• Album Stream: Duellists – Into The Fade

    May 24, 2019 - By 

    Comprising members of NI alt-rock royalty in Throat and Element, the music of Portadown/Larne trio Duellists is full-blown, riff-fuelled testament to the power of perseverance and pushing forward. Off the back of lead singles ‘Into the Fade’ and the recently-released ‘Perspective’, their long-awaited debut album, Into The Fade, makes for a breakneck, twelve-track statement of intent across 35 minutes. Recorded by Caolán Austin at Smalltown America Studios in Derry and mixed by Kurt Ballou (Converge) at Godcity Studios, it’s a release that firmly reveals the threesome to be at the peak of their collective powers. Duellists play Dundalk’s The Spirit Store on…

  • Stream: Peter J. McCauley – Anywhere My Love Will Go

    April 15, 2019 - By 

    Under both his given name and previous moniker, Rams’ Pocket Radio, Peter J. McCauley has been responsible for some emotionally dense and finely-woven balladry. Right up there with his most potent efforts to date is the brief but brilliant ‘Anywhere My Love Will Go’. With its delicate ebb and flow, it’s a masterfully minimalist, yet deceptively intricate tale of love and longing. ‘I wrote this song at a time when I was working on music projects with two groups of older people in Belfast,” McCauley said. “One in a centre in the West of the city and one in an Alzheimer’s unit…

  • Premiere: Alpha Chrome Yayo – Cerberus 3000 (Killing Time)/A Sweet Car Named Demented

    March 21, 2019 - By 

    Last month, we had the pleasure of premiering ‘Breakfast in Daytona’ by Belfast producer and musician Alpha Chrome Yayo. It was, as we saw it, “soaked, SEGA-leaning gem” from an artist who, alongside the likes of the equally mysterious Danny Madigan, are flying the chequered flag for Belfast’s surprising, yet thriving synthwave scene. A self-proclaimed “hi-octane hellride”, new single ‘Cerberus 3000 (Killing Time’) ups the ante from ACY. Building on previous releases, the track – just like shorter, but no less inspired b-side ‘A Sweet Car Named Demented’ – is a pure-cut dose of synth-drenched, shred-heavy retromancy from the producer.…

  • Watch: Robyn G Shiels – Black Moon (Arvo Party Remix)

    February 26, 2019 - By 

    Taken from one of the Irish releases of last year, the five-track Death of the Shadows, ‘Black Moon’ found Kilrea singer-songwriter Robyn G Shiels‘ funereal folk craft stripped back to a plaintive, five-minute ode. It was a fitting curtain call for an EP that doubly confirmed the Belfast-based musician as one of the most incisive songwriting voices around. Three months on, Herb Magee aka Arvo Party has given the song the remix treatment. And how it comes off: leaning into the innate spaciousness and yearnful quality of the original, Magee’s inspired washes of ambience and decay reveal a whole new character to Shiels’…

  • 19 for ’19: Strange New Places

    February 18, 2019 - By 

    We continue 19 for ‘19 – our feature looking at nineteen Irish acts that we’re convinced are going places in 2019 – with fast-rising Belfast queerpunk five-piece Strange New Places. Photo by Niall Fegan One of several fast-rising Northern Irish acts that have been propelled by the Scratch My Progress initiative at Belfast’s Oh Yeah Music Centre, Strange New Places spent 2018 steadily emerging as one of the country’s most promising bands. On full display at Outburst’s Youth Take Over Day, Atlantic Sessions, Women’s Work festival and elsewhere throughout the year was the band’s equal parts forward-pushing and ear-worming brand of queerpunk. Striking strong…

  • Premiere: Alpha Chrome Yayo – Breakfast In Daytona

    February 7, 2019 - By 

    It’s not every day, but every once in a while, a track will land in our inbox that just instinctively makes us want to punch the air. A textbook case in point is the new single from newfangled Belfast producer and musician Alpha Chrome Yayo. Bursting at the seams with pure-cut throwback goodness, ‘Breakfast in Daytona’ is a synth-soaked, SEGA-leaning gem from an artist who set out to chart the “excitement of one day at a sun-bleached race-track”. The musician put it best when he said, “Waking up with the drivers, crew members and spectators, this synth-wave single starts hazy and hopeful,…

  • 19 for ’19: Rebekah Fitch

    February 6, 2019 - By 

    Though it’s not always easy to pinpoint why, some artists seem simply fated for big things. Of the myriad alt-pop acts that Ireland has produced over the last few years, the fast-moving upward trajectory of Belfast-based artist Rebekah Fitch is no such mystery. Drawing from influences spanning the likes of Björk and Portishead, to Sia and Stevie Nicks, Fitch has, over the last couple of years, emerged as something of a world-beating proposition. Having been nominated for the Contender Award at last year’s prestigious Northern Ireland Music Prize, her self-produced material to date – not least recent single, the emphatic ‘Need…

  • Premiere: Ferals – The Low

    February 5, 2019 - By 

    The island of Ireland has always batted out out of its league when it comes to riff-fuelled post-rock. Right up there with the acts flying the flag in the North right now is Belfast-based threesome Ferals. Listing Foals, Biffy Clyro, Deftones and North Coast instrumental machine And So I Watch You From Afar as their main influences, the Zool Records-affiliated band have re-emerged with their new single, ‘The Low’. Doubling up as the band’s strongest single effort to date – and accompanied with a suitably emphatic video – the song strikes a fist-clenched mid-point between low-end riff slinging, gang vocals…

  • Stream: Arvo Party – ouroboros

    January 17, 2019 - By 

    Following a big 2018, a year that saw the Belfast-based producer and musicians release his second album, II, all while emerging as one of the country’s strongest electronic artists, Herb Magee AKA Arvo Party has returned with ‘ouroboros’. Across nine minutes, the track untangles as a masterfully propulsive effort, marrying ecstatic synth shapes, woozy ambience and drubbing rhythms. Better still – in a move that fully underscores the broad-minded spirit that’s setting Magee apart – there is, ladies and gentlemen, a sax solo. Delve in below. ouroboros by Arvo Party

  • Stream: James Joys – Fugitive Wound

    January 4, 2019 - By 

    Despite existing on a peripheral plain sonically, Belfast producer and composer James Thompson AKA James Joys deserves much more than negligible regard, both at home and much further afield. Beyond his work as one-half of Ex-Isles with vocalist Peter Devlin, his solo output to date is equal parts spectrum-bucking, dense and hugely rewarding. Six minutes of self-proclaimed “deep brain cracking electronica to get sweaty to”, new single ‘Fugitive Wound’ encapsulates this. Mastered by fellow Belfast-based electronic wizard Herb Magee AKA Arvo Party, it’s a heady, warped triumph marrying a slew of staggered beats with ecstatic arpeggios and textures. Placed back-to-back with October’s Super_Tidal, it heavily suggests that James Joys might well…