Dublin Punk/Trash Rockers Panik Attaks are a bit of a supergroup consisting of members of some of Irelands best known bands. They are: Rob Walsh (Cold Comfort), Mick Pyro (Republic of loose) Trevor Keogh (New Secret Weapon) Alex Harvey (Thumper) and Rian Trench (Leo Drezden, Solar Bears). The group are trying something a little different with the distortion fuelled music on display here and it really works.
‘Psychotic Delusions’ is the first single from their upcoming debut EP, which just rapped up recording in Wicklow’s The Meadow studio. The EP will release early next year but for now you can feast your ears on the blistering first track. It’s fast, heavy, short and to the point. Rob Walsh channels his inner Jagger in the video, perhaps with a little more edge!
Panik Attaks will play a headline show in Dublin’s Sin É on December 15th with support from deepinthewoods66. You can find the details and Facebook event here.
The annual Irish Music Christmas Party is back in it’s original Dingle setting this weekend and they’ve just released the full festival schedule for this year’s entry!
The timetable is chock full of incredible acts from every corner of the country and beyond. The performances in the intimate St. James’s Church will be live streamed to a number of venues in the town for those not lucky enough to get in & the music trail will provide plenty of live music throughout the weekend from some of Irelands most promising young acts including Kojaque, Sorcha Richardson, Pine The Pilcrow, I Have a Tribe, Dowry, Junior Brother,Wastefellow, Thumper and many many more.
Check out the full schedule and music trail playlist below, we’ll see you there!
You may be moping around like a drowned rat in that horrible weather but it’s not all bad news! The Christmas of the Summer, KnockanStockan, is back just in time for the traditional Winter Christmas.
The country’s premiere independent music festival will return to the shores of the Blessington Lakes, arguably the most beautiful festival site in Ireland, on July 19th, 20th and 21st 2019 with Early Bird Tickets going on sale this Friday at 9AM for an absolute steal at €99. You can grab them at knockanstockan.ie but you’d better hurry as they probably won’t last long!
After a sensational weekend in 2018 which featured unforgettable sets from The Olllam, Kojaque, Vernon Jane and over 150 other Irish and International showstoppers, plans are under way for our yearly pilgrimage to the idyllic valley.
Dublin Indie-punk quartet Pillow Queens have released a brand spanking new video for their single ‘Gay Girls’. The track is the groups first since March’s ‘State of the State’ EP and was produced by Tommy McLaughlin (Villagers, SOAK, Bell X1) in Attica Studios in Co. Donegal.
The track is about intoxicating lust and relentless religious repression, a theme which is compounded by a raucous outro featuring a full choir of singing voices.
Their previous music video for ‘Favourite’ was recently awarded Best Irish Music Video at the Irish Film Festival London and this new video from Director Kate Dolan could well be a contender for next year’s awards. It’s a super charming depiction of a communion money blowout by 4 girls, treating themselves to all the exciting things a local community can offer a 7 year old. Bottles of Cadet Orange, chips and sweet & sour flying saucers galore!
Pillow Queens have had a crazy year of live shows touring all over the UK & Ireland and hitting loads of festivals including KnockanStockan, Body and Soul, Electric Picnic, Hard Working Class Heroes & The Great Escape. We highly recommend catching them live in Whelan’s on November 24th while you still can! Tickets for their headline show are priced €16 and are available here.
We’re delighted to share the first single from The False and the Fair‘s upcoming debut EP ‘The Space In Between’. The band have given us a slew of singles over the last 2 years as well as some fantastic live videos but the new EP will be their first extend release. If this first track ‘In The Shade of The Mountain’ is anything to go by, you’re going to want to pick this one up when it drops on November 18th.
The vocals in the verse draw the listener in with a comforting familiarity, painting the scene beautifully and taking us to another part of the world where we can relax. The track then expands into a full blown psychedelic 60’s tinged instrumental section that echoes the original melody that elevates the song above your average folk ballad. I can’t wait to hear what else these guys have in store on the rest of the EP.
