• Video Premiere: Come on Live Long – For The Birds

    March 22, 2016 - By 

    Last week, Dublin based group Come on Live Long returned with their first track in several months; the lush, smooth, R’n’B infused ‘For The Birds’. The song makes good use of the band’s known strong suits, from Louise Gaffney’s hypnotic vocals, Daithi O’Connor’s subtle yet ear pricking guitar licks, to their overall penchant for tremendous dynamic shifts which lead to a feeling of both ease and empowerment when listening. ‘For The Birds’ is taken from Come on Live Long’s second LP Move As One which is due to be released this Summer. Speaking of the writing process for the new album, Gaffney…

  • Premiere: Hazing – Nervous Signals (Soil Creep remix)

    March 21, 2016 - By 

    Released back in February, Joy Void by Dutch/Irish artist Hazing is a debut EP that demands your our attention from the get go. Evoking the likes of Wild Nothing and Ariel Pink over its four tracks, there is a somnambulist glow woven throughout the release, conjuring late-night city traipses, head down, hands in pockets, driven forth by wayward thoughts of belonging and connection in a sleeping urban jungle.Two months after it dropped, Dublin producer Aidan Wall AKA Soil Creep has re-imagined lead single ‘Nervous Signals’ in superb fashion. Excavating beats and bleeps from the track’s placid fabric, it re-frames the track in such a…

  • Premiere: The Wood Burning Savages – We Love You

    March 21, 2016 - By 

    If their last few shows are anything to go by – not least their thrilling performance at our Tuesday Throwdown at Lavery’s in last month – Derry’s Wood Burning Savages are a band coursing forth with a huge amount of momentum right now. Recorded by Rocky O’Reilly at Belfast’s Start Together Studio, their new single, ‘We Love You’, is breakneck two and a half minutes that sees frontman Paul Connolly at the peak of his steadfast and ever-increasingly silver-tongued powers. Speaking of the release, Connolly said, “It’s not a love song. It’s a song about youthful dreams and hope being…

  • Video Premiere: Edward F Butler – Joke Until Caught

    March 7, 2016 - By 

    Having spent the last few years making his mark in Belfast with HOWL and solo adventures, audio-visual maestro Edward F Butler is currently back home in Norfolk, working in a wood and home studio having recently returning from recording material in Berlin. Ahead of recording with LCON in Canada in May and playing shows in Toronto, New York and Montreal in May/June, Butler is releasing 12 releases in 2016, the second and latest of which, ‘Joke Until Caught’, distils his very prismatic craft to four consuming minutes. Keep up to date with Butler’s 12 releases in 2016 here. Created by Butler, check…

  • Premiere + Interview: Ryan Vail – Invert

    March 4, 2016 - By 

    Whether you’re a newcomer or have been following his slow-burning, revelatory evolution as of late, Derry’s Ryan Vail has always commanded a domain that he can call his own. A master of subtlety, nuance and the hallowed space between the notes, his debut EP These Words revealed fully-formed promise that has only grown (and grown into itself) in the half-decade since. Whether you look to EPs including Fade and Grow, tracks such as ‘Sunlight’ and ‘Days’, superb new single ‘Wounds’ or Sea Legs, his well-received concept collaboration with Ciaran Lavery, Vail’s music and the sphere he conjures via slowly bobbing, synth-laden electronica has always…

  • EP Premiere: Bouts – Unlearn

    February 29, 2016 - By 

    Self-described as a “pop-grunge noise rock band with an inherent, unashamed attachment to big pop hooks” Dublin indie rock quartet Bouts have well and truly lived up to that explication over the last few years. Having fully arrived with their stupendous debut album Nothing Good Gets Away back in 2013, today marks the release of a five-track EP that sees their craft as downright convincing as ever, in spite of two members living overseas. Recorded at various points in 2015, at no point during the process where all members present together – a fact that both underlines the studio efforts of John Murphy and Shane…

  • Video Premiere: Left With Pictures – Terra Firma

    February 22, 2016 - By 

    Having made fans out of BBC 6 Music’s Gideon Coe and Lauren Laverne amongst others, the music of London orchestral pop ensemble Left With Pictures is an exquisite proposition. Belying the classically-trained trio’s command of contemplative, layered textures, upon which vocals dance and harmonies entwine, their new single ‘Terra Firma’ summons a wall of gently swelling strings, ghostly church-pew background vocals and a gorgeous looped keyboard motif, evoking the quiet sanctity of Wild Beasts at their most ruminating. Taken from the band’s forthcoming album Afterlife – set for release on April 29 – have yourself an exclusive first peek at the video for the track, made by Jonathan…

  • Premiere: Orchid Collective – Lay As Stone

    February 22, 2016 - By 

    Set to be launched at Whelan’s on March 11, ‘Lay As Stone’ by Dublin quartet Orchid Collective is an unwinding alt-folk meditation on weariness and reprieve that sees wonderfully-woven harmonies come to the fore across the track’s nigh on four minutes. Recorded by Mojo Fury’s Mike Mormecha at Lisburn’s Millbank Studios, it’s a similarly rousing, radio-seeking effort to previous singles including ‘Figure It Out’. Orchid Collective also play Belfast’s Eglantine this Thursday night (February 25). Have an exclusive first listen to ‘Lay As Stone’ below.

  • Premiere: Monster Monster – The City’s Ours

    February 12, 2016 - By 

    Ahead of its release on March 11, we’re pleased to present a premiere of ‘The City’s Ours’ by Dublin alt-pop duo Mick Stuart and Ríona Sally Hartman AKA Monster Monster. Taken from their debut EP of the same name (released last year and recorded with UK producer James Lewis) the lead track is a rousing battlecry of urban abandon and collective immunity. Check out the video for the single and forthcoming Monster Monster tour dates below. Tuesday, March 1 – Ruby Sessions, Dublin Saturday, April 9 – Brewery Corner, Kilkenny Friday, April 15 – Boyles, Slane Thursday, April 21 – Róisín Dubh, Galway Saturday, May 14 –…

  • Premiere: Hot Cops – Scared of Everything

    February 11, 2016 - By 

    It’s no coincidence that we’ve hosted Belfast indie rock trio Hot Cops in four different TTA shows over the last couple of years, most recently at a packed-out show at Belfast’s Lavery’s on Tuesday night for the launch of their stellar new single ‘Passive Passive‘. The b-side to that, ‘Scared of Everything’ is an equally emphatic effort from the fast-rising threesome, forging pounding, fuzzed-out chords and frontman Carl Eccles’ admissions of apprehension (“I’m afraid to go outside/I don’t want to see your skin/I’m afraid to let you in”). Conjuring the likes of Pinkerton-era Weezer and Cloud Nothings’ more tuneful throwdowns, it gives everyday quasi-agoraphobic dread yet another…