Category Archives: You May Like This

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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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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

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Roisín El Cherif – Kerosene

What you may need to know…

01. Dublin-based Galwegian Roisín El Cherif comes to the singer-songwriter fray from a multimedia background, including assistant director work on Brooklyn, Vikings, and others.

02. Her experience informs the video to single Kerosene, which she wrote, co-produced and directed with FailSafe Films.

03. The tune itself is a proposition seemingly made for bigger stages, which gives precedence to El Cherif’s voice, at once plaintive and possessed of certain presence.

04. Roisín is playing at King Kong Club in Dubland on April 5 and has a few live session vids upcoming via The OB Blog’s OBSessions series. Stay tuned to her various social media for more.

Verdict: Big, sweeping pop with an ambitious visual identity to match. Much here to love for fans of the singer-songwriter oeuvre.

Roisín El Cherif

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Loner Deluxe – Winters Last Fire

What you may need to know…

01. Loner Deluxe is the nom-de-beats and solo folktronica project of Rusted Rail Records man, Keith Wallace.

02. “…like a blend of Godspeed, Four Tet, glitchy little electronic sound effects, haunting fairground music, Boards of Canada and a kinda strange psyche folk version of My Bloody Valentine“, said the dearly departed Road Records at one point.

03. Winters Last Fire, is the lead song on the project’s newest ‘digital cassingle’ Snowed Under, released this past January. Animated sci-fi visuals courtesy of Galway’s Tiny Epics.

04. The song was selected as part of An Taobh Tuathail Vol. 7 by RnaG tastemaker Cian O’Cíobháin, alongside tunes by Sufjan Stevens and Nils Frahm, among others. Good company.

05. Snowed Under is the winter-themed sequel to previous digital cassingle (which is a nice concept for small groupings of songs that don’t quite feel like a “proper” E.P., in fairness) The Coast is Clear.

Verdict: We might be a bit past winter but this is still music to come home and put on a cup of tay to…

Loner Deluxe

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White Line Fever – playing Cork, Galway and Kilkenny this month

Here’s what you may need to know…

01. Named for an apparent lack of focus that afflicts long-distance truck drivers (and the Peckinpah-esque truxploitation flick of the same name), Cork’s White Line Fever trade in a proggy, post-rock-inflected strain of folk rock.

02. 2014’s Anomie EP set the tone for their current live show, a concise, yet polished two-tracker that they’ve used as the foundation for their current live sound, to be heard on their upcoming follow-up.

03. Streaming above is the band’s most recent video, Lordship & Bondage, filmed and recorded live at Youghal’s Claycastle Studios, and mastered by Murdock man Aidan Cunningham.

04. The four-piece is playing the rest of a series of spot-shows with alt-rockers Harbouring Oceans and singer-songwriter Míde Houlihan throughout March, hitting the Crane Lane Theatre in Cork on the 18th, and the Brewery Corner in Kilkenny on the 26th. The band also plays Galway’s Citóg night at the Roisín Dubh on the 23rd.

Verdict: Minimalist, yet somehow massive, the band’s recorded output and confident live excursion so far bode well for the future. Check ’em out.

White Line Fever

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Therapy? – Tides

Here’s what you may need to know…

01. The gatekeepers of the Irish underground are in rude health as always. Twenty-seven years and counting in the game, with their fourteenth album Disquiet hitting shelves last year, Ballyclare/Larne’s Therapy? unleash their best ‘pop’ single in years with Tides.

02. Though many casual observers associate the boys in black with their major-label heyday in the mid-Nineties, they never went away.

03. Sadly unloved belters include 1999’s Suicide Pact – You First and 2004’s Never Apologise Never Explain, but most notably a pair of honest-to-jaysus classics in 2010’s cerebral Crooked Timber and 2012’s groovy A Brief Crack of Light.

04. Disquiet, from which Tides is taken, acts as a sequel of sorts to 1994’s million-selling Troublegum, and sees the band revisiting that album’s teenage protagonist as a middle-aged man in the throes of further tumult.

05. The song itself is inspired singer/guitarist Andy Cairns‘ time living in Dun Laoghaire [Co Dublin], as evidenced by the single’s artwork.

06. Keen punk fans will spot the other reference in the cover art immediately, and it’s intentional: Bob Mould, of hardcore trailblazers/accidental college-rock inventors Hüsker Dü was a major influence on the song’s writing.

Verdict: Though the album itself feels a little retro after the band’s insistence on forward-thinking for the better part of three decades, Tides is one of its highlights. Here’s hoping for more of this somewhat psychey, washed-out pop in the not too dim ‘n’ distant.

Therapy?

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Imlé – Fún Orm

Here’s what you may need to know…

01. Decent Irish(-language) hip-hop brought to you by Imlé, a Gaelgeoir collective of musicians and creatives led by Raidió na Life/Wild Promises man Cian MacCárthaigh, and flanked by numerous guests and collaborators, including, on this track, Gaelgeoir wordsmith MC Muipéad.

02. Part of a resurgence of the mother tongue in Irish independent/contemporary music, it seems: as well as appearing on The Gloaming‘s reconstructed versions of trad standards, an Gaeilge can be heard these days in the works of bands like West Cork black-metallers Corr Mhóna, as well as via various compilation/rearrangement projects over the past few years.

03. Imlé formally kicked off last May at Féile na Bealtaine, and swiftly followed up with the launch of their debut single Pádraig. They’ve since appeared at Electric Picnic’s Puball Gaeilge stage. Not just dealing in hip-hop, either, as you may gather from listening to Pádraig, their work explores the contemporary music landscape.

04. 2016 looks to be a busy year for the boys, as they launch their debut full-length later this year, via Irish-language gatekeepers Gael Linn. Production comes from The Frames/Ham Sandwich desk-man Karl Odlum.

Verdict: Ceol den scoth. More contemporary music as Gaeilge, please (suggestions are more than welcome in the comments), and ways to put it into the curriculum, while we’re at it.

Imlé