THE FALSE AND THE FAIR present ‘In the Shade of the Mountain’, the lead single from their upcoming EP.
On a camping trip in the Wicklow mountains, Tommy was the first to wake up. He climbed some rocks and sat down, headphones on, looking down over the campsite where his friends slept. As he breathed in the cool morning air, the voice of Townes Van Zandt reverberated in his ears:
“…the sun will rise soon on the False and the Fair.”
In that moment a band was born. Once assembled, Cormac, Adam and Jacob wove their psychedelic web around Tommy’s distinctive vocals and folk songwriting to create a uniquely atmospheric blend of alternative rock. New single ‘In the Shade of the Mountain’ pays tribute to these origins while celebrating the beauty of the natural world in which we all strive for purpose.
California hip hop veteran 2 piece People Under The Stairs recently brought their rambunctious live show to The Sugar Club and Choice Cuts were kind enough to bring me along to take some photos.
It was incredible night of music, with Dublin DJ Handsome Paddy warming up the crowd with a mix of obscure beats and oldskool classics before People Under The Stairs took control of the packed out venue and treated us to an education in street knowledge.
Double K (Michael Turner) and Thes One (Christopher Portugal) describe themselves as “just good old hip-hop”, but in truth there’s a something more here. The group excel at the fundamentals that brought the genre to the world stage: deep groove samples, irresistible breakbeats, and simplistic street corner emceeing. Double K’s skills on the turntable are undeniable, sampling everything from soul, jazz, reggae and especially funk. This bedrock is the perfect platform for Thes One’s laid back and somehow simultaneously heavy hitting rhymes. The guy can spit! On the few tracks that both MC’s rap on they display the kind of off the cuff chemistry that can only come from years of practice.
The whole evening was slightly bittersweet as the group announced it was to be their 2nd last ever show, with the final one taking place in London’s Jazz Café the following night. All we can do is keep listening to their excellent back catalogue and hope they someday change their minds….
Conor O’Brien has announced that the fourth Villagers album, their first since 2015’s Darling Arithmetic, will be called The Art of Pretending to Swim and is coming out on Domino Records this September 21st. The record will be imbued with “lyrical themes that embrace existential fears and hopes in this desperate, technologically-centred dystopian age”.
The band have also dropped the albums lead single ‘A Trick of the Light’ accompanied by a stunning surrealist video directed by Bob Gallagher. Check it out below!
Speaking about the collaboration, Conor says “Myself and Bob got together and discussed the song thematically and came to the conclusion that there was no other option but to make a short film in which we follow a disheveled shamanistic protagonist who mysteriously triggers an altered state of consciousness in everyone he meets, or at least believes that he does. We also wanted lots of dancing and to inspire a general feeling of ‘What the hell did I just watch?’ in the viewer.”
The track moves away from the stripped back aesthetic of Darling Arithmetic, introducing R&B style bass and percussion complimented by O’Brien’s rock solid vocal delivery. The album will reportedly reconnect with the multi-faceted approach of Villagers’ 2010 album debut Becoming A Jackal and 2013’s {Awayland}. I can’t wait to hear the rest of the record.
Summer is officially here and we’re getting in on the fun with some fresh new folk acts to catch after the grand stretch in the evening!
Headlining on the night are Wexford twin brothers The Ocelots. With just a guitar, a harmonica and their voices, Brandon and Ashley have created a raw sound that has been generated from years of street performing all across Europe. They have crafted their songwriting and musical experience together to produce a forceful blend of rich harmonies and bare, raw acoustic folk. The Ocelots are known for their ability to capture an audience, with mesmerising melody and variety meeting their charm and wit on stage.
Support comes from folk singer/ songwriter Junior Brother. Hailing from Co. Kerry, he plays sometimes humorous, sometimes heady tunes. Strange stories, poetic and arcane, unfold with reckless abandon upon an idiosyncratic Guitar and Foot Tambourine accompaniment. Unique, experimental yet ambitious, his material draws heavily in tone and subject matter from his upbringing in rural Ireland, demonstrating a wild love of language.
