01. The Smoke Clears is a pseudonym of Galway-based house/techno producer John Daly, a project in which he eschews genre tropes for experimental electronics.
02. A leader in his field, Daly has been well-travelled, co-founding and rebooting Irish label Feel Music, and releasing on well-renowned independent labels, among them Drumpoet, Secretsundaze and Running Back.
03. Streaming above is a teaser for the project’s second eponymous LP, released in September via Dublin label/shop All City Records.
04. Appearing live next at the Triskel in Cork on November 12th, with support from WRY MYRRH and Huerco S., as part of the Cork Film Festival.
Verdict: With more in common with ambient electronica and post-rock than with any established club fare, The Smoke Clears allows Daly to explore his own outer limits.
Congratulations to Joe Schmidt and the Ireland team for achieving an historic win over the All Blacks.
An equal non-congratulations to the IRFU, EirSport and whoever else was involved in not showing the match live on television to the vast majority of sporting fans.
The selfish manipulation of live television coverage is in stark contrast to the honesty and heroism of the players on the field.
01. Dublin noise-rock four-piece That Snaake riff equally on no-wave angularity and bleary-eyed early ’90s pop, a concoction referred to by the band as “seshcore”.
02. Hailed by Goldenplec as “unfashionable”, the band have been steadily gigging in Dublin over the past while, and have notched up stage time with Proto Idiot, Cat Palace and Sister Ghost, among others.
03. Streaming above in its entirety is newly-released E.P. compilation, In the Court of the Baby Kyng. Collecting the band’s first two extended players, Go Bricker and Blinded by the Smell, two equally ramshackle statements of intent.
04. Available now for streaming, download, and on limited-run cassette via tape-slingers Little L Records. That’s purple spray-painted cassette, we might add.
05. Also, the label is still selling its entire back catalogue for a fiver/pay-more-if-you-like. That’s a fairly ridiculous deal for nearly 125 singles, E.P.s and full-lengths, if you so desire, including the above.
Verdict: A succession of noisy, entirely smart-arsed, but eminently likeable tunes. Full taste.
Ropemaker – playing Galway with Hope is Noise and The Magnapinna
What you may need to know…
01. Math-rock three-piece Ropemaker hail from the alternative-music capital of Ireland, Portarlington, Co. Laois.
02. Having gigged sporadically the last few years, they’ve already shared stages with Steve Strong, the dearly-departed Terriers (the real ones, not the Dublin-based pretenders), ZINC and others.
03. Streaming above is the band’s 2015 extended-player, Abyssinia, available for download via the band’s Bandcamp.
04. Catch them live next at the Roisín Dubh on the 19th, in support of FEAST’s Cork takeover of the Roisín Dubh, featuring Hope is Noise and The Magnapinna.
Verdict: Swaggering, striding math-rock in a Battles or Alpha Male Tea Party vein. Grand.
Snatching a draw from jaws of yet another defeat to the all-conquering All Blacks.
When some of the goys played twice a week such was the demands of the amateur game at the time.
Paul MacWeeney reported:
The All Blacks can kick themselves all the way back to New Zealand for allowing Ireland to snatch a draw, with two penalty goals and a try to a goal and a try, six minutes from the end at Lansdowne Road on Saturday.
Completley inflexable thinking cost Kirkpatrick and his team the glittering prize of becoming the first from their country to beat all four HOME countries on a single tour, and assuming that the captain is the final arbiter of policy once play has started,
Kirkpatrick, one of the greatest forwards of history, must shoulder much of the blame for not ending with a margain of at least 10 points.
01. Dublin indie/pop veterans Fight Like Apes announced their imminent split on social media this morning, following a prolonged radio silence. It closes a career that includes two Choice Music Prize nominations.
03. Streaming above is the video for Crouching Bees, the lead-off single from the aforementioned eponymous long-player. Not to pick favourites, but it’d be silly to just horse Jake Summers into their eulogy.
04. The band’s farewell statement included the announcement of their final gigs. Write the band:
Stick a fork in us, we’re done.
We’ve been quiet for a while now. We’ve had a lot of thinking and talking to do.
We’d be here all year if we started listing the people we wanted to thank, so we’ll just do that in our own time.
You’ll see us all again under different musical guises but, these 3 shows will be Fight Like Apes’ last. We want to call it a day while we’re all still pals and are proud of what we’ve done.
And we are very, very proud.
