Following the success of his last single release ‘Ballena Bar’ which has gathered over 160k on its first 4 weeks on Spotify, with a feature on Spotify Editorial prestigious playlist ‘Jazz Vibes’. Nicolas Kluzek returns with ‘Keep Me Warm’.
Nicolas is a Paris born, Dublin based , songwriter / composer / producer. His latest single ‘Keep Me Warm’ is a chill HipHop instrumental with sensual guitars, hard hitting drums and Jazzy flavours. It is accompanied by a black and white Youtube video.
‘Keep Me Warm’ by Nicolas Kluzek is available across all digital platforms now.
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Vivid Dreamer are musicians and producers Ryan McGroarty and Rocky O’Reilly from Belfast, Northern Ireland. The pair recently retreated to their shared writing space. They locked the door and inflated a dazzling bubble of synthesizers, space echoes and drum machines, wrapped in fairy lights with endless immersive animations looped on their screens.
They felt inspired to create an instinctive escape from the everyday pressures, self-imposed expectations and crippling fears that they often witnessed taking hold of their musician friends. They soon created a character based on those friends.
Their new super friend begins lost in the motions, devoid of the drive that once defined them. They embark upon a journey of searching for themselves, seeping tales of ambition, anxiety, regret, jealousy and even laughable paranoia in THINK ABOUT IT.
They finally find resolve, rediscovering the naivety, hope and child-like innocence that remained deep within. Soaked in the sonics and approaches of the pair’s individual projects they encouraged and dared each other to act more immediately than they ever had before. The result is a blueprint of how they will operate in the future; Openly, honestly and fearlessly.
The debut album will be released on 12th July 2020, a joint release from the duo’s new-formed Reckless Abandon collective and Third Bar in Belfast.
Digital and vinyl pre-orders are available exclusively on Bandcamp from July 3rd.
‘Courage’ series two has garnered a fantastic global response since it began on the 23rd of June, with concerts from James Vincent McMorrow, Maija Sofia, Lankum, The Murder Capital and Kodaline. They continue on next week with performances from Neil Hannon, Cathy Davey, Eve Belle, Saint Sister and Crash Ensemble.
Veteran chamber pop musician Neil Hannon who’s been making music under the moniker The Divine Comedy since the early 90s will be performing from Glenveagh National Park in Donegal with singer-songwriter Cathy Davey and up and coming alt pop musician Eve Belle on the 7th of July. Beloved electro folk duo Saint Sister along with members of ‘New Music’ collective Crash Ensemble will play from The Guildhall in Derry on the 9th of July.
Once again performances will take place on Tuesday and Thursday nights and will be made available worldwide, free of charge, thanks to the support of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, RTÉ and IMRO. Courage series one is currently being shown on RTÉ 2 Thursdays at 23:30
Speaking of the project Minister Madigan said: “Building on the phenomenal success of the original Courage programme with a reach of over 2.7m, I am delighted to support this new initiative of live streamed performances from some of our best known heritage sites. The outpouring of wellbeing created by the first series of performances will no doubt be carried through Courage 2 and reminds us that culture lifts us up beyond circumstance and challenges and is vital to the core of our collective humanity.”
IMRO Chief Executive Victor Finn said “In times of crisis we often turn to music creators and artists for their unique ability to interpret and reflect on the world in which we live. Music is a collective experience which can overcome physical distance and is the perfect antidote to the growing sense of alienation and isolation we have all felt in recent times – even more so, now we are being asked to actively practise social distancing. The Other Voices’ Courage series brings some of our finest Irish music creators to the world stage from a number of unique locations around Ireland in what we hope will be inspiring and unforgettable performances.”
Other Voices founder and director Philip King said “We are delighted to present this second season of Other Voices Courage as part of the Government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This is about bringing people together through music, and recognising the essential and powerful contribution that artists continue to make to our lives. We are inspired by the response here in Ireland and globally to the first season of Other Voices Courage, and our artists and crews have helped to bring beauty, solace, strength and a sense of belonging to people at this time of national and global crisis – is ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine. The Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht has played a leading and imaginative role in making it possible for our artists and crews to work together to create and present Other Voices Courage.”
Joel Harkin has been causing a gentle stir since the release of his debut album ‘Never Happy’ on the 19th of May; a release date he chose to coincide with his 26th birthday.
One of the stand-out tracks from that album, ‘Vada’, has already received widespread praise with Hot Press Magazine commenting on Joel’s “dazzlingly unconventional approach to songwriting.”