Opening the show on the night is Tullamore native Eoin Martin who has spent the last number of years honing his craft and finding his own voice in the crowded singer-songwriter scene. And what a voice! Eoin mixes percussive acoustic guitar with complex finger picked melodies and rounds things off with a truly captivating vocal style, full of harmony and punctuated rhythms. Think Bon Iver and Newton Faulkner meeting up for a few sneaky pints.
Entry is FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and doors are at 8:00pm. See you in the front row!
Two of our favourite Irish bands return this week with two wildly different and equally exciting new singles.
Jazz/Punk/Psyjance purveyors Vernon Jane have just dropped a brilliant new video for their single ‘Fragile’, directed by Conor Dockery (DOCK). The track itself is an enigmatic display of songwriting, full of chaotic and disparate sounds that somehow gel together into a deep groove that’s hard to shake once it sticks in your head.
The band said in their own words:
”Fragile explores the darker side of human nature. It captures the constant battle between keeping yourself together, or letting yourself truly fall apart.The water in the video represents the feeling of suffocating under your own expectations. We tell ourselves we have to be stronger. We have to get better, And stay better. We forget to tell ourselves to be our own authentic self. To find strength in vulnerability and fragility. We push ourselves until we break. This video represents a breaking point.”
This may be one of the few opportunities to catch them on such a small stage, Vernon Jane have just signed a worldwide distribution deal with AMS Records as well as a Chinese distribution deal with Pocket Records. Their last single ‘Fuck Me’ has also racked up a crazy 227,000 plays online. Don’t sleep on this one people.
Also launching a new single on the night are Dublin fuzz merchants THUMPER. Explosively energetic live, previous recordings have leaned pretty steeply towards the lo-fi end of the spectrum, failing to fully capture the bands raucous sound. We’re happy to report that this is not the case on the Dan Fox (Girl Band) produced ‘AFL’. The track is a perfectly polished gritty ear bleeder, rocketing through it’s 3:43 and begging to be played again.
The song is about ageing rapidly but gaining no wisdom. Feeling like a child in a man’s suit, desperately playing catch-up in the Imposter Syndrome Champions League. Every Friday night gasping for answers in the smoking area of your nearest terror den. The music thunders on and words fall away like the raving of a calm lunatic. There’s no conclusion, even at the end.
Supporting both bands on the night are one of Ireland’s most promising instrumental bands, BiCurious. Twonys Cosmic Disco Wobbler DJs will finish out the night, hitting the decks til 3am.
Dublin quartet Pillow Queens have released a brand new video for their song ‘Favourite’. Directed by the ever excellent Bob Gallagher (see his previous work with Girl Band and Enter Shikari) and produced by band member Sarah Corcoran, the video is set at an unconventional dog show and features plenty of bathroom dealings (heh) and brown envelopes changing hands. It’s a hoot to watch and kind of reminds me of the King of the Sheep episode of Father Ted.
According to the band the main influences were old episodes of Antiques Roadshow, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and the general look of the 80’s – specifically prom portraits. Many of the dogs featured in the video are friends of Cara Rescue Dogs, so check them out too! They do great work.
The track itself is a super catchy slice of alt-rock goodness that’s been stuck in my head receiving multiple daily listens since it was released on Soundcloud earlier this month. It comes in advance of Pillow Queens new EP State of the State which will be released on March 16th through Bristol based indie label Specialist Subject.
Pillow Queens will be embarking on a UK/Ireland tour to coincide with the release, finishing up with a headline show in Dublin’s Workmans Club on April 21st. Tickets for the show are on sale now price €15.
Dublin Punk/Trash Rockers Panik Attaks are a bit of a supergroup consisting of members of some of Irelands best known bands. They are: Rob Walsh (Cold Comfort), Mick Pyro (Republic of loose) Trevor Keogh (New Secret Weapon) Alex Harvey (Thumper) and Rian Trench (Leo Drezden, Solar Bears). The group are trying something a little different with the distortion fuelled music on display here and it really works. 
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