Author: Breffni Banks

Taylor has become well known for her pop heart felt   anthems such as ‘Pretentious Mind ‘ and ‘White Roses ‘ , but her new single ‘Strangers Again ‘ delves into a more mature expressive indie vibe.

Taylor describes that  ‘Strangers Again’  is about  personal experiences of loosing friendships and loves that once are the pinnacle of your life to becoming absolute Strangers.  ‘Strangers Again ‘ is a subdued down tempo track with simple arrangements of acoustic guitar, delicate synthesiser and dramatic drum beats.

The last year has been pretty busy for Taylor. She released 8 songs, gained 350,000 streams on Spotify and performed at numerous events as a featured act. She was even  awarded with a Garda youth Award and a president Gaisce award for using her Music to give back to the community.

‘Strangers Again ‘ will be available on all streaming platforms on September 16th.

You can Pre-save on Spotify using the link below https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/taylord1/strangers-again

You can follow Taylor on:

Instagram: @taylor_d_music_

Facebook 

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Kevin Smith AKA Kojaque is a 24 year old Irish Hip Hop experimentalist, rapper and producer from Dublin who has built a global fanbase on the back of his breakout debut mixtape ‘Deli Daydreams’ from 2018 and his follow-up No.1 Alternative Irish album ‘Towns Dead’ in 2021. Co-founder of independent label Soft Boy Records, Kojaque mixes sampling and jazz beats with dynamic, poetic lyrics, showcasing life as a modern Dubliner. It Takes A Village brings Kojaque and his dynamic live band to Cork Opera House on Friday 14th October to perform ‘Town’s Dead’ in its entirety, along with more original tracks. Tickets are €26 + booking fee, on sale this [date/time].

Emerging in 2015 with a video performance piece for Midnight Flower, a literally breathtaking performance piece taking place underwater, Kojaque co-founded Soft Boy Records with Kean Kavanagh. Soft Boy quickly became a hub for experimental hip-hop, jazz, and the indiscernible genres that emerge when artists with vision find their voices.

‘Deli Daydreams’ arrived in 2018, ostensibly a concept album orientating around a week in the life of a deli worker, and loaded with heartbreak, tenderness, side-angle views of masculinity, and loneliness. The project was nominated for the Choice Music Prize, the prestigious album of the year award for music from Ireland. Green Diesel (2019), a collaboration with Luka Palm, followed.

Soft Boy became the subject of a Boiler Room documentary, Mercury Prize-nominated UK rapper Slowthai chose Kojaque to accompany him on his sold out European tour to promote his album Nothing Great About Britain, and festival appearances exploded at Glastonbury, SXSW, Pitchfork Music Festival Paris, alongside the multiple UK and Irish tours. Since the release of Town’s Dead Kojaque has performed for tastemaker YouTube channel COLORS, toured North America, sold out shows across the UK and Europe and high profile festival performances.

Kojaque’s directorial vision continues to create incredible videos for his tracks, vignettes that explore intimacy, isolation, and hedonism; offering a brilliantly surreal immersion into the Soft Boy world. This show will be no exception, a performance not to miss out on!

KOJAQUE SHOW DETAILS:

It Takes A Village presents

Kojaque & His Soft Boy Band

Friday 14th October

Cork Opera House

Tickets €26 + booking fee from www.corkoperahouse.ie

On sale Wednesday September 14

Renowned Irish songwriter, John Spillane, is set to release the second single from his upcoming album, In Another Light, recorded live with Cork Opera House Concert Orchestra. ‘Princes Street’ was recorded live at the Right Here Right Now Festival at Cork Opera House in 2021 and is set for release September 16, 2022. Performed live by John Spillane and Pauline Scanlon with the Cork Opera House Concert Orchestra and conducted by John O’Brien and orchestrated by Kevin Codd.

Two-time Meteor award winner John Spillane is a musician, songwriter, performer, recording artist, storyteller, poet and dreamer. Rooted in people, place and story, his music transports the listener and his live performances captivate audiences around the world. John’s extensive back catalogue begins with the 1997 album The Wells of the World.