Today, Friday 3rd July, Joel Harkin releases a radio edit of the delicately beautiful ‘Vada’ – a song that showcases this ‘unconventional approach’ of Joel’s perfectly.
Seamlessly blending real life with fiction, Joel inserts his childhood friend from Donegal, the son of an undertaker, into the narrative of the classic 1991 movie, My Girl, starring Macaulay Culkin and Anna Chlumsky.
“After sweet Thomas Jay, there’s been a new boy over to play.”
Joel says: “The song creates a world in which my mates from Letterkenny and the main character of my favourite film, the 1991 classic My Girl, exist in the same universe. It’s about how they compare the differences and similarities in their lives that take place on two different sides of the world.”
Joel Harkin played Other Voices Mayo and Output Belfast in February 2020. The year before, he supported Junior Brother, Joshua Burnside and Kitt Phillipa. His songs have received airplay on BBC 6 Music, BBC Radio 1 and more. In 2019 he was nominated for the Oh Yeah Contender Award at the Northern Ireland Music Prize 2019, and this year he is a participant in the Oh Yeah Centre’s Scratch My Progress Talent Development Program.
Joel also features on the ‘Bangers ‘N’ Mash (Ups)’ compilation album released today in aid of ‘She Sells Sanctuary’, which supports victims of domestic violence in NI.
Aislinn Logan’s mix of genre blurring bops and brooding, introspective electronica is starting to set a scene. The single ‘Joyride’ brought dance-pop edge to a necessary message on women’s rights, whilst ‘Everything In Between’ offered a fragile take on longing set to sweeping soundscapes.
Often described as a “firecracker” by friends, the London based Belfast gal’s writing often tackles societal issues such as addiction and sexism, balancing candour with shimmering synth pop grooves. “Don’t expect the beat to say nothing,” Logan states.
Her new single, ‘What Everybody’s After’, is an ode to happiness. As a queer person, Aislinn explains that “writing a song this forthright about being in love is rebellious in itself. I didn’t want to shy away from the sincerity of my feelings.” The trip-hop happy beat and hypnotic synth swells reflect the feel good-drug in question as Aislinn explains “I wrote it to be a sonic IV-hit of serotonin.”
Her upcoming EP ‘Look, I’m Flyin’ confronts loss, self-doubt, and finding solace in the pursuit with a good helping of dream pop, and a side of straight-talking grit.
‘What Everybody’s After’ is the new single from Aislinn Logan’s first EP, ‘Look, I’m Flyin’.
Self-produced, and recorded using her home set-up, the track lays bare Logan’s studio chops for the first time. Featuring woozy synths, 90s era trip-hop breaks, and lush guitar riffs, we’re seeing her emulate the evocative production she admires on shimmering pop records. Then there’s her vocal which glides deliciously through it all.
A breezy love-bop, ‘What Everybody’s After’ sounds like riding your bicycle down your favourite street on a warm day.
As Aislinn explains, “’What Everybody’s After’ is about feeling so light that you’re nostalgic for the present moment. I wanted to make something unapologetically sincere about feeling prismatic happiness, and just bathing in it when you get there.”
‘What Everybody’s After’ was mixed by Kristofer Harris (Ghostpoet, Belle and Sebastian, Emmy The Great) with bass performance from Conor King (Milk, JYellowL).
SEAC Live is a series of live music streams of folk, traditional and contemporary Irish music presented by the Séamus Ennis Arts Centre. They will be streamed from Studio 1 at the iconic Windmill Lane Recording Studios in Dublin’s Docklands.
These streams can be viewed on smart TVs or mobile devices and will be interactive enabling fans to chat with the performers, submit requests and have a front row seat for a great night’s music and entertainment. Audience members can sign up to participate through zoom and will they be projected on to the walls of the studio during the performance. Some special guests may also be dropping in!
Viewers can tune into SEAC Live
from all over the world to watch these amazing performers. They will bring the
incredible musical culture of Ireland to homes around the world and will appeal
on an international level to the Irish diaspora and to the Irish abroad who are
yearning for their Irish culture and heritage.
Background to SEAC Live The Séamus Ennis Arts Centre usually holds an annual Summer ‘Garden Party’ series with the best of Irish and international artists rocking the intimate venue’s dome stage in North County Dublin. Due to COVID-19 restrictions on touring, artists have suffered a disconnection from their audience. As a response to the pandemic, the Centre is bringing music to a new audience through a combination of high-quality web streaming with the addition of audience participation through Zoom. Artists thrive on engaging with their fans and this quality livestream will allow them the opportunity to reconnect. This new series of interactive musical performances will provide music fans with an enriching live musical experience and will provide musicians with an income for their work.