It’s a deadly time in so many ways to be in a band; you can have so much control over your work if you’re clever; you can release it how and when you like and in our opinion, right now, Ireland is the healthiest it’s ever been in terms of talent and diversity.
But, there are massive challenges for a lot of bands, mostly financial, that make this a tough job and sadly, those obstacles have become too big for us.
I think we all know that we’re going to hear announcements like this more often. A lot of people don’t seem to understand that we can’t keep producing records if you keep not paying for them. Bands are having to sell beautiful albums for €2.99, labels can’t give you as much support since they’re losing income too and our alternative radio stations* are practically non existent now, meaning so many wonderful bands will not get a chance to get played on radio as they’ll be competing with huge pop acts.
Please buy your music in independent record stores or directly from the band.
Don’t fool yourself in to thinking that your £10 subscription to Deezer and Spotify helps us at all. It does not. Look how many bands are on there and do the maths.
Please go to gigs. Please buy merch.
Thanks to all you entirely crazy, wonderful people who have supported us and danced and screamed with us over the past 10 years. We could never thank you enough.
I still can’t believe some of the amazing things we’ve done together and how far we came.
December 9th – back to where we had a our very first gig 10 years ago – Whelans, Dublin.
FLA out.
-MK, Jamie, Conor, Pete-
*RIP TXFM. We absolutely adore you and everything you’ve done for music in Ireland.
VERDICT: Another veteran act calls it a day in a time of transition for an active Irish music scene. They’ll be sadly missed, but this upcoming tour ought to be the New Orleans funeral that Fight Like Apes deserves.
Rejjie Snow – teethgrinding new video for single Pink Beetle
What you may need to know…
01. Alex Anyaegbunam, also known as Rejjie Snow, has taken on the world, and done so without so much as a second thought for the Irish musical establishment. Keen-eyed observers will remember his brief run as Dublin-based teenage wordplay prodigy Lecs Luther.
02. Soon after his time in the Luther pseudonym, he went Stateside to further his then-burgeoning soccer career, eventually tiring of it and coming back to Ireland to work on his real passion. Debut E.P. Rejjovich, released in 2013, did the business, and resulted in a deal with leading indie platform 300 Entertainment.
03. Streaming above is the video for single Pink Beetle. Inspired by the thoughts of a trip to the dentist, as if Hallowe’en wasn’t spooky enough.
04. It’s been released digitally via 300, his second single for the label, and prelude to his debut album, due “as soon as possible”, as confirmed in a recent interview with US industry mag Billboard.
Verdict: Success finds people in many different ways, and Snow has undoubtedly gone about it in his own fashion. It all bodes well for the man with the husky, concentration-laden delivery.
01. Hailing from Cork, five-piece Soothsayer provide a psychey, emotive take on sludge/doom metal.
02. Formed in late 2013 after the breakup of nine-headed Leeside noise beast Íweriú, the band were patient in assembling their debut extended-player The Soothsayer, released independently two years later.
03. Streaming above is Umpire, the lead-off from Soothsayer’s follow-up record At This Great Depth. It marks their signing to Indian metal label Transcending Obscurity, who are handling the physical release, as well as a limited-run merchandise pack.
04. Playing this Sunday at the Siege of Limerick at Dolan’s Warehouse, one of twenty-odd bands playing across fourteen straight hours (!) of various stripes of riffage.
Verdict: Eerie, almost reflective in quieter moments, and feral at their height of their heft. To be experienced live.
Ian Whitty and the Exchange – first album in eight years
What you may need to know…
01. Corkman Ian Whitty and collaborators the Exchange return for his first record in eight years, the wonderfully-monikered Cash Crop.
02. Recorded as live in various spaces around the city, including Bhailiú/Elastic Sleep man Chris Somers’ One Chance Out studio, the album’s production and mix was also a collaborative effort, between Somers, the band and producer Steve Fanagan.
03. Streaming above is the video for Bottom Line, the album’s lead-off single.
04. Launching Cash Crop tonight at Coughlan’s, kicking off the IMRO-award winners’ Jazz Weekend proceedings. Kickoff 9pm, a tenner in.
Verdict: Keenly-aware pop with a folkish tinge, with absolutely nothing having been lost during Cash Crop‘s lengthy process.
A sneak-peek at Fleadhed: Mo Bhig Fat Dirty Féile, a bilingual documentary on festivals in Ireland, focusing on bespoke fest B.A.R.E. in the Woods, premiering at 6.30 on Bank Holiday Monday on RTÉ.
