Mere Moths - You Grew Up

Mere Moths used to be the name of a band from Dromore, who released the E.P "Water of The Land" in 2012, when the average age of the band was just 15, before splitting up not long after its release. However, like Passenger before them, their lead songwriter Patrick Wright decided to hold on to the name for his subsequent solo releases, the first of which being the E.P "You Grew Up".

The title track of the E.P is an interesting little song indeed. Unlike many young performers, who feel the need to fill every single nook and cranny with some sort of noise, Patrick Wright seems happy enough to leave the production of the song quite sparse, as if the silence is just as important as the music. And somewhat paradoxically, by doing so, the track leaves much more of an impact as a result. It's a confident, mature offering from Mere Moths, one which should win him some new fans during the rest of 2014.

The "You Grew Up" E.P will be launched at the Oh Yeah Centre in Belfast on February 20th.

Hillspeak - Reaching E.P

As you are all more than aware by now, those fellows in Mumford & Sons have made a pretty penny out of their upbeat indie-folk stylings, and like any group that enjoys global success, they've had their fair share of artists jumping on their bandwagon. However, in all that time I have yet to hear many artists do the obvious and take the raucous folk template and infuse it with Irish traditional music.

That is until I happened upon Dromore based quartet Hillspeak, and their impressive debut E.P "Reaching".  They've got the energy, the harmony vocals and production techniques of Mumford, Bellowhead, Of Monsters and Men and the ilk, yet add their own spin on it by apparently taking inspiration from the Irish folk tradition on tunes like "Eden" and "End of Me". It's an incredibly strong release from a band who deserve to be heard.

"Reaching" is available now on a pay what you want basis.