Simon And Sorcha of Ships have spent much of the year so far recording their debut album. Director Eoghan Kidney popped down to their house/studio for a catchup chat and to capture a bit of the music that they are currently playing.
Ships play Camden Crawl Dublin on May 4th in Button Factory and May 5th at the Nialler9 Party in Sweeneys. The timetable is up now.
The best new music/artist picks of the last week. As published in today’s Day & Night Magazine. Follow Day & Night on Twitter or Facebook
As released by Neon Gold, the arbiters of cool accessible music, the New York band with members from Europe and North America have been called a “a veritable United Nations of pop supremacy.” Their debut single Wings is certainly a great soaring pop song.
More stylish and dashing operatic-leaning piano-led pop from London Grammar after last year’s ‘Hey Now’ and ‘Metal and Dust’. This fine-looking trio are heading places, namely festivals for now. Watch a live version of this via The Guardian too.
‘Corkadoragha’ features on Mossy Nolan’s excellent self-titled debut album release of very good awesome Irish trad / not trad music from last year. This video by Ruairi Galavan presents an alternative instrument visual to the song’s thundering guitar style.
If you’re like me you’ve been singing the chorus to this new Daft Punk song for the last week or so (alternating it with “go rub a Mexican monkey” soundalike). The song is now on iTunes. I’m of the opinion that ‘Get Lucky’ is a masterful pop record. A lot of people were crying foul yesterday saying it must be fake and that Pharrell’s vocals were done by somebody else. Clearly, these people were obviously projecting something of their own hopes on the return of Daft Punk being something closer to shake up the world of dance music, that would help rid the tide of poor-quality “EDM” from our Soundclouds and iPods. Instead, ‘Get Lucky’ is just a great pop tune.
For me, getting Pharrell and Nile Rodgers in for their comeback single is a smart move. It indicates that Daft Punk are perhaps happy with making great pop music rather than changing the dance game as they did before. Daft Punk are the elders now. ‘Get Lucky’ is basically a great funk record. I’m sure the kids listening to Trap music probably hate it. And lest we forget their last album proper Human After All was pretty uninspired. Away from the amazing marketing campaign they’ve created, this makes them relevant musically, for now. Random Access Memories, the album is a whole other story.
I’ve been listening to the new Kool Thing album a fair bit these days, so when this track from London duo Death Rattle came on in a Soundcloud wander, I had to do a double take. The electronic-indie pop sound of ‘The Blows’ features on Bristol label Fear Of Fiction’s special Record Store Day release alongside five other bands like New York’s Salt Cathedral, Bristol’s Idles, London’s Bare Pale and more. Listen to the whole release below too.
I became aware of Chelsea Wolfe’s music last year when she released her collection of gothic folk songs called Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs last year. It is a devastatingly atmospheric album that is also strikingly melancholic. Ever since, she’s kept me reeled in with fantastical visuals and a back catalogue of dark-edged guitar music. Next Wednesday, April 24th, Chelsea will make her debut in The Sugar Club. We had a brief chat about her music and identity…
Ireland will be the first stop on your European tour, tell us about your setup and plan for each evening…
This tour is going to be unique in that I’m combining the acoustic and electric sets. Typically I’d separate them, bringing my drummer and guitarist out for the electric set and my violinist out for the acoustic set, but we’ll all be there together onstage for this tour.
More…→
Woah. Props to Stones Throw for keeping tabs on things. Yesterday, I got a mail from Jeff Jank, one of the label founders pointing to this old Dilla post. He was letting me know that the official version of J Dilla’s Gary Numan-aping track ‘Trucks’ was now released on PayJay Productions. Now, that’s organisation.
J Dilla recorded “Trucks” in December 2001-February 2002 at Studio A, Detroit, MI. An unmastered MP3 version which leaked in 2008 has been heard by countless Dilla followers. This is the first time the mixed & mastered track has been heard. It was just released on J Dilla’s “Anthem” 12-inch, the first official release from J Dilla’s long lost vocal album, The Diary, coming next year on PayJay Productions.
Today all of the venue lineups have been announced by Camden Crawl Dublin (see below) as well as the comedy lineups. First up though, I’m announcing my involvement with the day and stage breakdown for the Nialler9 party in Sweeneys on Dame Street. We’ll have two stages, one upstairs and one downstairs alternating between both all night. We’ve have Joe Florry aka Amateur Best, the former Primary1 man coming in from the UK (check out his excellent No Thrills album), the DFA disco of Ships, the sunny folk of Owensie, the indie-electro of Sleep Thieves, Irish electronica from Adultrock, Ghosts, Terriers and White Collar Boy, indie-pop from Come On Live Long, folk-pop from Liza Flume, and the girl-rock of Hunk and special international guests on the Saturday. Buy tickets here. Here’s the breakdown:
Day breakdown →
