• Premiere: Documenta – Lady With the Ring

    October 2, 2018 - By 

    A break from their planned trilogy of Drone Pop albums, ahead of its final chapter, Documenta will release their first music since 2015’s Drone Pop #1 through Belfast’s Touch Sensitive Records on October 12. Titled Lady With The Ring, it’s the story of “lived once, buried twice” Margorie McCall, who lived in rural Ireland in the early 18th century. She succumbed to a fever and was hastily buried in Lurgan’s Shankill cemetery. Her grave was visited by “a tramp of disreputable character with a reckless and thieving disposition” who drew blood as he tried to prise the ring from her finger, awakening the dead woman who subsequently lived…

  • Watch: Gnarkats – War Cry

    September 27, 2018 - By 

    Recorded with The Answer guitarist Paul Mahon, ‘War Cry’ is a statement of intent from Belfast trio Louis Nelson, Jordan Evans and Stuart Robinson AKA Gnarkats. Having already revealed their knack for blending heavy rock riffs with indie-pop melodies via previous effort including ‘Something to Say’ and ‘Enigma’, their new single shows a band whose huge choruses and fuzzed-out tangents are quickly setting them apart. Check out the band’s DIY video for the single below.

  • Stream: Arvo Party – D a N S E’

    September 19, 2018 - By 

    Having bridged the gap with the equally masterful ‘Liberté’ and ‘D U S T’ (a track Resident Advisor called “surging but melancholy synth pop”) Belfast-based producer and musician Herb Magee AKA Arvo Party is back with ‘D a N S E’. The second single from his forthcoming second album, which is set for release next month, it finds the fast-rising multi-instrumentalist marry spectral electronica with a host of backwashed beats. Listen to the track – and watch its DIY visuals – below. Magee plays our co-hosted Culture Night Belfast bill at Oh Yeah Music Centre on Friday night (September 21).

  • Shortlists Revealed for Northern Ireland Music Prize 2018

    September 10, 2018 - By 

    The shortlists for this year’s Northern Ireland Music Prize has been announced. Set to take place in Belfast’s iconic Ulster Hall on November 15, the event – which is now in its sixth year – returns with three categories that formed part of the first NI Music Awards back in 2011: Best Live, Best Single and the Oh Yeah Contender Awards for best emerging act. Over 80 industry and media cast their vote for all four categories over the last few months. The winners of each category will be awarded a cash prize. Best Single, Best Live Act and Oh Yeah…

  • Stream: Documenta – The Blue Sleep

    September 6, 2018 - By 

    We recently snuck a sneak peek of the forthcoming new EP from Belfast’s drone-pop septet Documenta and let it be known: we’re in for something very special indeed. Featuring the inimitable Will Carruthers of Spacemen 3, Spiritualized et. al, the five-track Lady with Ring will be released on vinyl EP and digital formats via Touch Sensitive Records on Friday, October 12. A release that doubles up as a departure from the band’s Drone Pop trilogy, the EP revolves around the story of Margorie McCall. We’re told: “McCall lived in rural Ireland in the early 18th century. She succumbed to a fever and…

  • Inbound: ABQ

    August 21, 2018 - By 

    Off the back of their debut single ‘Takes So Long’, Paul Shevlin of London-based Belfast quartet ABQ (AKA Albuquerque) talks process, pressure, the power of the right producer and keeping up with the scene back home. Hello ABQ. You have been playing together in different guises over the last few years, but the band still feels very new. For those of us not in the know, what’s the backstory to ABQ and what’s changed? It was a fairly natural transition from previous projects to ABQ. We’ve all played in and around the NI music scene for years and when an…

  • Premiere: Oisin O’Scolai & The Virginia Slims – Join Me in The Ground

    July 27, 2018 - By 

    Hailing from Donegal, Derry-based artist Oisin O’Scolai is most certainly one to watch. Very accurately being dubbed by his label, Belfast’s Black Tragick Records, as “the Buncrana Beck” (alternatively “if Harry Nilsson was from Donegal” or a latter day Paul Westerberg if he hadn’t have got drunk with the Stinson brothers and started The Replacements”). Self-recorded and released as Oisin O’Scolai and the Virginia Slims, the stellar, slow-burning gothic-folk of ‘Join Me in the Ground’ was mixed Ben McAuley and sees O’Scolai wield subtlety and pathos like a scythe. Taken from his forthcoming debut album, Vacant Sea, the single comes yet more…

  • Premiere: CATALAN! – Espionage

    July 16, 2018 - By 

    Despite having played only a handful of dates since emerging in July last year, Ewen Friers’ self-coined insurgency rock project CATALAN! has made a considerable dent on the Northern Irish music scene over the last few months. His latest effort, ‘Espionage’ has felt like bona fide single material since we first caught wind of it at a show in Belfast back in October. In characteristic Friers fashion, it commingles wide-eyed hope with full-blown melodies, and fuzzed-out bombast with lyrics that bring defiant people in foreign lands vividly to life. Curated by Friers, CATALAN! play the downright unmissable Coaster in Portrush this Friday…

  • Premiere: Dugout – Ride

    July 13, 2018 - By 

    One of several acts set to play the first ever Coaster in Portrush next Friday (July 20), Dugout are a new-fangled Belfast-based quartet whose debut single is a statement of intent. An earworming three-minute blast of Cuomo-conjuring indie-rock, the Ryan McGroarty-mixed, Rocky O’Reilly-engineered ‘Ride’ was, in the band’s own words, written about “that terrible job that we’ve all had.” Sealing the deal on the single is its video. Shot by Ciara McMullan and edited by Brendan Seamus aka BeeMickSee, it was filmed on location at Belfast venue Voodoo and features Dugout giving us a little preview of what to expect from their…