Following the release of their brilliant debut album, Killer Brain Waves, Asylums return with the feel-good hit of the summer.  ‘When We Wake Up’ is built for throwing warm lager in the air at Reading Festival, for pogoing in your kitchen just because you can, for shoulder-barging your best mate on the dancefloor. But underneath the energy runs the intelligence of a band that are compelled to reflect the real stories around them.

Asylums have also announced the release of their highly anticipated album, Alien Human Emotions, which is set for July 6 release on much respected indie label (owned and run by Asylums) Cool Thing Records. 

Alien Human Emotions tackles themes of bitter sex and soured relationships which swirl over bleak analyses of a disintegrating social and political landscape. Frustrated rage writhes below the surface on every track and occasionally bursts through with a shocking intensity. But everywhere are hooks both musical and lyrical that demand repeat listens. The music seeping thru owes as much to the brooding darkness of The Cure as it does to the disjointed mind of Flaming Lips singer Wayne Coyne, both of which only add to the dark danceability of the album.

Track List:

1: Day Release To The Moon

2: When We Wake Up

3: Bottle Bank

4: Alien Human Emotions

5: Millennials

6: Napalm Bubblegum

7: Pause

8: Graveyard Tourism

9: Critical Mass

10: Homeowners Guilt

11: Sexual Automation

12: The Company You Keep

Belfast's Girls Names have confirmed details of their new album and shared the opening track, along with accompanying live dates. Stains on Silence, the band’s fourth LP, will be released on June 15 via Tough Love Records and today the band have shared a first taste with the brooding “25”. It stands to reason that many vital albums come critically close to never being made. The eight-track upshot of doubt, upheaval and financial strain, Stains on Silence by Girls Names is one such release.

Following 2015’s blitzing Arms Around a Vision, and the parting of drummer Gib Cassidy just over a year later, the Belfast band suddenly found themselves facing down a looming void. “There was a finished – and then aborted – mix of the album, which was shelved for six months,” reveals Girls Names frontman Cathal Cully. “We then took a break from all music and went back to full-time work. We chilled out from the stress of rushing the record and not being happy with it, as well as being skint with no impending touring on the cards and constantly having to worry about rent.”

The stumbling blocks that proved a strain became the album’s defining breakthrough. Recorded in various locations including Belfast’s Start Together Studio with Ben McAuley, Cully’s home and the band’s practice space, spontaneous creation, cut-up techniques and self-editing took centre-stage for the first time. "We started tearing the material apart and rebuilding, re-editing and re-recording different parts in my home in early Autumn last year,” says Cully. “When we got them to a place we were pleased with we went back into Start Together Studio with Ben McAuley to finalise the mixes to what they are now."

Girls Names live dates:

June

15th - Blackbox, Belfast

19th - Moth Club, London

20th - Oporto, Leeds

21st - Old Hairdressers, Glasgow

22nd - Night People, Manchester

23rd - Whelans, Dublin

August

9-12th - Ypsigrock, Sicily