• Spilt Milk Festival Announce 2021 Line-Up

    September 30, 2021 - By 

    Spilt Milk makes its return to Sligo for its third edition from 18th – 21st November, 2021. Coming a year on from its online event Transmission last November, organisers are delighted to announce the festival will return as an in-person series of live shows, installations, film screenings and workshops across four days and nights. As with previous installments, Spilt Milk have once again delivered an eclectic, carefully-curated bill that reflects the scope of forward-pushing music and art in Ireland today. On Thursday, 18th November, the festival launches with a zine workshop and an audio-visual trail. On Friday 19th November the…

  • The Thin Air’s Top 100 Tracks of 2020 (#50-1)

    December 17, 2020 - By 

    Ah, 2020 eh? Unless you were living off the grid in a self-made banana bread house whilst rocking yourself gently to various iterations of ‘Happy Birthday’ as you washed your hands, then you will know that despite collectively living through the pandemic there were plenty of Irish songs to get excited about. 100 to be precise. We’ve listened to them on repeat since we couldn’t attend gigs, raves, or house parties so we’re certain we’ve selected the finest this little locked down island has to offer. It’s safe to say this year epitomised the true meaning of community in this…

  • The Thin Air’s Top 50 Irish Releases of 2020

    December 20, 2020 - By 

    In years to come, when someone asks me what The Thin Air was and represented, I’ll likely direct them to features like the one you have just opened. Much like other publications of our ilk – Nialler9, The Last Mixed Tape, Goldenplec and others – we spend 52 weeks of the year relentlessly championing what truly makes Irish music special and, very occasionally, genuinely world-beating. We all do it in different ways, and to slightly different audiences, but the impetus and desire to shine a light on what we have is one and the very same. Although they’re almost never…

  • A Litany of Failures: Volume III Announced

    July 3, 2020 - By 

    Two years on from its second volume, islandwide independent music compilation series A Litany of Failures has opened pre-orders and announced the tracklisting for Volume III in the series – out Friday, October 2nd. More eclectic, and more export-ready than ever, the compilation features brand new music from 22 acts across Ireland, including the first recorded output from Fifty Years of Hair (Postcard Versions/Girl Band’s Dara Kiely), The Golden Cleric (Shrug Life/Girlfriend/That Snaake) and Grave Goods (Girls Names, Pins, September Girls), as well as many of our favourites – Robocobra Quartet, Silverbacks, Rising Damp, Percolator, Extravision and many more. With cover art by Nathanaël Roman, it will be accompanied by…

  • Stream: The 343 Vol 1

    May 1, 2020 - By 

    In virtually no time at all, Belfast’s 343 has established itself as a vital part of the city’s creative community. An artist-focused, feminist-led, queer art-space in East Belfast, it’s one of many venues fighting to survive during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Currently fundraising as part of a national initiative launched by the Music Venue Trust, the 343 are going one further with the release of the aptly-titled The 343 Vol 1. Across fifteen tracks, it’s an endlessly listenable, perfectly genre-traversing compilation, featuring TTA favourites Rising Damp, Natalia Beylis, Elaine Howley, Gross Net & Fears and more. Best of all, seeing as Bandcamp…

  • Rising Damp – Petrol Factory

    April 22, 2020 - By 

    So what exactly is punk? It’s a question that probably goes back at least as far as when The Damned released ‘New Rose’, and tends to get easily muddied in issues of purity and pretension. It was addressed again recently through a tongue-in-cheek, classroom-style approach on Declan Synnott’s  Ain’t You on Dublin Digital Radio. While following along with specially prepared Powerpoint slides and track selections from artists as diverse as Special Interest, Rites of Spring, and Dustin the Turkey (!), Mr.Synnott and his class mused on the punk credentials of various topics. And while there were occasional unambiguous declarations (cats:…

  • 10 for ’20: Rising Damp

    February 28, 2020 - By 

    In the latest installment of 10 for ’20 – our feature looking at ten Irish acts we’re sure are set to do great things in 2020 and beyond – Eoin Murray profiles genre-warping musician and visual artist Michelle Doyle aka Rising Damp. Photo by Peter O’Hanlon One of the Irish undergrowth’s most febrile live acts, Rising Damp, makes music to be shook to. We first heard her at Banger Cliff, on the Sunday of Open Ear 2019, when she played an appropriately head-scrambling live set of ravey electronic punk and EBM. The Dublin artist’s effect-soaked howls and propulsive rhythms injected…

  • New Three-Day Irish Underground Festival Alternating Current Announced

    January 28, 2020 - By 

    A new, three-day Irish festival has been announced. Set to showcase Ireland’s underground as part of St. Patrick’s Festival 2020, the inaugural Alternating Current will take over Dublin’s The Sound House from Friday, March 13th to Sunday, March 15th. Curated by Dublin Digital Radio, Enthusiastic Eunuch and Tiny Cosmos, the line-up for the festival’s first outing is absolutely nothing to sniff at it, either. From ELLLL, BB84, Woven Skull, Vicky Langan, Crevice and Fixity, to Maija Sofia, Naive Ted, Post Punk Podge, Robocobra Quartet, Rising Damp and beyond, this is a bill that more than comfortably makes up for the absence of…

  • Preview: Féile na Gréine 2019

    August 12, 2019 - By 

    It’s no longer up for debate: right now, the network of promoters, venues and artists that make up Ireland’s extraordinary DIY music scene (singular) is the strongest and most homogeneous that it’s ever been. From Dundalk, Cork, and Belfast to Letterkenny, Dublin, Derry and beyond, incalculable good people are putting on world-beating shows and festivals, featuring acts of every ilk and every conceivable corner of the island. No area or sound is being overlooked. No band is stranded in the arse-end of nowhere after a show. Blind, sweeping reverence for Dublin as some sort of untouchable bastion of Irish music…