Sissy
B
oy meets girls. Protest punk meets loud lo-fi garage. A three-piece band is born. Traversing the jagged topography of social commentary, sexual politics and gender inequality, streaked through with black humour and sonic references, Sissy describe their sound as “cool music”. The trio’s sound comes across like Dead Kennedys or Devoto-era Buzzcocks, but the vitriol is more subtle than from where Jello sounds off. In its place is irreverent invective, with hints dropped to the debt that’s owed to Kathleen Hanna’s output over the last quarter century.
Sissy: Carlos Daly, Edward F Butler: Alan Maguire
The band subverted Enya’s ‘Orinoco Flow’ in the chorus of their collargrab first single ‘Sail and Rail’, trashing and trampling it in the recounting of a trip to Britain for an abortion; an Hiberno-centric pop cultural reference deriding the same land’s archaic politics. Sissy’s songs are heavy in focus but swift in passing, artfully lacerating in execution; above all, though, cool fucking music. Justin McDaid
Edward F Butler
M
ulti-talented music man Edward F Butler has had a fairly tremendous run of things so far. Not only has he had a foothold in the cinematic arts, having directed videos for Oh Volcano, as well as the video for his own debut single, 2014’s ‘Running From Fears’, he has seen his music reach far and wide over the past year or so, through the ‘BBC Introducing’ scheme and through his own former project, the much loved and much missed HOWL. He’ll build you a shed too if you ask him nicely. The London-born, Belfast-based producer is creating the kind of soulful electronica that brings to mind Caribou and James Blake but forefronts a pop mentality. With a new EP in the works too, Edward F Butler is very much the one to watch in 2015, and, if his past exploits are anything to go by, we’ll be seeing a lot more of him over the coming months. We can’t wait. Aaron Drain
Jan / Feb 2015
9
– 15 for ‘15 –
15 for ‘15 Sissy / Edward F Butler