Who?
There’s a lot to be said for hype – if nothing else we all end up listening to something new – but there’s even more to be said for going out and finding top class acts yourself. That’s probably my favourite thing about Goldenplec’s Coast to Coast Tea and Toast, which is where we were lucky enough to stumble across this group from Nenagh, County Tipperary. Silent Noise Parade splatter themselves across that “happy buzz meets morose lyrics” brand of rock-edged electronic music, chucking in a dose of Manchunian bitterness along the way for good measure. They consist of Owen Geaney (Guitar, Bass), Joseph Geaney (Guitar, Keys), Gary Sherlock (Vocals), Liam Hayes (Drums) Kevin Gubbins (Keys, Samples), and sound a whole lot like they tried to fuse Joy Division with a ride on Space Mountain with your eyes taped shut. Embrace the ride.
What?
There’s an album, ‘Electric Lives and the Nightmare That Follows’, released last year, which comes with a ‘true to form’ front cover depicting Poe-esque crows flying away from a nesting tree at the heart of a psychedelic rave. If you’re looking for modern contemporaries; think Sleigh Bells after they’ve turned down every instrument they own, stopped screeching and attempted something other than a bludgeoning. Or perhaps a Friendly Fires album track, rewired for 2am in a field and sticking with the beats instead of those radio-friendly choruses. It’s earworm stuff, wriggling into your head space through the intelligent and organic use of blurry synths. As we found out through the video below, it also survives adaption extremely well: in acoustic-ish form, the tracks strength stands out, so much so that highlighting that end of the sound wouldn’t be Silent Noise Parade’s worst move. Check it out here:
Why bother?
The Irish music scene could hardly be more Dublin-centric if it tried, so when a top-class band comes out of the sticks, we owe it to them to listen. These guys are polished. If were to be brutally harsh, their album might even be a touch too polished, which gives us the honour (ok, bias alert) of presenting a video that I personally feel outdoes their more professionally recorded Soundcloud efforts, as it’s delivered minus the studio trickery. We’ve only seen one song live, but on this evidence they’d be stellar. Gary’s voice alone is worth a few minutes of your time.
And the flip side?
We already mentioned the slight overproduction on the album – it’s probably intended to make the sound a little more blurry and contemporary, and to be fair it applies to a whole lot of far more high-profile albums, too. For an unheralded debut, though, there’s really very little to pick holes in here. That’s especially promising combined with the knowledge that these guys really deliver live, even when they’re stuck in a quiet, midday corner of their hometown art centre. Given the right late-night slot, they’d be sensational.
Catch them…
As far as we’re able to work out, Silent Noise Parade have no dates planned right now. Go ahead and book them yourself!
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Up & Comers is jointly produced fortnightly by Goldenplec and 
