• Video Premiere: Shrug Life – First World Problems

    In case you missed the memo, Dublin three-piece Shrug Life released one of the Irish albums of the year, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, last month. Directed by long-time collaborator Dave Knox, the video for the album’s opening track and latest single ‘First World Problems’ is – in the band’s own, suitably spot on words – “a schizophrenic split-screen of life’s absurdity – featuring tarot cards, frenemies and “crap corporate coffee” along the way”. And just when we thought we couldn’t dig the track any more. Have a first look at the Knox’s visuals below.

  • Video Premiere: Trick Mist – Fraction

    On last Thursday’s edition of our show on Dublin Digital Radio we debuted the new single from an artist we’ve become rather fond of in the past two years. Gavin Murray AKA Trick Mist‘s blend of skilled songwriting, atmospheric electronics and percussion, and looped violins make him a solo artist whose output has only improved since we first came across it. Now, the newly Cork-based artist who had lived in Manchester for the past number of years, delivers his most mature work to date in the form of ‘Fraction’, a track in two halves that blends echoed vocals and layers of violin and…

  • Premiere: CATALAN! – Alive

    Back in July we presented a first look and listen to ‘OKA’, the debut solo single from CATALAN! AKA Ewen Friers of North Coast alt-punk three-piece Axis Of. What we said of that track (“whilst certainly redolent of the subtly anthemic and nicely bombastic alt-punk of the aforementioned North Coast outfit, explores new, socially-conscious territory) could be directly applied to new single, ‘Alive’. Featuring some great visuals courtesy of Tristan Crowe and Chrissie McGlinchy, it’s a fuzzed-out and perfectly trouncing effort that will almost certainly become something of a live favourite for the project in the coming months.

  • Premiere: Elephant – Time Will Tell

    Dundalk-based artist and multi-instrumentalist Shane Clarke AKA Elephant has returned with one of his strongest single efforts to date, ‘Time Will Tell’. Featuring a wonderfully collaborative DIY video contributions from 28 different Dundalk artists, Clarke said of the Bowie-influenced track: “‘Time Will Tell’ is a song about death. Its irregular arrangement and calm-to-chaos approach is an extension of the deeper feelings within. Like a teenaged temper boiling over, grieving loss and remembering lost love. Unbalanced, unhinged and hauling ass through circumstance without having time to come to terms with where you are and how you are supposed to feel about it when…

  • Video Premiere: Half Forward Line – Column A, Column B

    Galway super-group of sorts Half Forward Line are set to release their debut album The Back of Mass tomorrow. Before we premiere it on this here website though, the band have been kind enough to share a video for ‘Column A, Column B’. The trio, comprised of So Cow‘s Brian Kelly on guitar and vocals, Oh Boland‘s Niall Murphy and bass, and regular TTA photographer Cíarán Ó Maoláin behind the drums, have been doing some wonderful damage on the live circuit these past few months and also unveiled one of the sweetest love songs to come out of the West in quite some time in the form…

  • Video Premiere: Malojian – Let Your Weirdness Carry You Home

    Released last week, Let Your Weirdness Carry You Home by Stephen Scullion’s Malojian is a record firmly rooted in place and visual memory. With the seeds of this latest outing being sown when BFI and Northern Ireland screen approached Scullion about playing a show at a coastal location with coastal-themed visuals from their archive to be used as a backdrop, Scullion soon took to the idea of recording some new material to go alongside those visuals. Teaming up with long-time collaborator, Belfast filmmaker and photographer Colm Laverty, the videos for LYWCYH’s lead singles ‘Some New Bones‘ and ‘Ambulance Song‘ presented symbiotic visual narratives that…

  • Video Premiere: Best Boy Grip – Molecular Individuals

    Having already received support from the likes of Steve Lamacq and Tom Robinson on BBC 6 Music, ‘Molecular Individuals’ by Eoin O’Callaghan AKA Best Boy Grip is a track perfectly typical of the Derry musician’s ever-ambitious sonic scope. Summoning the likes of Talking Heads, The Books, Peter Gabriel and LCD Soundsystem – and that’s just touching the surface – it’s a masterfully giddy, wonderfully polychromatic effort that confines within its three-and-a-half-minutes O’Callaghan’s serious multi-instrumentalist flair. Heard the new Beck album yet? This one track is ten times better than that. Take note, Hansen. The track is out via Amelia Records now. Buy it…

  • Video Premiere: Sue Rynhart – Black As The Crow Flies

    The follow-up to her 2014 debut album, Crossings – a release that was nominated for Best Jazz Album at the Irish Times‘ Ticket Awards – Dublin vocalist and composer Sue Rynhart’s new album Signals has been receiving a wave of critical acclaim from a wide range of Irish and international voices. Forging an exquisite midpoint between delicate and forceful, jazz and classical, as well as contemporary and canonical sonic realms, her emotionally-dense avant-garde craft rewards an attentive ear and repeated listen. Directed by artist Sophie Merry, we’re pleased to present a first look at the video for ‘Black As The Crow…

  • Video Premiere: Tuath – Cuz Why!?

    Arguably the northern province’s foremost purveyors of hepped-up-on-goofballs psychedelia, the bilingual Tuath, have a new single, ‘Cuz Why?!’ and we’re delighted to premiere it here. As opposed to the usual shoegaze & trip-hop-laced excursions the band are used to – watch the video for their last single, ‘Youth‘ – filtered through frontman Robert Mulhern’s psychedelic lens, this song adds post-punk to their considerable palette. Mulhern has drawn a consistent thematic throughline through Tuath, of the questioning of accepted ideals & organised ideology. They continue to effuse their worldview with a half-maniacal cackle, half-nihilistic-shrug, helped along by its kitchen sink absurdist imagery. He says of the…

  • Video Premiere: John Blek – Salt In The Water

    More than many of his peers and others of his ilk further afield, Cork songsmith John Blek is a master of subtlety in realms of folk-informed pop. Set for release on October 6, his third studio album, Catharsis Vol. 1, is a release that – as its title duly attests – stems from some personal hardship. Speaking of the release, Blek said: “I spent much of the early part of 2017 in and out of hospital with some mysterious illness that was intent on wasting my now 30-year-old body. My energy was at an all-time low and all that gave me…