• Premiere: Hot Cops – Decay

    July 27, 2018 - By 

    On Monday (July 30), Belfast indie rock stalwarts Hot Cops will release Speed Dating, a five-track EP that compiles remastered versions of their singles to date. Doubling up as a quick primer of-sorts, the release holds up as an all-killer insight into why the Carl Eccles-fronted band are widely considered to be one of the country’s very best (a theory you may have noticed we’ve shared over the last few years.) The release’s lead track, ‘Decay’ has long been a live highlight for the band. A three-minute blast of fuzzed-out slacker-pop, it’s a full-blown celebration of ennui that finds relief in both simple admittance and its feedback-soaked closing…

  • 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: Girlfriend – Spitkissing/Small Smile Grow

    July 21, 2018 - By 

    Boasting one of the most compelling live shows around, Dublin alternative quartet Lahela Jones, Lisa Rogers, Hana Lamari and Sophie Dunne aka Girlfriend have gone from strength to strength over the last couple of years. New recorded material has been in the pipeline for some time, but some things are worth the wait. The follow-up to 2016’s 3AM Rituals, the foursome’s new double-single ‘Spitkissing/Small Smile Grow’ captures the heart, craft and intensity that is setting them apart in five blitzing minutes. While the former track is a harmony-driven, masterfully lo-fi paean to the private codes of intimacy, the latter effort is a fierce, fist-clenched…

  • Album Premiere: Elephant – 88

    July 20, 2018 - By 

    We’re pleased to present a first listen to 88, the second album from Dundalk artist and multi-instrumentalist Shane Clarke aka Elephant. Released today, both digitally and on 12″ vinyl via Pizza Pizza Records, Clarke has called the album “a soundtrack to my childhood and young adult life.” From the gossamer folk-pop spell of opener ‘Summer’ to the album’s glitchy closer ‘All These Dragons’, Clarke brilliantly filters bygone times, Proustian moments and lucid epiphanies of the past through a lens that always see melody and – the album’s crowning achievement – his vocals take centre-stage. Speaking about the release – which is dedicated to the…

  • Premiere: Joshua Burnside – REarranged (Lyrics Video)

    July 23, 2018 - By 

    Last month, Belfast-based singer-songwriter Joshua Burnside released one of the Irish EPs of the year thus far, the understated and masterfully candid All Round The Light Said. ‘REarranged’ was a highlight from the release, and now the track has a brand new lyric video courtesy of Blue Americans‘ Kris Platt. A bold visual accompaniment featuring the uncanny transposition of archive footage, it reframes Burnside’s words, which mine memory backwashed thoughts like very few others can. Have an exclusive first look below.  

  • Premiere: A Ritual Sea – Seasons (Like You)

    July 19, 2018 - By 

    Set to be launched at Dublin’s Drop Dead Twice on August 9, ‘Seasons (Just Like You)’ finds A Ritual Sea mining pure inspiration from dream-pop, shoegaze and indie textures. The second single to be taken from the Dublin band’s forthcoming debut album – which is expected to arrive in early 2019 – the song explores the themes of fear, paranoia and falling in love, asking, as the band puts it, |if we ever really fully know another person; navigating the slow unveiling of our true personalities – changeable, unpredictable, and ever-shifting.” Filmed by Fabian Chombart in Lioux, a region in the South…

  • 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…

  • Stream: DANI – Samson and Goliath

    June 28, 2018 - By 

    A multi-instrumentalist with a remarkable knack for eking out sublime, burrowing melodies evocative of Irish traditional music, Belfast-based singer-songwriter DANI has returned with ‘Samson and Goliath’, a three-minute gem of pastoral alt-folk exploring the concept of “disconnection and being unable to recognise oneself.” Having spent last year facilitating music workshops and performing in Colombia and Indonesia, namely working in the field of conflict transformation, this is the sound of a musician who is renewed and ready to take her rightful place in being recognised as one of the island’s most singular alt-folk talents. Listen to the single – and check out its artwork – below.…

  • Premiere: Peter J. McCauley – Where Do We Belong

    June 22, 2018 - By 

    We last heard from Belfast singer-songwriter Peter J McCauley when he released his five-track EP Liminals back in 2016. Two years on, the multi-instrumentalist and vocalist — who previously released music under the moniker Rams Pocket Radio — is back with one of his most nuanced and carefully-crafted single efforts to date. Threaded with some subtle electronic ambience, it’s a wonderfully sparse piano-and-vocals paean to the eternal conundrum of not knowing where one is going, but taking solace in both perspective and faith in que será, será. Have a first listen to the single below.

  • Premiere: Heroes in Hiding – Berlin

    May 15, 2018 - By 

    The second single from their forthcoming debut album, Actor, ‘Berlin’ by Dublin quartet Heroes in Hiding is a cathartically-driven effort exploring “a want for change and a sense of belonging, or lack thereof.” According to the Joe Carroll-fronted band, “The narrator has become fed up with their surroundings, and fantasises about a new life in Berlin. They are convinced that by moving away they will be able to throw off the shackles of their old life and start afresh, leaving the anxious surroundings of their current world behind.” Exploring “a ‘moment’ of uncertainty in life – a moment where we are…