• Premiere: Adjunct Ensemble – How Dare You Be Free!

    August 21, 2024 - By 

    In a sonic flash that feels both fleeting and eternal, Adjunct Ensemble’s ‘How Dare You Be Free!’ emerges as a six-minute sorcerous effort – a masterful act of improvisational conjuring featured on the forthcoming Habits Of Assembly – Live At Café OTO. Under the direction of fêted Belfast composer and musician Jamie Thompson, whose radical improvisational instincts are matched by his uncompromising political commentary, the project assembled a world-class lineup: Stephen Davis on drums, John Pope on bass, Sam Comerford on tenor sax, and Thompson himself on piano and electronics. Recorded live at the legendary Café OTO, their session transforms…

  • Video Premiere: Group Zero – We Need Water

    April 8, 2022 - By 

    Last October, Belfast-based musician Cathal Cully, AKA Group Zero, unveiled the sublime Everyone’s Already Come Apart. Released via Touch Sensitive, the five-track album melded muted psychedelia with loose, electronic experimentalism that brightened some brilliant corners. While each track rewarded, ‘We Need Water,’ proved an outright peak. Across six minutes, the subtle interactions between backwashed samples with piano, synth, and muted drum machine patterns burrow deep. Today, we’re pleased to present a first look at Belfast-based artist and filmmaker Benén Dillon’s video for the single. Shot on location in Mayo at the annual cliff-diving competition, it was filmed during the counties’ collective hangover from the All-Ireland…

  • Premiere: Martin Rössel & The Dum Dum Boys – Pablo Picasso

    November 4, 2020 - By 

    This Friday, November 6th, Belfast’s independent imprint par excellence Touch Sensitive release Hearts of Champions, the second volume of London-born producer, DJ and archivist Gareth Goddard aka Cherrystones‘ acclaimed Critical Mass series. In Goddard’s own words, the comp is “not a rare-for-rare-sake appendix of bands designed to showcase exclusivity and superiority”. Instead, we’re treated to an excavation of eighteen pure-gems from the post-punk and new wave era, featuring the likes of Konec, Loco Lotus, Siglo XX, Neon and more. Ahead of the compilation’s release via gatefold double vinyl, CD and digital on Friday, we’re pleased to present a first listen to Martin Rössel & The Dum…

  • Premiere: Deathbed Convert – Inner Mountain

    April 30, 2020 - By 

    Two years on from releasing the stellar Sentience and Sapience under his Ai Messiah alias, Belfast producer and musician Connor Dougan is back as Deathbed Convert. Set for release via NI’s finest imprint Touch Sensitive tomorrow (Friday, May 1) Dougan’s debut in his new guise is a feature-length exploration of bygone times, conjuring the melancholic beauty of The Durutti Column, Gigi Masin’s deep, ambient ocean, and Iasos’ endless expanse. Running parallel with Ai Messiah’s subjective speculations on the future, Debris of Echoes – which betrays the influence of Talk Talk, Alice Coltrane, Miles Davis and Pharoah Sanders – goes the other way, casting its inner…

  • Win Tickets to Future Sounds Now 2 @ Masonic Hall, Belfast

    September 5, 2019 - By 

    We have a pair of tickets to the second installment of Future Sounds Now at Belfast’s Masonic Hall on Saturday, September 7th. Hosted by Touch Sensitive Records as part of Belfast Music Summer 2019, the event will feature sets from The Lost Connection (aka Locky Morris of Rare and John O’Neill of The Undertones and That Petrol Emotion) and Ai Messiah. Tickets are £7 and doors open at 8pm. To enter our competition, simply send an e-mail to info@thethinair.net with the answer to the following question. Who was the vocalist of That Petrol Emotion?

  • Album Stream: Ai Messiah – Sentience & Sapience

    November 14, 2018 - By 

    From Black Bones’ remix of ‘Pursuit by Group Zero and David Holmes’ Mosaic OST to Documenta’s stellar Lady With The Ring EP, Belfast imprint Touch Sensitive have delivered another all killer year in releases. Their fourth and final release of the year, Sentience & Sapience by Belfast producer Ai Messiah offers up something yet more compelling. A self-proclaimed “soundtrack for gutted metropolises, virtual sanctuaries and utopian enclaves”, the album – which was inspired by the outlandish prophecies of tech guru Ray Kurzwell – confidently veers between fourth world-leaning tapestries, balmy kosmische and panoramic new-age across seventeen tracks. Officially out on Friday, the album will be launched…

  • Stream: Group Zero – Pursuit (Black Bones Dreams Mix)

    February 23, 2018 - By 

    A highlight from last year’s Structures and Light, ‘Pursuit’ by Belfast’s Cathal Cully AKA Group Zero has been reworked by production and DJ duo Black Bones. Extroverting the inward-looking subtlety of the original, the track has been re-woven as an early-morning dancefloor gem. Speaking of the track, Black Bones said, ““We wanted to lean the track more towards the club without losing it’s essence. Familiar noises mixed with an unfamiliar end. A sort of lost on the dance floor fog at 5am when you should have really gone home a long time ago. The joy of being there slightly mixed with…

  • Autumns – Dyslexia Tracks

    October 16, 2017 - By 

    Despite flecks of dust barely touching his debut album, Derry subgenre polymath Christian Donaghey, aka Autumns has announced yet another release on its way, in the form of his new Dyslexia Tracks EP, released on Belfast independent Touch Sensitive Records. Debut album Suffocating Brothers came out on Clan Destine Records at the end of September, with numerous remixes, cameos on specialist labels, and other releases bubbling to the top throughout this year. Autumns has never sounded as assured as he has recently, the creative trajectory approaching levels hinted at over the last few years. With his live show moving into a fully-fledged, techno-industrial piece of performance…

  • Group Zero – Structures and Light

    February 1, 2017 - By 

    With his primary project currently working on album number 4, Girls Names frontman Cathal Cully is to release his debut solo effort, Structures and Light under his Group Zero pseudonym. Released on February 17 on Touch Sensitive Records, like his bandmate Philip Quinn’s Gross Net electronic side-project, it projects the flip-side of their post-punk day-job, instead channelling the shadowy intensity along the lines of Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, without ever approaching an over-reliance on nostalgia or pastiche. As Touch Sensitive & Cully himself say: The genesis of this newly discovered musical freedom coincided with a viewing of ‘Pyramid of Light’ by Heinz Mack from the post-war Dusseldorf based…

  • Bullitt Presents: Ryan Vail [Live]

    October 13, 2016 - By 

    Belfast’s Bullitt hotel on Church Lane runs a free admission performance as part of a new series of events, kicking off with a free live show from Derry electronic musician Ryan Vail in their bar on Saturday, October 15. Combining electronic, classical & folk, amongst other genres, Vail (above) has released three EPs and a collaborative album, Sea Legs, with Ciaran Lavery, and just released his debut album, For Every Silence, nominated for an NI Music Prize. Check out the video for ‘Wounds’ from earlier this year below. Admission is free and doors open at 8pm. DJ duties come from Girls Names‘ Cathal…