Partnership with Windmill Lane Recording Studios The Séamus Ennis Arts Centre chose Windmill Lane Recording Studios as the venue for SEAC Live to ensure high quality sound and for the space to have multiple cameras filming the performance. SEAC Live is one of the first phases of the re-opening of the iconic Irish recording studios, who launched their Visitor Experience in February this year. The team at the studios are putting in place precautionary procedures to ensure the health and safety of visitors and to guarantee that all guests and performers can enjoy their experience safely. SEAC Live will be broadcast from the famous Studio 1, where The Chieftains, U2, The Rolling Stones and The Cranberries recorded. Windmill Lane Recording Studios is one of the most unique cultural attractions in Dublin. Viewers who book a ticket for SEAC Live will get a fascinating behind-the-scenes view of the studios.
Steve Wickham, NoCrows said “The NoCrows are delighted to be part of this live-streaming event for the SEAC. Playing for a live audience is our stock in trade and we are ready make live music again. We’ve been locked away from stage performances since the Lockdown. Having been the holy ground for a great many records over the years, Windmill Lane studios too, holds a lot of magic and we hope that some of that shine through. NoCrows are celebrating 15 years together so we’ll be playing tunes and songs from our albums and some new tunes written during the time the earth stood still.
Naomi Moore, CEO of Windmill Lane Recording Studios said, “We are delighted host the SEAC Live streaming sessions, supporting an alternative platform for gigging artists. Bringing the audience into the venue through Zoom really excites me about this project. To grab a few friends to have a few drinks and a dance and being able to interact with the musicians is the closest we will get to actually going to a gig for a while. It will also celebrate the reopening of the Windmill Lane Recording Studios Visitor Experience, which we had just launched before lockdown. It will be wonderful to see our famous doors open to the public again.’’
Liz Halpin, Head of Dublin at Fáilte Ireland said: “In recent months, tourist attractions and cultural centres across the country have shown that they can maintain a very real connection with their audiences in many innovative ways. The new livestream series from Windmill Lane Recording Studios featuring some of Ireland’s best-known artists will help to maintain that bond and provide a welcome and entertaining reminder of Ireland’s musical heritage to visitors across the globe. It is initiatives like this that help strengthen the truly unique offering that we have here, and keep Ireland and Dublin front of mind for future visitors from home and abroad.”
Join SEAC Live
from another legendary home of Irish music, Windmill Lane Recording
Studios, for a series of interactive music concerts like no other!
Musical influences from the likes of Bob Dylan, Van
Morrison, Joni Mitchell, and Tom Waits, seeped into songwriter Mick Flannery’s
creative DNA during his younger years; Mick absorbed, learned, and honed his
song writing skills, which helped mature him to ‘a complete master of his
craft’ (Clash Magazine).
Ahead of his seventh album release, ‘Alive – Cork
Opera House 2019’, coming July 24th, Mick has released the first taster of the
album, ‘There Must Be More’:
“The verses of this song deal with some personal
truisms, and ask the simple question; is there more? Is there anything of
significance to us out there in the universe, is it sooner found in our own
minds, is it possible to be or feel content?”, questions Mick.
The album, ‘Alive – Cork Opera House 2019’, is a fully independent release, with all proceeds being distributed evenly between Mick’s band and crew, who have lost work this year due to the Covid-19 crisis.
Recorded in front of a sold-out audience at Cork Opera
House in 2019, the 17-track album will feature more recent favourites from
Mick’s discography:
‘Wasteland’, ‘Boston’, ‘Red to Blue’, ‘I Own You’, and even hilarious
interludes such as: ‘Brad Pitt from the Neck Down’ and ‘Dead Thing Missing’,
written by Mick’s friend Andrew House, for their “Side Project”Christy
Skulls.
With this new release, the humble Mick Flannery aims
to shine a spotlight on his hardworking band and crew, who will evenly share
the profits from the release: Chloe Nagle (sound engineer), Christian Best
(drums), Alan Comerford (electric guitar, vocals), John Fitzgerald (monitor
engineer), Karen O’Doherty (violin, synthesiser, vocals), Matthew Berrill
(saxophone, clarinet), Mike O’Connell (bass, vocals), Phil Christie (keyboards,
vocals), Sandra O’Mahony (sound engineer), Yvonne Daly (vocals).
Mick adds: “I’m very glad this album is coming out;
I think it showcases the talents of the people I’m lucky to share stages with.