This new live version of ‘Princes Street’ will be accompanied by an imaginative video, directed by former member of Gráda, Alan Doherty and is the second instalment in a triology of films telling a unique story.  Speaking on the series John says, “As In Another Light is a career spanning album including songs I have written between the years 1983 – 2021, we wanted to create the videos in a similar vein. We wanted to work with one videographer across all three videos to have a consistency in the vision, Al Doherty who created these videos has a really wonderful point of view and a great eye, so it had to be him.”

Speaking about the single John says, “Each video explores a different theme. The first for ‘Dance of the Cherry Trees’, was all about childhood and wonder. This, the second in the series, was built on the excitement you can only feel when you’re beginning your journey into adulthood; hopeful, curious, open and invigorated. It very much brings me back to the time when I wrote the song. I used to busk on Princes Street when I was 21 and I wasn’t even conscious at the time that there was a family connection. My father’s family had lived at 16 Princes Street, where Clancy’s Bar is now. My father died when we were all very young so I’ve always seen him as mirrored in the past, in an old romantic Cork light. The song itself speaks of meeting in our beautiful city on a night where you don’t know what will happen or where you will end up. It’s an ode to the magic of Cork and I see Princes Street as the heart of the town. In my poetic imagination the fountain in the English Market there represents the umbilicus of Cork”.

John’s nephew Philip appears in the video which sees the younger ‘John’ transition into present-day John. The film is a real family affair and features several more Spillanes creating a lovely link with the Spillane family history and with the story of Cork city.

Pre-Order In Another Light 

Tour Dates

August 30 – O’Sullivan’s, Dingle

September 10 – Clare Island Folk Festival

September 17 – The Marketplace Theatre, Armagh

September 18 – Clonakilty Guitar Festival

October 7 – Hot Spot, Greystones

October 15 – The White Horse, Ballicollig

October 21 – Cleere’s, Kilkenny

October 29 – Gleneagle INEC, Killarney

Connect with John Spillane

Website: https://johnspillane.ie/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/john.spillane.musician.ireland/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnspillanemusic/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnSpillane_

Bandcamp: https://johnspillane.bandcamp.com/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4DsTKmZFDe2wWfdgSKCb1p?si=RTh1aX8DQQGFICVpYWm42A

Image: Fionn Hennessy-Hayes

Pauline Scanlon’s unique voice, described as “a superb mix of china cup fragility and steely strength” (Irish Times) comes from an ancient place yet is always fresh. Her music is both Irish and universal, traditional yet subversive at every turn. The ‘steely strength’ comes to the fore in both her activism and her determination to constantly evolve as an artist.

As a founding member of FairPlé, the role of women in the arts is central to Pauline’s creative path and something she is very vocal about. Her latest album, The Unquiet, reimagines what it is to be an Irish woman in the context of music and song. It is an album that shifts expectations and defy genre. The album is a representation through song, of the life of Pauline’s late mother Eileen Scanlon.

You’ve heard the story before, but not like this. A woman gives up a baby boy for adoption and passes away years later, before being re-united with him, while her daughter contemplates her mother’s story with love and compassion. This all-too familiar tale has been re-worked by Pauline into The Unquiet, an album of traditional songs each carefully selected to remember some aspect of her late mother’s life in all its joys and sorrows.

The making of Pauline’s album was captured over a period of 3 years in the profoundly moving radio documentary: https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/the-unquiet-songs-for-my-mother/

Witness Pauline perform these songs live as she continues album launch tour this Autumn to Castlebar September 15^th; Dublin September 16^th; Portumna September 17^th; Cork September 18^th; Waterford October 26^th and Dingle October 27^th. Tickets available from www.paulinescanlon.net

About The Unquiet, Pauline says:

“All my life as a singer, I have been drawn to old songs. In them I find solidarity with the ghosts of people I have never met and yet share fragments of feelings with. Somewhere in the empathy that is shared between singer, listener, and ghostly forms, I find strands of myself that didn’t originate in my own heart but have found their way in there all the same. They belong to someone or somewhere else, yet I feel them as deeply as if they were mine.

With this album I seek to represent the realities of modern-era women through traditional song. I am intentionally redirecting these songs away from the traditional narrative, turning them to face the modern era, to reflect a new social outlook, and I am imagining the present as I sing them.

’The Unquiet’ is based on the life of my late mother, Eileen Scanlon, and her contemporaries in Irish society. I include myself in this. The songs are not literal in that they do not reflect specific events in my mother’s life. They do, however, have a resonance and a purpose in reflecting her lived experience and that of modern-era women in Ireland, through my perspective.”

