Paul O’Connor – of That Snaake notoriety – has shared with us his latest release under the Licehead banner, which follows up on last year’s Music For Normal People album, and precedes upcoming summer LP Perfect Death Forever, which is set in a modern Ireland and based around a reincarnated lung’s attempts to kill its host. An aural equivalent to peeling-paint walls-closing-in claustrophobic hysteria, Friends at its extremes recalls the torpid squalor of Fat White Family or The Fall in dada-techno mode. Partly written over the last two months, the EP sees O’Connor turns the pen upon himself and loved ones, and societally-ingrained truths; title track ‘fRENDS’ is itself a reworking of ‘I’ll Be There For You’,…
-
-
Long one of our favourites in the (admittedly bereft) Irish free psychedelic improvised scene, Dublin-based outfit ¡NO! have announced a name change to the substantially more Googlable Zeropunkt, and with it have issued standalone single, ‘Bitch Nails’, available as a free download. On the name change, the band are self-awarely oblique: “The 0ught of N0ught is the point of zer0. NO. N. 0. The zer0 Number. The p0iNt. Zeropunkt.” Following a quiet 2018 for the generally prolific – 10 albums since 2014 – outfit, this single comes with the announcement of two forthcoming LPs, Clap Your Hands Say No and Open War, as well as the announcement of…
-
The first release on new Belfast-based label Love Will Bury Us is a statement. Optimistically titled Wish You Were Here, it’s a digital & cassette collaboration from Canadian noise artists Queer Fuck and Goth Girl. Devastating, corrupted and immeasurably intense, Wish You Were Here is a forty minute machine noise opus created initially by Queer Fuck – responsible for its majority of screeching – in two twenty minute drum sessions, that were then heavily edited and augmented to sound “like the chattering death rattle of a super computer from the 50’s”. Goth Girl’s wall of screeching turn the release into a blunt object, and is encapsulated in art by Queer Fuck. Nick Tooms,…
-
Gravity Records started out just like any other cult indie label – see: SST, Dischord – of the ‘80s-early ‘90s, when a pragmatic lead member (drummer Matt Anderson) of the most relevant band (Heroin) in a scene (1991 San Diego) wanted to release just one single. They would, as tradition goes, ultimately earn more notoriety and credibility than money, but it provided a rich catalogue of scattered splits and short long-players over which punk nerds and indie swots of the future can pore over and explore a periodic cul de sac. Fewer labels inbred more effectively and better developed a…
-
Recalling heavily the reverb-soaked bombast of the Creation Records roster, GALANTS, the brainchild of Dublin man David Kennedy, have unveiled the first part of a triptych of summer singles in the washed-out tumult of ‘This is Heaven’, a hefty beast of a broadside that sets the tone nicely for their upcoming output. Featuring artwork by Barry White, the new single comes at the start of a spate of Irish dates, including the Workman’s in Dublin on August 2nd, and on the 8th at Cyprus Avenue in Cork, in support of local indie-pop power-trio HAGS. Stream the new single exclusively in the…