Category Archives: Music

Every kind of sound imaginable.

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=pJyWTAVCqe0

Jonen Dekay – Passionate Example mixtape

What you may need to know…

01. Released last Friday, 17-year-old wordsmith Jonen Dekay‘s debut mixtape Passionate Example (streaming above) showcases the Limerick rapper’s scarily accomplished lyrical prowess and maturity.

02. Dekay is the product of the current swathe of Music Generation workshops in Limerick, overseen by Rusangano Family rappers GodKnows and Murli, and Andy Connolly, better known as one-man duo Deviant & Naive Ted.

03. The latter’s fingerprints are subtly identifiable throughout the mixtape, as the masked man stepped out of his box of pro-wrestling VHS to get behind the desk to record and mix the whole affair.

04. The whole mixtape can also be streamed and individual tracks downloaded via Soundcloud here.

Verdict: Dekay’s stream-of-consciousness style, seething observations and unabashedly accented delivery give an indicator of what we can expect from the Limerick rapper in the future. Daycent Irish hip-hop, to say the least.

Jonen Dekay

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Slow Motion Heroes – At the End a Big Wave

What you may need to know…

01. Making no bones about their predilection for big, shiny pop, Slow Motion Heroes are a motley crew of various Cork heavy/noisy-music veterans, moonlighting as an indie-rock proposition.

02. Members of the band are/have been in a number of Leeside outfits, including Hope is Noise, El Bastardo, Rulers of the Planet and Cyclefly. This would be their ‘older and wiser’ effort.

03. Streaming in the widget above is At the End a Big Wave, rolled out ahead of debut album Hinterlands. Organs and big singalongs a go-go, as per expected, it’s one of the centrepieces of the record.

04. Hinterlands launched locally late last year, and sees a national release via FIFA Records on April 7th, with the usual slew of gigs to follow.

Verdict: Cork music heads initially took to the band because of its status as a supergroup, but its own merits have long since been proven over a series of EPs and singles. Hinterlands‘ national launch should hopefully lift the lid on one of the real capital’s best-kept secrets.

Slow Motion Heroes

Chris Power

MANMAID (Chris Power & Gunkel) – Gum

What you may need to know…

01. Getting his start DJing on pirate radio at 14, Cork’s Chris Power is beginning to amass a serious body of work.

02. His collaborations and production have been garnering attention, working with the likes of hip-hop royalty Illa J (who he also supported on J’s recent Irish tour), Cleveland wordsmith Atari Jones, and most recently, fellow Cork producer Gumbel.

03. The latter has resulted in experimental/ambient collab project MANMAID, whose new single Gum is streaming in the video above. “Exploration of mind and space” is the order of the day.

04. It’s a busy year ahead of the 22-year-old. Later on in the year sees an EP release with Atari Jones, more solo work, and a project involving Detroit rappers Dank and Yakuza Moon.

Verdict: Cork’s hip-hop scene has been steadily growing, with Cuttin’ Heads Collective’s nights in UrbanJungle (of which Power is also a part) laying a foundation. Between production and DJing, Power looks set to form an important component of this in the long-run, and an upcoming US excursion will only broaden his palate and experience.

Chris Power

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OTHERKIN – I Was Born

01. Claiming equal influence from punk-rock’s grandfathers and ’90s alt-rock among other elements, Otherkin are a Dublin four-piece garnering a name for hard graft: at present, they’re touring Europe.

02. New single I Was Born very definitely skewers toward rock ‘n’ roll’s poppiest excesses, if not veering into garage-rock territory. Video directed by Finn Keenan.

03. The band emerged in 2013 and quickly landed themselves on the Irish festival circuit, including Longitude, Electric Picnic, Hard Working Class Heroes and Other Voices, the following year. 2014 also saw them garner attention with the release of single Ay Ay, which landed them on Irish indie Rubyworks.

04. The single is out on April 8, the same night as a headline show in Whelan’s in Dublin. Support from FANGCLUB and Wolff.

Verdict: Fans of classic power-pop and garage-rock will lap these lads up, even if their jams are a tad over-polished on record.

OTHERKIN

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A rather excellent video for Disco by composer Ralf Hildenbeutel directed by Boris Seewald and featuring impressionistic visions of real life dancers Althea Corlett and Simone Schmidt.

The technique (best known in the video for A-Ha’s ‘Take on Me’) is called rotoscoping and involves the painstaking animation of drawings and paintings created, in this case, from photo transparencies.

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BAILER – The Binding

What you may need to know…

01. Not for no reason does the new video from Cork hardcore four-piece BAILER (a week of all-caps artist names in this column) bear a flashing-images warning.

02. The band only came together early last year, but have already released a handful of singles and developed a bruising live show in the process (despite what their goofball promo pics might lead you to believe), sharing stages with Irish metal bands like Murdock, Hero in Error and Axecatcher.

03. The Binding is the lead-off from the band’s debut EP, Shaped By the Landscape, available for digital pre-order now from their Bandcamp page, and elsewhere on April 29.

04. Mixed and mastered by Murdock’s Aidan Cunningham. Video directed and edited by Rob O’Halloran.

Verdict: Very seldom does a band come together as coherently in such a short space of time, and, while Bailer’s blend of various strains of metal and hardcore might not be everyone’s cup of tay the band’s growing live rep speaks for itself.

BAILER

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MMOTHS – Deu (from new album Luneworks)

What you may need to know…

01. Jack Colleran, aka MMOTHS, has been on the ascendant in Irish electronic music since his emergence in 2010. His self-titled debut EP was released in 2012, and led to support slots for the likes of At the Drive-In and Aphex Twin.

02. The 22-year-old wrote debut LP Luneworks while holed up in a room in Los Angeles for a month, staying isolated to ensure his complete engagement in the creative process, and taking inspiration from the city at night for his compositions.

03. Luneworks is now streaming in its entirety on culture site The Line of Best Fit, and the video for single Deu, released this past November, is streaming above. The album is also on iTunes/Apple Music and Spotify.

04. The album launches with a live excursion this Saturday at District 8 on Frances St. Dublin. Supports include Derry “tape throb” man The Cyclist, guitars/loops soloist Somerville and Dublin’s DJ Deece.

Verdict: Luneworks is an achievement to say the least, gently channeling shoegaze, various strains of electronica and the intangibles of change and strange environments to beautiful effect. Essential.

MMOTHS