• A Grave With No Name – Wooden Mask

    August 15, 2016 - By 

    When the first guitar strum on ‘Sword’, the opening track on A Grave With No Name’s latest LP Wooden Mask, cuts through the atmospheric clinking and clattering, it’s clear that we’re in Phil Elverum territory. Alexander Shields, the man behind the Grave moniker, has his sights firmly set on picking up from where The Microphones’ The Gloaming, Part 2 left off. Shields’ output is based on these eerie slices of folk music infused with ambient whispers and these twinges of aggressive, electric and electronic instruments creeping around the edges of the aural plain. Although it never manages to invigorate or…

  • Everything Shook – Drinking About You

    August 11, 2016 - By 

    Everything Shook have proven one of the more interesting outfits on the Irish live circuit of late, a kinetic and technicolour blend of music, electro-performance art and synchronised choreography. The trouble with such visual bombardment is often that while it’s entertaining in the moment, it’s a transient thing. However, Robyn Bromfield, Jessica Kennedy and Áine Stapleton demonstrated on their debut release, Argento Nights, that they had the songs to back up the schtick. That three-track EP – as its title implied – was a louche, low-key and murky snippet of the brooding electronica that was to come on Drinking About You. It’s with the foreboding march…

  • Stream: Hot Cops – Dumbbo

    August 10, 2016 - By 

    A grinding, forlorn four-minutes wielding crescendo in fine fashion, ‘Dumbbo’ by Belfast trio Hot Cops is easily their most foreboding single to date. The follow-up to ‘Passive Passive’, the track – something of a recent live highlight for the Carl Eccles-fronted three-piece – steadily imparts backwashed thoughts and disorientated solipsism before yielding to a gusto of fuzzed-out resolve. This is a cunning, creeping effort that insists upon the repeated listen. Limited to 250 pink marble copies, ‘Dummbo’ will be released alongside ‘Auto’ via Paper Trail Records on September 2. Stream the A-side below.

  • Watch: No Monster Club – I’ve Retired

    August 10, 2016 - By 

    Filmed over the course of two years in venues and festivals including Whelan’s, The Pop Inn, Knockanstockan, The Button Factory, Galway’s Roisin Dubh, Castlepalooza, Cork’s Connolly’s of Leap, No Monster Club have released the jubilant video for probably the catchiest Irish song of 2015, ‘I’ve Retired’. Compiled by Daniel Martin, the video “follows the song on its journey from house shows to festivals, via rock clubs and dive bars”. Good times. No Monster Club will release a new 7″ EP, Where Did You Get That Milkeshake?, via Emotional Response Records on September 5.

  • Stream: Extra Fox – Ain’t That The Way

    August 9, 2016 - By 

    Dublin producer Neil Adams AKA Extra Fox was last on our radar back in February with ‘Lunar Float’, a spectral single we called “nigh on onomatopoetic”. With a rare live show expected to be announced over the next while, Adams has returned with the equally strong ‘Ain’t That The Way’, a brilliantly bobbing slice of electro-pop that, by virtue of its restrained, gradually layered repetition, burrows its way inside very nicely indeed.

  • Drown – Drown EP

    August 8, 2016 - By 

    Galway based experimental pop outfit Drown are set to drop their debut EP this month, a snappy four-track release that immediately beams with potential. The post-punk outfit were drawn together by their passion for experimental pop music, emerging with a punch towards the end of last year. Their sound however, suggests otherwise. Self-dubbed unintentional pop, the tracks appear heavily influenced by the more ethereal elements of 80s underground rock, drawing upon the likes of Sonic Youth and DIIV for inspiration. The release sees the five-piece noise outfit rebel against typical pop music, creating a sound that is intoxicating, honest and thought-provoking. Leavened melodies are carried by heavy angular guitar…

  • Russian Circles – Guidance

    August 5, 2016 - By 

    In many ways, post-rock is an easy genre. Get a guitar, bass, and drums, load them with enough pedals to make Kevin Shields gasp and repeat a single musical phrase for the guts of seventy minutes and, voilà, you’re the next Explosions In The Sky, This Will Destroy or The Album Leaf. Freebasers will line up far and wide to catch a glimpse of what you’re doing, tv shows will contact you to write the score for their uplifting emotional scene and you’ll write variants of an identical theme for about decade, replacing members faster than an 80’s hair metal…

  • Watch: FONDA – Dreaming

    August 4, 2016 - By 

    Few things can compete with that fuzzy feeling you get discovering a band – particularly one close to home – that just instantly tick all the boxes and hit home on first listen. A three-piece garage band from Limerick, Galway and Glasgow, FONDA are one of those bands. Having drawn comparisons to the likes of Crystal Stilts and the Go Betweens, the three-piece recorded their debut EP, Social Services with So Cow’s Brian Kelly last Summer. Now they’re back with ‘Dreaming’, a wonderful, perfectly understated new single that wields hard truths and major-minor chord transitions with a knack normally reserved for acts that have been around the…

  • Watch: Morrissey & Marshall – Stand Down

    August 3, 2016 - By 

    Set for release on August 26, ‘Stand Down’ by Dublin rock n’ roll duo Morrissey and Marshall is a track inspired “by those poor unfortunates (politicians) who tend to stop at nothing when striving for success… They will lie, mislead, instil fear and do whatever it takes to get the people on side, without any true regard for the people. This song sparks the idea that there will eventually come a time when we’ll come together, rise above the fear and use truth, honesty and love to start fixing all of the things that need to be fixed.” An admirable,…

  • Stream: Chris Hanna – And All Shall Be Well

    August 3, 2016 - By 

    Ahead of playing Sunflowerfest this weekend, Belfast producer Chris Hanna shared this track on SoundCloud. A bright and bouncy affair, it’s part of a live set he’ll be playing next month, made entirely of new material — having lost all his work he’s making everything again from scratch. Hanna describes it as “a wee Songs of Praise house tune”, and it’s not hard to see why. Hands in the air.