Formerly the proud posessor of the finest beard in NI rock, Paddy from Kowalski took time out this week to chat to our Rigsy, who embarassed us all by NOT knowing the familial connection to Two Door Cinema Club. What a spoon! He has been beaten.
The good news is that Kowalski are back, back, back with an EP about to drop, the first track of which 'Get Back' is uttelry swoonsome and has been cuddling up to the ATL playlist for the past few weeks. Check some of the new tunes out at the Belfast4Haiti gig this coming weekend and at Skinny Love on Feb 3rd in Belfast, before they embark on an Irish tour with Two Door. Busy bees!
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are a band that I reckon we'll hear much more off in the next few months. The London trio released a rather lovely single called 'Odds & Evens' (below) before the New Year, and it caught my ear (delicately).
It's a ridiculously simple acoustic pop tune that meanders along with no real aim. But its fuzz-laden guitar, whimsical dual male/female vocals, shimmering jangly guitar notes and floating repetition actually make it a dreamy fuzzy golden nugget.
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To celebrate Burns Night, this week'sÌýSuggestiON-AIR is a nod toÌýthe Scottish bands and artistes ATL loves.
And as always, we want your help!
Get involved by choosing your favourite song by your favourite Scottish act. What about before they were massive or at their noisiest? Maybe , and legends do it for you? Or perhaps a newbie like , or have been welcomed into your heart...
Let us know via or on , email us or text 81771 during tonight's show. We'll read out as many of your contributions as we can, play a couple of the tracks and add the best ones to this very blog once we come off air.
Here's five to get you started...
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are a bit 'math rock', a tad 'art noise', a little 'electro-punk' but mostly just 'epic live'. If you've ever witnessed the Wexford lads in the flesh, chances are the ferocious, twisted, unhinged experience has been left etched into your gray matter for good.
Adebisi don't hang around and rip hell for leather into their tracks. So much so that their 2008 album, , clocked in at a mere 21 minutes. They've released a split single with , they're label mates with and apparently have a love of the Belfast music scene. So with that in mind, it was only right that ATL caught up with them before their return visit to Belfast this Sunday.
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Heading to gigs outside of Belfast is always interesting and an experience we at ATL should enjoy more often. It's way too easy to get sick of the same venues, the same soundsystems, the same people... well, you get the idea. In the first of what will hopefully be a series of adventures across Northern Ireland, ATL made the trip to Carrick last Friday evening to check out a venue called the . Friday means , a weekly showcase of decent local talant - in fact their billings for the month read like a wee chuck of an ATL playlist. Right up our street.
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Have you ever been to a gig where the support act stole the show? Did the first band on stand out so much you don't even remember who the headline act was?
We want to know! , email us or . Or once we go on-air at 8pm you can text the show on 81771.
We'll try to read out all your contributions, maybe play a track or two by bands suggested. Then we'll update this blog with a selection of your ideas!
To get you started, here's five gigs ATL will always remember for the support act, and not the (supposed) main event...!
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"All these songs were recorded through a digital voice recorder and tracked in Audacity [free editing software]... thanks to J & T for buying me that voice recorder" Tune-Yards
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After a recent rant in the office about how I'm reaching the end of my tether with 'purposefully lo-fi' records because it's 'hip', I'm now backtracking from my vicious accusations. Instead of the cynicism I have for some recent 'heavily stylised' lo-fi acts, I find something genuinely charming about the album, Bird-Brains.
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I'm going to see General Fiasco again this week, at The Stiff Kitten, on Wednesday night. Looking forward to that gig, I was thinking back to some of the early GF shows I'd attended, you know, back in the day. In this review of a show in Belfast nearly two years ago, I made a point I'd made a few times previous and several times since.
"When you think about it, all (Northern Ireland's music scene) has been missing to make the rest of the world pay attention, is one song. A hit. Something that will go top-ten and generate a sing-along at the student disco. It would open the floodgates and a dozen bands from here would storm through."
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The snow is squalling outside the window of ATL Towers, coating the city centre with a veil of white. It's so very pretty, until you try to get a sarnie up the street and shatter both your elbows. We're kind of in the middle of it all being a winter wonderland and not wanting to walk like our great-grannies anymore, so in honour of this further climate oddness, we bring you ATL's not-particularly-very-well thought-through top 10 songs about Winter. Special mention must to go bands whose names suit the seasonal deluge - balaclavas off to Snow Patrol, Arctic Monkeys, , Coldplay and Wintersleep - but it is the songs we're after this time. Agree? Disagree? Throw us a virtual snowball in the form of a comment below...
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are a band that have been floating about the blogosphere for a while now, but it's only over the festive lull that I got a chance to listen to their album, A Mountain IsÌýA Mouth. The Canadian collective have a pretty distinctive sound with forceful driving rhythms, a gospel-esque choir and a gravelly lead vocal taking centre stage.
Think of local outfit having an anxiety-riddled melt down and Ìýhijacking the main vocal, marching them into a doomed but righteous battle... or you know, something like that,Ìýwould goÌýsome way to describing what Bruce Peninsula sound like. It's a mixture of straight up folk, traditional gospel, tribal, a bit of prog and eerie rock.
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