Seanie Buttons presents I Dreamed, I Dream + Inchworm (Strictly Over 18s)

Self-described ‘experimental no-wave bitch-punk’ outfit I Dreamed I Dream should be a music journalist’s worst nightmare – but it all just works.

Based in Cork, the band takes their home city’s post-punk legacy and their own wider noise-rock influences as a base for a transgressive sound that’s seen them gig around the country – breaking the fourth wall at festivals like Dublin’s MusicTown and Cork Midsummer, as well as opening for M(h)aol, The Altered Hours, Gina Birch and The Frank & Walters.

Indeed, it’s not all that far from this foundation that debut single ‘Apparition’, recorded at Wavefield Studio and produced by Brian Casey, manifests itself. A steadily-paced, swirling, menacing slab of eighties-inflected shoegazing underpins charismatic vocalist/bassist Claire Aherne’s hollering recall of various degrees of torrid existential horror, steeped equally in lucid, articulate lyricism, and the idiosyncratic Leeside snark that resides in the band’s DNA.

But while it’s an effective primer on the band and its raisons d’etre, it’s only the beginning for a band whose material to date has pulled in sonic elements and reference points from any and all directions – from walls of hectic, misogyny-haunted noise like ‘Tintin Haircut’; to ‘214’, a sean nós-inspired koan to suburban youngfellas and the commuter buses that contain them.

Armed with anger, humour and heart, as well as a healthy disregard for musical convention, they’ve terrorised gig-going audiences up and down the country. But with their debut single under their belts, and their upcoming debut extended-player in the can, I Dreamed I Dream are about everyone’s problem.

‘Apparition’ by I Dreamed I Dream is available on all streaming platforms from the 22nd of September.