With her debut album, Before We Forgot How To Dream, set for release via Rough Trade on June 1, SOAK has unveiled the video for ‘Blud’. Capturing different aspects of the Derry’s artist’s recent skatepark tour and more, the release is the second version of the video, the first, pre-Rough Trade video being released last year. Win tickets to SOAK’s Belfast show at the Empire on June 10 here.
Set for release on April 21, Bomber by Belfast’s Robocobra Quartet captures a band whose brilliantly burgeoning sound gets more engrossing and self-assured with each release. Following on the heels of agog lead single ”80-88′, the brief but burrowing ‘Wicker Bar’ is a more inward-looking, abstracted affair, the band’s drummer/vocalist Chris Ryan meditating on backwashed thoughts and distant scenes, relaying beat-inflected stylings over dancing sax and a floating, spectral vocal ensemble courtesy of Patrick Gardiner. Sub-titled “four songs about three people, two novels, a failed assassination attempt and a volunteer-run community arts space” the EP was recorded by Ryan at Belfast’s Start Together…
Derry alt-rock quartet The Wood Burning Savages aren’t exactly ones to slack with their music videos. Take the engaging, narrative-driven visual accompaniments to previous singles ‘Boom’ and ‘America’ – two strong, wonderfully considered videos that really manage to drive Paul Connolly’s words home. Directed by Cillian Farrell and Sonni Ross , the band have just went one better with the video for new single ‘Lather, Rinse, Repeat’, an instantly captivating accompaniment to a track bursting with upbeat gusto and eager flair. Check that out below.
Belfast-based quintet R51 have come on leaps and bounds over the last couple of years. Having cultivated a perfectly pulverizing live show and an effects-laden, shoegaze-tinged noise-pop craft that continues to surprise and intrigue, the Melyssa Shannon-fronted quartet will launch their debut EP, Pillow Talk, at Belfast’s Bar Sub on Wednesday night (April 25). In his review of the EP for the Thin Air, Will Murphy said, “Each one of the songs has something to recommend, be it the Sigur Ros vibe permeating throughout the EP closer, ‘Seaweed’, the spaced out verses on ‘I Hate That Too’ or the monstrously huge chorus on ‘Pillow…
Cornwall-based, Northern Irish singer-songwriter Patrick Gardiner is a methodical songsmith that thrives on the intricacies of his craft. From the poise and refrain of his carefully-considered words to specific chord changes and structures, he has really made an impression on us, live, on more than one occasion. Three years on from his self-released debut EP, Save Myself, the Co. Down musician will release its five-track follow-up, Carcassonne, on April 1. On first listen, it’s a subtly eclectic mix of acoustic tale-telling, Gardiner’s earnest delivery on each track hovering confidently over full-band tracks underpinned with some instantly memorable melodic threads and pop nuances. Ahead…
Does belonging to a location make an album better? Is Springsteen as interesting if you remove New Jersey or Nebraska? What about NWAand Compton? If this is the case, then rapper Bee Mick See’s debut Belfast Yank deserves some serious credit. The album is entirely engulfed in Belfast. Its language, culture and people are the subjects of various tracks ranging from loving portraits (‘Belfast Slang’) to lacerating polemics (‘Natural Scents’). Even his flow, which owes an obvious debt to Slug from Atmosphere, is heavily accented; it could only belong to this city. In spite of its overproduced beats, which bares a welcome resemblance to Malibu Shark Attack, it’s a strangely emotionally honest album. BeeMickSee is surprisingly…
In one of the more curious, unlikely – and, let’s face, envy-inducing – collaborations headed by a Irish singer-songwriter in quite some time, Belfast-based folk songsmith Mark McCambridge AKA Arborist has unveiled his latest effort, featuring backing vocals from none other than Kim Deal. Speaking about the collaboration, McCambridge said: “The harmony part was always there, from the moment the song was written and recorded here in Belfast. But it needed a unique voice. Fancifully, we drew-up a shortlist of desirable candidates with Kim far and away top of the list. So, we contacted her – as you do – and after a…
Stevie Scullion AKA Malojian has long been one of our favourite songsmiths from these shores. A real master of the hushed, understated acoustic lullaby, he has an extraordinarily for bringing a room to a pin-drop silence with a few softly-strummed chords and a repartee or two of plainly-sung truth. Directed by the equally gifted Richard Davis, the video for Scullion’s new single, ‘Communion Girls’, is a touching, darkly humorous and beautifully rendered piece, one that we couldn’t recommend you any more highly for giving the once over. ‘Communion Girls’ is taken from Malojian’s forthcoming album Southlands. Get involved in its…
Both in terms of songwriting and sheer work ethic, Northern Irish alt-rock quartet More Than Conquerors have always stood out from many of their music-making peers. Have entered a new phase of their journey to date, the band seem more intent and enthused than ever, something the earworming ‘Red’ goes some distance in confirming. The Belfast-based band’s first single of 2015, the track is a self-proclaimed “strange elegy and a strange right to understanding. It’s our reason to continue what we’ve started and to play harder than we ever have. When death comes it brings a strange atmosphere to life and music. It…
Having been described as “simple, beautiful and moving” by Rock Sound (where it premiered, no less), Belfast-based quartet A Plastic Rose have unveiled the video for the latest single, ‘Garavogue’. Directed by vocalist/guitarist Gerry Norman, it’s a wonderfully understated accompaniment to the track. According to the band, the song is “an ode to Sligo where Gerry and Ian grew up and the Garavogue is the river that runs through the town.” A Plastic Rose launch their album, Flickering Light of an Inner War, at Belfast’s Mandela Hall on Thursday, February 26. Watch the video for ‘Garavogue’ below.