• Watch: Swords – Sixty Thousand Years

    November 16, 2016 - By 

    Dublin three-piece Swords returned recently with their sophomore LP Tidal Waves. Moving away from the dense layers of production that occupied their – still excellent  – debut Lions and Gold, the band have have strived to create a more organic, live sound on this record. Nowhere is this more present than on new single ‘Sixty Thousand Years’, a fragile ballad sparingly built on piano, drums, bass and vocals with little or no added embellishments. The forthright structure of the song allows Diane Anglim’s vocals to shine more prominently with an aching honesty not dissimilar to Sharon Van Etten or Broken Twin.  The song is accompanied by an equally…

  • Watch: Hot Cops – Dumbbo

    November 14, 2016 - By 

    Ahead of their debut London show at the Islington on November 30, Belfast trio Hot Cops have resurfaced with the suitably spaced-out video for recent single ‘Dummbo’. Featuring age-old visual hallmarks like burning marshmallows, pink bedsheet ghosts and some field ironing at dusk, it makes for a curious, uniquely realised four minutes for the threesome.

  • Watch: Michael Mormecha – The Opera House

    October 24, 2016 - By 

    Taken from his hugely accomplished debut album LOFi LiFE, ‘The Opera House’ finds Mojo Fury’s Michael Mormecha in especially bombastic form. Featuring mantra-like, burrowing harmonies with Fiona O’Kane of RunawayGO, the track marries fuzzed-out grooves, smatterings of urgent percussion and Mormecha’s uncanny ear for a killer hook. The track’s accompanying video ups the DIY ante in perfectly kaleidoscopic fashion. Delve into LOFi LiFE right here.

  • Watch: Burnt Out – Joyrider

    October 14, 2016 - By 

    Back in March we featured North Dublin multi-disciplinary project Burnt Out in our physical magazine, discussing their origins, class disparity, misrepresentation and their stellar debut single ‘Dear James‘. The piece presented the project as one of the country’s most authentic and unequivocal artistic propositions and a a group of firmly rooted in working class society, raging against the distinct under-appreciation of their culture. Six months on, they have resurfaced ‘Joyrider’, a masterfully cathartic audio-visual statement confronting the “systematic concept of masculinity with regard to violence and emotions, aiming to highlight the destructive nature masculine expectation has on the adolescent and those surrounding”. Burnt Out…

  • Watch: Buckles n’ Son – Pancake Paradise

    October 8, 2016 - By 

    A self-proclaimed weird hip-hop duo, Dublin’s Conor Buckley and Shawn Mkandala AKA Buckles n’ Son caught our attention with their superb cover of Thundercat’s ‘Them Changes’ back in May. With its wonderfully warped melange of hip-hop beats, woozy synths, blips, beeps, bizarro lyrics and soulful/psycho vocal zig-zagging, the multi-instrumentalist pair have returned with new single,  ‘Pancake Paradise’. Watch its video – directed by Alex Harrison and featuring animation/co-direction from Kav – below. ‘Pancake Paradise’ is taken from Buckles n’ Son’s forthcoming five-track EP, Demo, which is launched via Clockwork on Friday (October 14) at Dublin’s Wigwam.

  • Watch: Paul Finan – Clouds

    September 19, 2016 - By 

    Melding pitch-shifting, underwater ambience reminiscent of Mica Levi’s Under The Skin soundtrack with The Radio Dept-esque city somnambulism and sparse guitar lines in the vein of Vincent Gallo and early Tortoise, ‘Clouds’ by Wicklow composer/producer Paul Finan is a perfectly inspired audio-visual traipse far beyond with no intention of return. Finan said, “This is a song about changing ones perspective. Changing the script or the lens. There is far more out their than our senses perceive. I like that. So much more to know. This is a quick visual I put to the song, but there is a short film in the pipeline inspired…

  • Watch: Katie Kim – Salt

    August 22, 2016 - By 

    Ahead of its release on Friday, October 14, Waterford artist Katie Kim has unveiled a Sean Zissou-directed promo video offering a curious behind the scenes look at the making of her forthcoming album, Salt. Encircling ever-thick like a flourishing curl of mist, its accompanying track evokes everything from William Basinski’s starker works, early Labradford and the that landscape of loss so masterfully soundtracked by the likes of Aidan Baker, Tim Hecker and Stars of The Lid (who play Cork’s Triskel on Saturday, October 8).

  • Watch: September Girls – Catholic Guilt

    August 16, 2016 - By 

    Imagine, just for one second, hopping in a time machine, zapping back to 1970s Ireland and telling someone there would one day be a 360-degree video on a thing called the internet for a song called ‘Catholic Guilt’. The distance we’ve come, man. The distance we’ve come. Made using a special 12-camera GoPro rig, the video for September Girls‘ new single was shot by the band’s director and guitarist Jessie Ward O’Sullivan in just one take. Pretty impressive. According to the band, “The video symbolises this force as over the course of the song, the band lose their autonomy as they are subjected…

  • Watch: Majia Sofia – Stains

    August 19, 2016 - By 

    In Novemeber of last year, Galway native and then London based musician Maija Sofia released her captivatingly stark The Sugar Sea EP, a collection of four icy, brittle folk tunes with a lo-fi crispness purveying throughout. Having since relocated to Dublin, the songwriter this week revealed the brand new video for ‘Stains’. Directed by Ciarán O’Brien, the video shows Sofia on an overcast Sandymount beach, the natural greyness of the early morning scene complimenting the lyrical and musical themes of the song which she has described as confronting “. . . the universal feelings of inadequacy and insecurity that come with being in a…

  • Watch: No Monster Club – I’ve Retired

    August 10, 2016 - By 

    Filmed over the course of two years in venues and festivals including Whelan’s, The Pop Inn, Knockanstockan, The Button Factory, Galway’s Roisin Dubh, Castlepalooza, Cork’s Connolly’s of Leap, No Monster Club have released the jubilant video for probably the catchiest Irish song of 2015, ‘I’ve Retired’. Compiled by Daniel Martin, the video “follows the song on its journey from house shows to festivals, via rock clubs and dive bars”. Good times. No Monster Club will release a new 7″ EP, Where Did You Get That Milkeshake?, via Emotional Response Records on September 5.