WITH festival season now more or less in the rearview mirror, we can look forward to a hefty season of releases in the final quarter of the year. Expect new albums, showcases and some of the most exciting acts in the country to be headlining your favourite venues in the coming months.
 
October will play host to Ireland Music Week. One of our foremost showcase festivals (a festival for the music and related industries to see some up-and-coming talent before they go international), IMW has long been a stepping stone for our best cultural exports: Fontaines D.C., Hozier and Dermot Kennedy are all examples of alumni who have gone on to have successful global careers. 
 
Organisers First Music Contact released this year's live schedule for the festival earlier this week. There are conferences on the 4th and 5th of October and the actual performances on the 6th and 7th. Representatives from the north include producer Mount Palomar, alt-folk singer Aoife Wolf, songwriter ROE, Grunge rock slacker Lauren Ann and psych-wizard Lemonade Shoelace. 


 

Festival director Angela Dorgan said: “It’s really exciting that we show the world just how great our music audience is in Ireland by turning up and coming out to support these future stars as they showcase their amazing talent to the world at Ireland Music Week. Let’s show them how great Irish acts can be in front of a home crowd.”
 
In more iconic festivals-from-Ireland news, Other Voices announced its return to Cork later this year. Having staged an open-air performance earlier this year in Belfast, and with a return to their spiritual home in Dingle later in the year on the cards, news of this other showcase should only be met with joy. A free-to-enter concert and live stream will be broadcast on the night, with performances taking place at University College Cork’s Violet Club.

Headliners are Derry songwriter SOAK, UK/Irish producer Biig Piig and Cork natives Susan O’Neill and Pretty Happy – plenty to be excited about. The broadcast and shows will commence on September 29, with the live stream directly on the Other Voices website. Set your alarm or grab your tickets today.
 
News also broke of a new two-day music event to take place in Dublin’s National Concert Hall next month. On the 1st and 2nd of October, five rooms in the NCH will be taken over by homegrown electronic artists and experimental producers for evenings of weird and wonderful music With reports that elusive producer ‘Oneohtrix Point Never’ will be playing his first Irish show in over a decade, these evenings have been programmed by Foggy Notions and feature some very exciting and talented Irish artists.
 
And as always, we shine the spotlight on some of the best independent music from Ireland that was released over the last week. Now that festival season is over, expect some doozies coming our way. 


 

Kildare-based DIY rocker Skinner’s new track, ‘The Slump’, is a harsh mix of punk, grunge and indie rock º let’s hope more is to come
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Kildare-based DIY rocker Skinner’s new track, ‘The Slump’, is a harsh mix of punk, grunge and indie rock º let’s hope more is to come

First this week, we have a collaboration between two of my favourites. Max Zaska is a polymath musician and a virtuoso guitarist. Melina Malone is a supremely talented singer, with a knack for intonation and delivery that makes every song a joy. The two have teamed up on the track ‘Just For One Day’, which is available now. Loosely described as a love song to Mother Earth, it's a swooning, sunset-drenched record, fuelled by Malone’s neo-jazz vocals. Accompanied by a beautiful performance video, the track has a cinematic score to it whilst maintaining a chilled, lo-fi soul.
 
Also out this week is the latest from Skinner. The Kildare-based DIY rocker released the new track ‘The Slump’, a harsh mix of post-punk, grunge and indie rock. This is the latest in a string of new releases from the artist, who had a relatively quiet number of years and it’s hopefully indicative of something larger to come. Stompy, angular and robotic, it's a throwback tune, reminiscent of the funk and fervour of early 2000s guitar bands.