• Premiere: The Mad Dalton – Devil Came To Derry

    October 20, 2016 - By 

    Keeping the candle burning for the dying tradition of the Halloween single, Belfast-based Scots/Canadian singer-songwriter Peter Sumadh AKA The Mad Dalton’s ‘Devil Came To Derry’ is a slow-burning dose of malevolent Americana that puts sparsely plucked guitar guitars and a bleak, unravelling narrative centre-stage. Accompanied by a video shot up Derry way by Dog Kennel Productions, the single is the follow-up to Sumadh’s 2015’s The Little Belfry EP, which we reviewed here. Have an exclusive first look at the video for the single (“a song for people of all faiths and for people with no faith at all.”) below.  

  • Premiere: Patrick Gardiner – Riverside Remark

    September 29, 2016 - By 

    When we premiered his Carcassonne EP back in April last year, we praised Co. Down singer-songwriter Patrick Gardiner‘s “subtly eclectic mix of incisive, occasionally wry and consistently considered acoustic tale-telling”. Nineteen months – and a whole lot of writing and recording – later, the songsmith has resurfaced with its accomplished, not to mention considerably more stripped-back and song-centric follow-up, ‘Riverside Remark’. A departure from the fleshed-out, full-band sound of the aforementioned EP, this new effort sees Gardiner and his guitar take centre-stage much like his early ruminations. A considerably less impressionistic – or indeed jazz-tinged – tale than many will be…

  • Sound of Belfast Programme Launched

    September 27, 2016 - By 

    Promising “live gigs, music industry, awards, learning and community” the programme for this year’s Sound of Belfast was launched earlier this afternoon at Belfast’s Oh Yeah Centre. The nominal successor to Belfast Music Week, the 10 day annual festival is, according to Oh Yeah Music Centre CEO Charlotte Dryden, “a celebration of a great music city impressing audiences with new sounds, providing youth and community with access, encouraging participation through workshops and discussing the sector with industry and artists”. With highlights including Malojian’s This Is Nowhere album launch at the MAC, Robyn G Shiels’ ‘If I Were Thy Demon’ single…

  • EP Premiere: Paper Dogs – The Lost Art of Conversation

    September 19, 2016 - By 

    If there’s one thing the island of Ireland has no shortage of it’s straight-shooting rock bands. But one such act that has developed that foundation to skilfully – and often very convincingly – accomadate the influence of blues, funk, indie rock and much more besides is Belfast quartet Paper Dogs. Counting such heavy-hitters as Pink Floyd, Miles Davis, Thin Lizzy and Black Sabbath, amongst their key influences, the Chris Rooney-fronted band – an increasingly established staple on the live scene up North over the last while – doth their collective cap to a certain grade of genre-defining greats whilst very consciously framing that imprint with their…

  • Video Premiere: Malojian – I’ll Be Alright

    September 16, 2016 - By 

    Featuring footage of the Stevie Scullion-fronted band recording their forthcoming new album, This Is Nowhere, with Steve Albini in Chicago early this year, the video for ‘I’ll Be Alright’ by Malojian captures a band very much in their element. Also featuring Joe McGurgan on bass and Michael Mormecha (also of Mojo Fury et al.) on drums, their journey was fully captured by Belfast-based photographer and The Thin Air contributor Colm Laverty; make sure to keep an eye out for the full-length reveal of that soon. The lead track from This Is Nowhere, ‘I’ll Be Alright’ is Malojian at their sharpest. With beautiful harmonies…

  • Stream: New Pagans – Lilly Yeats/I Could Die

    September 12, 2016 - By 

    There’s few things more satisfying than the sonic shock-and-awe of a band cropping up out of nowhere with a sucker punch of a debut single. Comprised of Claire Miskimmin of Girls Names/Cruising, Cahir O’Doherty of Fighting With Wire/GOONS, Lyndsey McDougall and Balkan Alien Sound’s Conor McAuley, New Pagans fall very comfortably under that bracket – and go one with further with the release of two singles, ‘Lilly Yeats’ and ‘I Could Die’. Bearing the hallmarks of a band that have spent some time fleshing out their sound over the last few months, both tracks are keenly balanced between the burrowingly melodic and downright vehement, each strident passage and…

  • Premiere: Arborist – I Heard Him Leaving

    September 12, 2016 - By 

    With a sound in which subtlety holds sway where a scream would fall short, Mark McCambridge AKA Arborist is a craftsman of nuance. With his debut full-length album, Home Burial, set for release on November 11 via Kirkinrola Records, the Belfast-based singer-songwriter’s recent single ‘A Man of My Age’ garnered comparisons to such venerated figures as Leonard Cohen, Bill Callahan and Jason Molina with very good reason. In knowing there’s no need to clothe a skeleton, McCambridge’s knowingly stark, wonderfully composed songs put the cutting phrase and heavy allusion centre-stage, each lyric lit by softly lilting Americana folk betraying both longing and hope…

  • Inbound: Brand New Friend

    September 8, 2016 - By 

    As the seasons inevitably turn and summer ambles into autumn, sometimes you need music to augment the mood and bridge that interim between the party and the comedown; the wind-down from long evenings boozing by the canal and the sinking realisation that it all has to finish up sometime. That seems as good a time as any to welcome a brand new friend into your life – four of them, more accurately – playing a blend of sad and raucous, joyous and melancholic songs about love and other less important things. Initially Taylor Johnson’s solo endeavour, the addition of his…

  • Premiere: SKYMAS – No Easy Way Out

    September 2, 2016 - By 

    One of the country’s most compelling live outfits, Belfast duo Martin Corrigan (ex-Alloy Mental) and Nick Todd AKA SKYMAS are an act that aim straight for the sonic jugular. With their aim to create tracks that “can channel the fundamental, super physical energy from beyond our everyday world” their new Dave Lievense-produced single ‘No Easy Way Out’ bears the hallmarks of their propulsive electro-rock craft to date: pounding rhythms, powerful textures and brazen lyrical gusto. Tipping their hat to musical and philosophical forerunners ranging from Fela Kuti, Steve Albini and John Lydon to David Bohm, Robert Anton Wilson and Alan Watts, Corrigan and Todd’s…

  • Premiere: Invaderband – Ship of Nothing

    September 1, 2016 - By 

    With their self-titled debut album set for release on November 25, Derry quartet Invaderband‘s idiosyncratic brand of garage-laced artrock betrays the hallmarks of a band content in doing things their way without neglecting the power of the hook. Nowhere is that more self-evident than on their forthcoming single ‘Ship of Nothing’, an impossibly earworming three minutes that simultaneously rollicks and lulls via chopping guitar chords, handclaps, seagull samples and organ lines in confident, mercurial synchronicity. Invaderband songwriter and vocalist Adam Leonard, “Lyrically this record covers a number of disparate bases: The invasion of Iraq, ectoplasm, alien attack and Alan Rickman, and that’s…