The album is out now on digital, CD, and vinyl. Order on Bandcamp https://paulinescanlon.bandcamp.com/album/the-unquiet

​​Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/paulinescanlon_x/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pauline.scanlon.9

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PaulineScanlonX

The new  album from Ben Reel is to be released 15th September 2022 on all platforms titled “Locked in & Live”.

The album will feature 18 songs – 8 live songs recorded during lockdown in The Iontas theatre Castleblayney.

It will also feature 7 studio recorded songs that Ben worked on during lockdown & 3 live acoustic songs that featured on his Facebook live streamed concerts in the 1st year of the covid pandemic. Two of these are cover versions of Bob Dylan’s – Oh Sister and Bruce Springsteen’s – Drive All Night which features Ben on the piano. Out of the 7 studio tracks there is tribute songs to 2 great friends who sadly passed away in the last year: The late Rainbow George Weiss whom Ben co wrote ‘U People & Scoring Goals’ which features voice overs by Rainbow George & his good friend Ian Jury. The song ‘U Look to Me’ was co wrote with the late great Irish songwriter Tony McLoughlin.

The album features the live single ‘This Is the movie’ (locked in & Live).

The album also features previously released singles during lockdown.

‘Isolation Blues‘ – a tongue and cheek look back at the last 2 years.

‘2020 Vision‘ – a song that was recorded during lockdown which Ben played all instruments and shot a great selfie video himself just using his iphone – watch here on YouTube 2020 Vision

‘Tear It Down‘ – protest song against the British Tory party who didn’t really care about the consequences of Brexit that could have resulted with a hard border on the island of Ireland and jeopardized the good friday agreement.

‘When I Was a Boy‘ – a re working of a song that always had promise as a single but didn’t make the cut for Ben’s 2013 album ‘Darkness & the Light‘.

Ben Reel – Belfast CD launch

Fri, Oct 21 @ 8:00PM

Sunflower, 65 Union Street, Belfast, BT1 2JG Northern Ireland, Belfast

https://benreel.com

Do You’ is the second single from 22-year-old Dublin-based Pop/R&B artist-songwriter, Maria.

‘Do You’ is an infectious track that conveys the frustration and fear that surrounds the vulnerability of ‘blindly falling’ for someone.

Of the song, Maria states “The rawness of this single really highlights the back and forth thinking inflicted by fear which I believe can really resonate with people.”

‘Do You’ was co-written and produced by Wexford-based producer extraordinaire Alex O’Keeffe.

‘Do You’, is available from Thursday, September 15th on all digital platforms.

Instagram  | TikTok |  Twitter | Facebook

Dylan Flynn and The Dead Poets make music for twenty-somethings living in a country that completely ignores them. In the last year the Indie up-and-comers have amassed over 40,000 streams on Spotify, secured support slots with NewDad and Milk., embarked on their first Irish tour and played a number of sold out headline shows.

“Running Away is a guitar driven, saxophone soaked anthem that incorporates elements of Indie Rock, Jangle Pop and Power Pop. The songs upbeat feel is contrasted by it’s lyrics, which I wrote last year while my grandfather was dying. The song covers themes of love and guilt, while trying to process losing someone who was so close to me. We wrote, recorded and produced the song from our small studio space in Limerick City, with help from Mike Gavin (Windings). Mike co-produced and mixed the track, while Richard Dowling mastered it.” – Dylan Flyn

The 5-piece, who blend elements of Jangle-Pop and Alt-Rock, take influence from artists such as The War on Drugs, Radiohead and The 1975. The band all met while at college in Limerick, Ireland, and use their music to delve into themes of loss, relationships and mental health.

The Indie-Rock outfit have been quickly gaining recognition in the Irish music scene for their energetic live shows, and self-produced releases, which have been featured in Hot Press, Golden Plec and Indie Buddie. Their music has also been heard across major Irish stations such as Today FM, RTE 2XM, and SPIN SW.

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Jenyis recently released her single ‘Lost My Soul’.

