major explosion – ‘Seer”s measured, primal urgency, gives way to an incredible synth motif – think Vangelis’ Blade Runner Blues – before settling into a mess of rusty, screeching guitars.…

  • Premiere: Elephant – Time Will Tell

    October 31, 2017 - By 

    Dundalk-based artist and multi-instrumentalist Shane Clarke AKA Elephant has returned with one of his strongest single efforts to date, ‘Time Will Tell’. Featuring a wonderfully collaborative DIY video contributions from 28 different Dundalk artists, Clarke said of the Bowie-influenced track: “‘Time Will Tell’ is a song about death. Its irregular arrangement and calm-to-chaos approach is an extension of the deeper feelings within. Like a teenaged temper boiling over, grieving loss and remembering lost love. Unbalanced, unhinged and hauling ass through circumstance without having time to come to terms with where you are and how you are supposed to feel about it when…

  • Autre Monde – Autre Monde EP

    November 2, 2017 - By 

    We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Dublin quartet Autre Monde are one of the very best indie bands in the country at the moment – the proof being scattered all over their eponymous debut physical release, out now on borderline-iconic Dublin indie label Popical Island. Barely allowing us to sit upon their opening (acclaimed, by our reckoning) batch of singles – available on Bandcamp – the act are undeniably referential to contemporary pop & art-rock from the mid-sixties through today. Indeed, they make an art out of mining genuine originality from a breadth of genre touchstones like Talking Heads, Can or Pavement, simultaneously giving a nod to underground movements like CBGBs new wave…

  • Static Vision – What is and Now

    October 31, 2017 - By 

    We have to say – per capita, there’s no other town or city in Ireland producing DIY indie rock at the rate of Limerick. We’ve got Hot Cops in Belfast, Slouch in Dublin, but we can now happily add Static Vision‘s self-released 10-track debut to the likes of Eraser TV,  Cruiser, Anna’s Anchor, oh, and The Rubberbandits, to the city’s list of self-made accolades. Equal parts effervescent and slack, What is and Now is a stab of garage post-punk in the ’80s SST, Wipers-esque vein that could pass for an undiscovered proto-grunge gem from the midwest in 1989 fronted by a time-travelling Will Toledo, and having been…