• Album Premiere: Count Vaseline – Yo No Soy Marinero

    September 27, 2016 - By 

    Whilst many musicians tend to tread the thin, often imperceptible lines blurring their status as performer or full-blown artist, it’s safe to say Dublin’s Stefan Murphy falls very comfortably into the latter. With his unique brand of urgent, genre-warping sonic wanderlust, from his days fronting the much-loved The Mighty Stef to his current guise as Count Vaseline, Murphy has always clearly lived, felt and fully meant his calling. Set for release on Friday (September 30) via OCDC, the debut Count Vaseline album, Yo No Soy Marinero, was born as a DIY project in Berlin back in the Spring. Having spent much of his time since in…

  • Album Premiere: windings – Be Honest and Fear Not

    September 27, 2016 - By 

    It takes a certain amount of gall to open an album with a 7 minute epic culminating in an arena-seeking, solo-drenched crescendo. But in the case of much-loved Limerick alt/folk five-piece windings that gall is something far more akin to collective poise and confidence on ‘Ambivalence Blues’, the lead track from their wonderfully-realised fourth studio album, Be Honest and Fear Not. Four years on from the release of the band’s sublime, Choice Prize-nominated I Am Not The Crow, this new record – recorded at Attica Studios in Donegal with Villagers’ Tommy McLaughlin – bursts forth with the band’s “modus operandi in 2016: if you are…

  • Warpaint – Heads Up

    September 26, 2016 - By 

    Warpaint are a band that divide opinion. In 2010, they became an almost instant underground success with ‘Undertow’, the lead single from their abstractly alternative album, The Fool. The album stood out in the year when Beach House released Teen Dream, Vampire Weekend’s Contra and Broken Social Scene’s Forgiveness Rock Record dominated radio airtime. Warpaint sought to be different with a sombre and grittier edge in the midst of bands shedding lightness and exuberance lyrically and musically. Unfortunately, they lost momentum with their subsequent self-titled album from 2013, which was met with mixed reviews, upon which the Californian quartet went on a…

  • Video Premiere: No Monster Club – Do The Mess Around

    September 23, 2016 - By 

    In case you missed the memo, Dublin’s No Monster Club are catchier than velcro with a cold.  They’re catchier than Avian flu on the 212 to Derry from Belfast on a Friday afternoon. They’re catchier than Brian Wilson spinning a whole stack of Ty Segall records back-to-back for eternity, ad infinitum. You get the picture. With its synopsis of “en route to the big gig, the boys cross paths with a peculiar stranger…” the Bobby Aherne-fronted outfit’s latest visual extravaganza is a veritable feast for the senses. The track itself is one of four new songs on the 7″ EP Where Did You…

  • Inbound: FONDA

    September 23, 2016 - By 

    FONDA are the sound of power pop having grown older and that bit more cynical: imagine Big Star replacing tickets to the dance with overpriced bars and the inevitable morning-after introspection. There’s a sense of displacement and longing that characterises the band’s music, a possible result of the group’s varying backgrounds, with band members Liam O’Connor, Laura Kelly and Patrick Burke hailing from Limerick, Galway and Glasgow respectively. The trio have been performing together since 2015, releasing debut EP Social Services that August. It’s four songs tackled everyday ennui with assured understatement, both in O’Connor’s lyrics and baritone delivery, and…

  • Watch: Meltybrains? – Know My Name

    September 23, 2016 - By 

    Still very much one of the country’s most singular sonic propositions, Dublin five-piece Meltybrains? have returned with ‘Know My Name’, a new track featuring their trademark blend of warped electronic textures and auto-tune sprinkled harmonies. The track is the first single to be taken from the band’s upcoming Kiss Yourself EP, which is released on November 18. Meltybrains? play the following dates in October and November: 01/10/16: Nelliefreds – Dingle 07/10/16: Billie Byrnes – Kilkenny 08/10/16: Connolly’s of Leap – Cork 15/10/16: Roisín Dubh – Galway 31/10/16: KEX Hostel – Reykjavik (Iceland) 05/11/16: Loft – Reykjavik (Iceland) 11/11/16: Eagle Inn – Manchester (UK) 12/11/16: Legain –…

  • Stream: Rejjie Snow – D.R.U.G.S

    September 21, 2016 - By 

    Doubling up as his first release since signing to Lyor Cohen’s 300 Entertainment (home to Fetty Wap, Young Thug et al) Rejjie Snow is streaming his stellar, subtly euphoric new single, ‘D.R.U.G.S’. Featuring a laid-back Rahki-produced beat, it’s a typically slick, blip-heavy three-minutes from the fast-rising Dublin rapper and the lead single from his forthcoming – and long-awaited – debut album.

  • Stream: Shrug Life – Your Body

    September 22, 2016 - By 

    We in the Republic don’t like to talk about the big things, and if our history of women’s rights is anything to go by, we especially don’t like to talk about the big things that involve women. As Dublin gears up for Saturday’s March For Choice, jangle poppers Shrug Life have decided to celebrate the event with their latest single, the 8th amendment baiting ‘Your Body’. Leaving subtly and nuance at the door, the trio launch into their polemic with the jugular strike of the track’s opening line: “Your body is not your body/ It’s the property of church and state”.…

  • Premiere: Survival Bag – The Vivid Past

    September 21, 2016 - By 

    Johnny Muir AKA Belfast’s Survival Bag, has self-released several tracks recently, most recently the evocative ‘The Vivid Past’, an sonic experience akin to the feeling of emerging from Madchester’s ecstatic haze into the grim reality of Cool Britannia. Like much of Survival Bag’s music, each instrument was played and recorded by Muir, with his own spoken and sung vocals, programmed sounds and discovered samples. Conceptually, the song is about memory loss and confusion, as Muir explains: “When I was growing up, my grandma suffered from severe dementia – always described as ‘hardening of the arteries’ whatever that is – and she came to live with us. But sometimes she…

  • Watch: Paul Finan – Clouds

    September 19, 2016 - By 

    Melding pitch-shifting, underwater ambience reminiscent of Mica Levi’s Under The Skin soundtrack with The Radio Dept-esque city somnambulism and sparse guitar lines in the vein of Vincent Gallo and early Tortoise, ‘Clouds’ by Wicklow composer/producer Paul Finan is a perfectly inspired audio-visual traipse far beyond with no intention of return. Finan said, “This is a song about changing ones perspective. Changing the script or the lens. There is far more out their than our senses perceive. I like that. So much more to know. This is a quick visual I put to the song, but there is a short film in the pipeline inspired…