Speaking about her musical journey so far, she says;

“This has been quite a journey for me so far: working with an incredibly talented producer, Coco from M5 Sound Studio, here in Cork. I have always wanted to release a single but just did not know where to start. It was my sister Safarii- –one of Cork‘s up and coming DJs- that told me “you’ve  got to go to Coco” and I’m  so glad I did!

“LOST MY SOUL” represents my struggle- or anyone’s -struggle of love, pain and finding ones true self again. Usually when I’m going through a tough time in my life I write lyrics as a form of therapy for me, that’s what LOST MY SOUL was for me- I worked through some complicated feelings while writing it, it was a cathartic experience almost.

Coco probably found me difficult to work with at the start as I was initially hesitant to show him my lyrics, it such a personal thing it’s hard to share it with someone you don’t really know. Coco really helped me turn this song into something I’m proud to show the world- I want people to hear my music and my words, and dance and sing along with them. It ended being such a fun time, working together on “LOST MY SOUL”. We were dancing in the studio and Coco said, “This is a Banger!”. I I’m still amazed sometimes how we were able to create a piece of music that I love so much- from lyrics that were originally inspired by mostly by painful emotions- it nice to look back and see how something so positive came out of it.

This song is about losing oneself to love- a toxic type of love, reflecting on what the most important people in my life would advise me to do, and then finally having the strength to overcome the pain and find myself again. It’s still a journey full of ups and downs, and it never really ends, but it’s a beautiful journey to recognising your true self.”

Growing up in Letterkenny, County Donegal, Aaron Coleman aka Arn.’s penchant for writing infectious pop hooks and his borderless aesthetic is challenging any preconceived notions of what it means to be an artist from rural Ireland.

Having been raised on a diet of classic rock and The Dubliners as a child, he inhaled hundreds of hours of seminal records on family road trips to Waterford and fed his fascination for anthemic pop hits through looping VCR clips of Enrique Iglesias as a child on the weekends.

As his taste developed and the challenges of adolescence unfolded, Arn. found solace in the recommendations of his brother. Blaring Slipknot, Wu Tang Clan, Korn and early pop-punk heroes like Paramore through his bedroom speakers Arn. was able to channel his teenage angst into visceral and emotive records that would come to inform his heart-on-his-sleeve songwriting. Subsequently, the rising act has developed a unique way of borrowing from music before his time and transforming it into future nostalgia indie earworms.

Coupled with a modest but growing discography that shares DNA with the bedroom-pop textures of Clairo and the hook game of indie highflyer Remi Wolf, Arn. is developing a reputation as an act crafting infectious cuts on his own terms. An approach highlighted on ‘White Nikes’ and ‘Alive’, where rather than compromising the rousing instrumentation, the vulnerable lyricism accentuates the sound, pulling his ability to seamlessly marry disparate elements into full focus.

Emboldened by the homogenous and limited pub scene of local musicians, Arn.’s mission statement is fueled by a desire to take the road less travelled.

“My surroundings informed me what I’m doing now, because I didn’t want to do country. I didn’t want my music to be a direct association of where I’m from. It was the things that weren’t from where I’m from that moulded my taste of music.”

It’s an attitude that won fans in Nialler9, An Nóta Ard, and Hot Press Magazine and resulted in airtime on BBC Radio Foyle, Dublin City FM, KCLR and Highland Radio.

Achievements that hold significant weight when contextualised against the backdrop of a small town mentality that shuns progressive art and the isolating experience of creating forward facing music in rural Ireland which was further underscored by the national lockdown. However, not to be discouraged by conditions out of his control, Arn. took the extra time granted in 2020 to up his game and fine tune his sound.

“I was releasing a song every 2 weeks at the start of 2021. I Did like 11 I think. That was me on overdrive. It was fun, the creative flow never lapsed but I had no time to do any other music content such as music videos etc. Had to stop then to focus on the bigger picture.”

Now, with several singles under his belt and an appetite to bring Letterkenny to the world, Arn. is gearing up to be next up on Ireland’s conveyor belt of DIY trailblazers.

SUNLIGHT:

Bouncy, funky, full of life.

Happy, groovy, full of light.

Sunlight is our life force. The bringer of happiness. The colour in the world.

In this song, sunlight is embodied in the one I love and yearn for.

Inspired in part by Sam Sparrow’s ‘Black and Gold’, Sunlight uses what’s up above to describe the feelings within.

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