I’ve been playing music with this band for quite a while now and this was a
particularly nice night to capture on a recording.”
The release of this Live album further solidifies the fact that Mick Flannery is one of the hardest working Irish touring musicians. Since the release of his last record in July 2019, Mick has performed nearly 100 shows between Ireland, the UK, USA, and Canada. However, there’s nothing quite like performing to a full house back in your hometown. ‘Alive – Cork Opera House 2019’ comes out July 24th. Pre-order at:https://smarturl.it/AliveMickFlannery
Joseph Kiernan is a songwriter from Wicklow, Ireland. His
self-titled debut EP, due for release later this year, delivers a subtly
cultivated body of work that is merciless and redemptive. A musical cartography
of sonic confessions of vulnerability, loss, courage and surrender.
This EP represents an emergent wave that is primal, viscerally emotive and at times unnervingly raw. He introduces us to a melodious space that brings the listener into deeper communion with the numinous.
The songs, written and recorded across two continents,
arrived to him in old rehearsal rooms, on several long haul flights, and in the
basement of an old chocolate factory. They are connected by a timeless thread,
fused together by fractured melodies and broken soundscapes.
‘Strip The Vines’, the second single to be taken from the EP, was released June 26th and touches on the indistinct harsh reality of loss, written in the wake of the death of his closest friend. It is laced with hooks, melodies and refrains that tease you into a dynamic tension between ethereal vocals and sonorous progressions that traverse themes of death, regret and redemption. The depth of introspection can be traced as the track opens with a childlike naiveté, evocations of sentimentality, old ties, and loss of the ground that we all take for granted until familiar love is extinguished by fate.
Kiernan’s nous, as a sincere explorer of the shadow of humanity, presents us with a deceptively profound, catchy track which hints at some of his musical influences (Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, Damien Jurado). His intention to take the listener on an existential sensory trip gets down to the bones with the gutsy climactic drum outro that leaves us in a very different landscape to the one we set out from.
Emerging from Dublin’s thriving DIY punk and hardcore scene, The Winter Passing have released their brand new album ‘New Ways Of Living’. The album is out now.
Formed by siblings Rob and Kate Flynn and guitarist Jamie Collison in their hometown of Tipperary, the band have become known for their fiery DIY work ethic, pressing their own records and tapes and booking their own shows across the world. Armed with a deluge of influences, from Sonic Youth, No Doubt and American Football to a collective fascination with film photography, Irish colloquialism and rural seaside towns, the band have consistently created an infectiously raw mix of punk energy and indie rock quirks. Fans have come to love them for their ability to expertly layer their many inspirations with a heady mix of vulnerability, that make their sound difficult to categorize yet easy to love.
The Winter Passing are back and ready to bash down the doors of the alternative world. Armed with a slew of anthems and ballads alike, they’re a band whose creative outgoings and DIY ethos make them one of the most exciting bands coming out of Dublin right now, acting as a beacon of hope and catharsis in a forever murky sea of noise.
“‘New Ways of Living’ is a story of struggle. In life as humans we tend to repress our bad feelings and carry on through the day to day. But sometimes you have to look at everything you’ve been repressing and get real with yourself. We’ve always used our music to release these burdens we otherwise wouldn’t be able to. The band has kept me and my sister connected mentally throughout our adult life together on two totally separate journeys through life so it’s very important to us that we still get to be the band. We wrote ‘New Ways of Living’ for ourselves but I think there’s something there to help everyone and anyone.” – Rob Flynn
This Saturday 4th July, The Winter Passing will perform live on Hot Press Instagram at 7.30PM.
Proudly ran by Hot Press and supported by the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.
The Y&E Series of the Hot Press Lockdown Sessions. Hosted on Hot Press Instagram
The Y&E Series is designed to showcase and support young & emerging Irish acts in these difficult times. 40 emerging acts. 40 consecutive days. 40 live performances. Join The Winter Passing at 7.30PM – 8.00PM on Saturday, 4th July
Ava (Irish singer and songwriter Eabha McMahon) is set to release her new single ‘Loud’ this Friday, July 3rd on all streaming platforms and iTunes. Ava’s second song from her forthcoming album is an anthemic powerhouse of a song that people will be singing along to very quickly!
Based in Galway, Ava has been building a solid following online. Weekly she connects with her 58,000 Facebook fans and 14,000 Instagram followers – find out why she’s gaining the fans by checking out her YouTube playlist of acoustic performances here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9bP1uM3W-Hz9HlmzGhIpYI8bxKyKd2kI
Play it LOUD, this is a track will have you humming…
