• New Online Initiative for Northern Irish Music, Music Connections, Launches

    July 2, 2021 - By 

    A new online initiative championing Northern Irish music has launched. Off the back of news that live music can return to the north from July 5th, Music Connections is a central online hub created to support the development and growth of NI’s diverse and talented music sector. As well as featuring information on evcents, funding opportunities, health services and the latest funding opportunities, the website will also signpost musicians, freelancers, music organisations and music businesses towards vital information to support their career. In a statement, Lynne Best of The Fourth Pillar said, “The music sector in Northern Ireland has a…

  • Watch: piglet – mill

    April 21, 2021 - By 

    Belfast-raised, London-based songwriter & producer Charlie Loane emerged as a compelling voice fronting his past project, the DIY electronics duo Great Dad. Continuing to explore themes of queer/trans experience, further filtered through personal experience, the arrival of his debut solo EP as Piglet, alex’s birthday, last year revealed an artist fully forging their own path. Off the back of two collaborative tracks with Porridge Radio, which received coverage from Pitchfork among others in February, Loane returns today with their most emphatic single to date. Bridging woozy lo-fi solipsism in the vein (Sandy) Alex G with the swarming brass of Bowie circa Blackstar, it’s a triumphant, homespun…

  • Inbound: Amerik

    April 21, 2021 - By 

    In the early 2000s, Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello’s method of overcoming physical distance in musical collaboration was so unusual that they named the resulting project – The Postal Service – after it. In 2021, it’s the new normal. Funny, then, that Adam Booth, Belfast producer of instrumental music under the moniker Amerik, chose the current climate for his first collaborative effort. Perfectly timed as we all prepare to get a little closer to each other, his second EP, Bouquet, brings together Gareth Dunlop, Travi The Native, Little Rivers, and Pete Wallace for a richly seasoned collection of heartfelt sounds…

  • Q+A: Nathan O’Regan of Songbook

    December 1, 2020 - By 

    We catch up with Belfast-based musician and promoter Nathan O’Regan about the origins, success and upcoming – downright unmissable – festive installment of monthly invitational session Songbook on Tuesday, December 8th. Hi Nathan. First of all, for those not familiar with Songbook, briefly tell us about your original motivations for starting the night back in the summer of 2017. Songbook began with the intention of filling what I saw to be a massive hole in the Belfast music scene. Having started gigging here in 2013, I was lucky to have fallen in with an incredible group of players but was…

  • Sound of Belfast 2019 Launched

    September 27, 2019 - By 

    The programme for this year’s Sound of Belfast has been launched. Taking across November 1-10 in various Belfast venues, the ten-day celebration of local music was established by Belfast’s Oh Yeah Music Centre to promote and celebrate the musicians, bands, venues, promoters and music communities of Belfast. This year’s programme is its most extensive to date, with over 70 performances set for 18 participating venues. As well as live music from atists including Jordan Adetunji, Kitt Philippa, The Darkling Air, Wynona Bleach (pictured) and more, there will also be various workshops and conferences from the likes of PPL, Musicians Union…

  • Inbound: Foreign Owl

    April 11, 2017 - By 

    Foreign Owl is a band whose members have found their musical home in Derry by way of a protracted route through the Southern prefecture of Fukuoka, Japan and the mean streets of Burt, Donegal. Members, Eoghan Donegan (Guitarist/Singer), along with brothers Míchéal (Bass/Singer) and Ciarán McCay (Drums/Singer) struck up a friendship after meeting at Japanese drumming (Taiko) classes in Derry. What started out as a mutual appreciation of film, soon germinated into a real desire to express themselves through music, inspired by their surroundings, art and Japanese culture. Along the way, Radio Foyle’s Stephen McCauley has championed the band by…

  • Premiere: Travis Is A Tourist – Loosen Up

    June 29, 2015 - By 

    In a land and age increasingly over-saturated with every conceivable ilk and fashion of singer-songwriter, Travis Gilbert AKA Travis Is A Tourist manages to carve his own path of folk-pop, one imbued with a real, almost touchable sense of purpose. The follow-up to his ear-grabbing 2013 debut EP, Gilbert will release the five-track Weakdays on July 6, a release defined by Gilbert’s wonderfully crafted admissions of open-eyed restlessness, doubt and destiny. Seeking to “marry the robust rock of artists such as Ryan Adams with a slice of Prince-esque R’n’B” the EP’s lead single ‘Loosen Up’ distils the essence of Weakdays across three and a…

  • Hot Cops – #1 Babes

    February 2, 2015 - By 

    Arguably one of the most exciting and idiosyncratic Irish indie-rock bands of a generation, Belfast-based three-piece Hot Cops are teetering on the brink of some great things in 2015. Released immediately off the back of their stellar double-single ‘Origami/Novelty’, the band’s new four-track EP, #1 Babes, coyly, often cryptically renders instability, heartbreak, and the human condition in first-rate, wanderlust-tinged lo-fi glory. Positively bursting at the seams with fuzzed-out tangents, earworming refrains and masterfully nonchalant hooks, the Carl Eccles-fronted threesome’s cunningly off-kilter, slacker-soaked anti-anthems instantly evoke their main influences in Pavement, Deerhunter and Cloud Nothings. At the root of that is…

  • TTA Session #004: Robocobra Quartet

    November 18, 2014 - By 

    Undoubtedly one of the more ambitious and inimitable acts to emerge from Belfast this year, jazz-rap-punk four-piece Robocobra Quartet are a guitarless, sax -and-bass led, cymbal-spattered, improv-leaning, off-kilter time and rhyme-melding, Zorn-summoning, Mingus-hinting, Isotope 217 and Soul Coughing-echoing, decidedly forward-thinking force to be reckoned with. In the fourth of many more live sessions in the making, our resident videographer Colm Laverty captures the band perform two of their best tracks, as well as in conversation about their approach to songwriting, their “place” within local music, what the future holds in store and more. Keep an eye out for these guys…

  • EP Download: The Holy Ghost Explosion – Wolves

    August 1, 2014 - By 

    A chugging, decidedly DIY five-track dose of teeth-clenched alt-rock, Dundalk five-piece The Holy Ghost Explosion have unveiled their long-awaited debut EP, Wolves. Two years on from the release of the EP’s lead single, the EP evokes early Biffy Clyro and Reuben in equal proportion, down-tuned riffs marrying feral smatterings of cymbals and potent, pissed off vocals. Stream and/or download (for free, if you like) the EP below via Bandcamp. Wolves Extended Play by The Holy Ghost Explosion