Katie Kim
In some ways, Katie Kim is the logical outcome of Ireland’s storied singer-songwriter scene. In her work, the often imagined passion, personality and strength of all those who have picked up an acoustic guitar and dared to sing over it is made real. The tremulous surface of her songs belie a hidden power, their flighty nature interrupted at key moments by bursts of unforgettable melody. The balance between delicacy and intensity is a tough one to strike but none have done it better than Kim has on her second album, Cover & Flood. Live performances warp the songs into something bigger and more powerful again, with the voices of her band combining to lift what was small and grounded into the air and into the ether.
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D/R/U/G/S
Is post-trance a thing? Maybe D/R/U/G/S will make it a thing. Described by the Guardian as “torpid disco”, the beats on show may hint at the likes of Blondes and Teengirl Fantasy, though there is something a little less frantic about this duo’s enterprise. Here things are a little less euphoric and somewhat more compact, drawing on the dregs of rave culture to create something that is disassociated, dark and hard to pin down. Somnambulist party music.
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Girls Names
Wearing your influences on your sleeve (sometimes literally) is a classic indie move. You align yourself with a tradition, aesthetic and cultural, and seek to move it a little step forward in your own particular way. Girls Names have fully internalized the sounds and structures of classic indie pop, from classic Postcard bands to their modern-day peers on Slumberland, and are using the knowledge to create a uniquely Belfast sound. It’s grey, obsessed with morbid imagery and utilises the hazy, jangling wall of sound we all know so well. It seems morose but there’s a smile in there somewhere, a sly joke hidden deep beneath the layers of guitar and reverb. Keep listening and you’ll find it.
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Jogging
Perhaps one of the Richter Collective’s most under-rated bands, the classic power trio of Jogging are a forced to be reckoned with on stage. Their first album, Minutes, drew heavily on classic post-hardcore influences and ended up sounding something like a beefier version of Fugazi and their Dischord cohorts. Though things have been quiet over the past few months as they work on their upcoming second album, they’ve promised a set of new songs for their slot at the Crawl. Don’t miss the opportunity to catch a glimpse of what’s to come from three of Ireland’s finest heft-mongers.
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Dels
Coming out of the same scene that birthed Ghostpoet, Micachu and fellow Crawler, Kwes, Dels kicks things up several notches from his often melancholic compatriots. With a flow that brings Jay-Z to mind and a sound that bends grime signifiers to his service, the 27-year old has been called ‘the future of UK Hip-hop’ by The Times and his Kwes-produced debut album certainly shows off a confidence and depth that would point to big things in this lad’s future.
