With their long-awaited fourth album Is This Hyperreal?… due to hit the streets in the coming weeks, Atari Teenage Riot are giving fans a taste of what to expect by offering their new single as a free download. ‘Blood In My Eyes’ features Nic Endo on vocal duties and, ever the activists, the subject at hand is

Europavox, the aunnual music festival and industry convention held in the French city of Clermont-Ferrand, has revealed the first acts to be confirmed for this year’s event. Each year, Europavox brings together leading lights from music scenes right across Europe, including Ireland, with Le Galaxie now being despatched from Dublin to rock the socks off the French festivalgoers.
The …

Rapper and R&B singer Nate Dogg has died at the age of 41. The artist, whose real name was Nathaniel D. Hale, had been ill for some time after suffering a series of strokes.
Nate Dogg was a pioneer of the Long Beach movement, performing with Snoop Dogg and Warren G as part of the hip-hop group 213 before signing…

Fresh from her inclusion in State’s Faces Of 2011 list, Cork-born pixie/singer-songwriter EleventyFour is currently recording her debut EP, The Joy Imperative…, and she needs your help! Her plan is to get as many people as possible to submit recordings of themselves singing along to ‘The Friend Song’, which will then be included on the album

Mike Starr, former bass player with Alice In Chains, has been found dead at his home in Salt Lake City. Starr had endured a long battle with drug addiction, which resulted in him leaving the group after the release of Dirt… in 1993. He later worked with ex-Black Sabbath singer Ray Gillen on the Sun Red Sun

Legendary guitarist Gary Moore has died. According to reports, the 58-year-old Belfast-born musician was on holidays in Spain when he passed away in his sleep. He’s best known for the time he spent in Thin Lizzy and for his solo career, during which he wrote several classic rock songs, including ‘Parisienne Walkways’ and ‘Out In…

José Gonzalez’s band Junip have cancelled their Irish tour dates after the singer was forced to return to Sweden due to illness. The group were set to play Auntie Annie’s in Belfast tonight, as well as gigs in Dublin (Whelan’s) tomorrow night, February 4th, and Cork  (Cyprus Avenue) on the 5th.
No rescheduled dates have been announced yet. Refunds are available from…

Describing themselves as “Pavement jamming with Go West,” Gavin Elsted’s We Are Losers splice together retro synths and backbeats with riffy, lo-fi garage rock straight out of 1980′s America. They retain an unashamed pop sensibility beneath all the bleepy keys and superfuzz guitars, with addictive vocal hooks and summery harmonies shining through in the mix.…

Sacred Animals appeared out of left field in 2010 with their Welcome Home… EP, which promptly received State’s seal of approval. The CD came housed in a homemade cover that was thoughtfully designed and carefully assembled – quite apt, as their music is constructed in a similar fashion. The Gorey-based band excels at composing languid,

Taking their name from a Vladimir Nabokov story, Cloud Castle Lake are driven on by a mish-mash of influences, allowing them to slide easily from freaky krautrock one moment to ethereal shoegaze and epic post-rock, often within the same song. Their sound is also typified by intuitive use of samples, a variety of percussive textures…

Jennifer Evans likes to keep herself occupied. Not only has the Dublin-based singer recorded and released her debut EP in recent times, but she also landed a prestigious slot in the ‘Other Room’ section of RTÉ’s Other Voices… series. And that’s all in addition to a rather full gig schedule, which included a date at

Villagers, Grand Pocket Orchestra, Prince Kong, The Ambience Affair, Heathers, O Emperor, Patrick Kelleher, Two Door Cinema Club – just some of the bands that we’ve featured over the past two years of our annual Faces Of…. round up of new Irish talent. This year is no exception, except for the fact that the class…

State was hoping to provide in-depth coverage from last month’s Europavox II event in Brussels (preview here) but flight cancellations due to the heavy snowfall meant we had to stay home by the fire instead. But, while we can’t offer a full report, we were still able to asemble this collection of photographs taken for us by Thieva…

Quarter Inch Collective have announced they are to release the first in a new compilation album series called, quite cleverly, Quompilation…. It will feature Irish acts performing re-worked and re-imagined versions of their favourite songs of 2010. Here’s the full list of artists involved:
Cloud Castle Lake
Flok
Ginola
Hipster Youth
Kid Karate
Market Force
No Monster Club
Patrick Kelleher