Chordblossom

About Chordblossom

Chordblossom is a Northern Ireland music website dedicated to covering new local music, gigs and reviews. Founded in 2012 and run from Belfast, it has spent well over a decade championing the artists and bands of the North — publishing monthly round-ups of new releases, fortnightly gig guides, interviews, reviews and an annual competition for unsigned acts. Its website, chordblossom.com, carries the motto of shining a spotlight on Northern Irish musicians, and its "Fresh Music From NI" playlists and end-of-year lists have become fixtures of the local music calendar.

A champion of Northern Irish music since 2012

Chordblossom came into existence in 2012 with a clear aim: to shine a spotlight on the artists and bands of Northern Ireland that deserved wider attention. The site's copyright line — "© Chordblossom 2012 – 2026" — marks fourteen years of continuous publication, a remarkable run for an independent music site run by volunteers and enthusiasts.

From the start the focus was local. While the site receives submissions from all over the world, its editorial heart has always been the music coming out of Belfast, Derry, the North Coast and the towns and villages in between — the indie bands, singer-songwriters, electronic producers and folk artists making up one of the UK's most fertile regional scenes.

Fresh Music From NI: the monthly playlist

The site's flagship feature is "Fresh Music From Northern Ireland," a monthly round-up of the best new releases from the North, published with an accompanying Spotify playlist. Every month the writing team selects the standout singles and tracks — typically around 25 fresh songs — and writes about each one, creating both a listening guide and a written record of the scene as it evolves.

The September 2026 edition, with words by Eimear Gallagher, Robert Brown and Will Mac Aoidh, covered artists including Kynsy and Lemonade Shoelace, Belfast's piglet (the project of Charlie Loane), The Gentle Reckoning (Jamie Welles) and Novena — a snapshot of a scene spanning dream-pop, lo-fi indie, folk-rock and beyond. Earlier editions have championed acts such as VERA, Strange New Places, Moon Landing, JC Stewart, SX70 and Rachel Craig.

The fortnightly gig guide

Alongside its release coverage, Chordblossom publishes a fortnightly gig guide picking out the must-see shows taking place across Northern Ireland — from small club nights in Belfast to festival stages on the North Coast. The October 2026 gig guide continued a series that has run for years, serving as a practical companion for gig-goers and a promotional lifeline for promoters and venues.

The guides reflect the site's deep embeddedness in the live scene: its writers are regulars at the venues they cover, and the recommendations carry the authority of people who actually go to the shows.

Introducing: new artists, first

The "Introducing" series gives first coverage to emerging Northern Irish artists — by late 2023 the series had reached its 126th edition with a feature on Disorder, each instalment presenting a new name to watch with an interview and music. For many young bands, an Introducing feature on Chordblossom has been their first press coverage, a rite of passage on the way to wider recognition.

The series embodies the site's founding purpose: finding the artists before anyone else does and giving them a platform at the moment they need it most.

Kickstart: the unsigned competition

Chordblossom runs Kickstart, an annual competition aimed specifically at unsigned bands and artists from Northern Ireland, offering winners a leg up with prizes including recording time, festival slots, professional photo shoots and support slots. The 2018 edition, promoted in partnership with The Unsigned Guide, invited entries until mid-April and offered a year's subscription to The Unsigned Guide among its prizes.

Kickstart has become one of the most important development opportunities for emerging Northern Irish acts — a direct investment by the site in the future of the scene it covers, turning music journalism into practical support for musicians.

Songs and albums of the year

Every December the site publishes its definitive end-of-year lists: the Northern Irish Songs of the Year (typically a top 50 counted down in two parts) and the Northern Irish Albums & EPs of the Year. The 2024 albums list, selected by Addison Paterson, Aaron Cunningham, Ben Magee, Jonah Gardner and Robert Brown, ran from 30 to 1 and included acts such as Córas Trio, Buí and J Shields — spanning avant-folk, midwestern emo and beyond.

The lists are among the site's most-read and most-debated features each year, functioning as an alternative canon of Northern Irish music — one compiled by the writers closest to the scene rather than by industry committees.

Reviews, features and the wider scene

Beyond the regular series, the site publishes news, features, reviews and media content covering the full breadth of the Northern Irish music world. It has reported extensively on the Northern Ireland Music Prize — covering shortlist announcements and winners from SOAK's 2015 triumph with Before We Forgot How To Dream through Robyn G Shiels (2014), Joshua Burnside (2017) and The Wood Burning Savages' 2018 double at the Ulster Hall — and on festivals and industry events including Atlantic Sessions, Stendhal Festival, the Sound of Belfast and Output Belfast.

Its "No Fixed Abode" feature extends the spotlight beyond the North, covering artists and bands from further afield that the team thinks readers should hear — from West Midlands indie-rockers The Mucks to Leeds' The Kites and American acts such as Thunder Club.

The podcast years

In its early years Chordblossom also produced a podcast series, published via Mixcloud and hosted by Peter Cinnamond. Episodes such as "Full Of Secrets" (June 2014) and "Old Fang, New Tricks" (May 2014) mixed new music with interviews — including a conversation with Belfast label boss Thomas Camblin — capturing the scene in audio form during the site's formative years.

The team behind the site

Chordblossom is written by a team of contributors who are fixtures of the Northern Irish music scene in their own right. Long-standing writers include Aaron Cunningham and Robert Brown — both prolific reviewers and playlist compilers — alongside Martha Greer, Will Mac Aoidh, Eimear Gallagher, Ben Magee, Jonah Gardner and Addison Paterson. The bylines are those of genuine enthusiasts: people who go to the gigs, buy the records and argue about the end-of-year lists.

The site's navigation tells its own story about what matters to the operation: News, Features, Reviews, Media, Chordblossom Kickstart, Chordblossom Gigs, About Us, a mailing list and a standing invitation to Submit Music — the door always open to the next band.

Fourteen years of the North's new music

Across fourteen years Chordblossom has documented the Northern Irish scene through its boom years and its hard ones — through the streaming revolution, the pandemic's shutdown of live music and the venues' fightback. Its archive is an unparalleled chronicle of who was playing, who was releasing and who was about to break through in any given month since 2012.

For anyone wanting to know what's happening in Northern Irish music right now — the new singles, the essential gigs, the next big thing — chordblossom.com remains the first and best port of call.

Gigs, showcases and scene partnerships

Chordblossom's relationship with the live scene goes beyond writing about it. The site's "Chordblossom Gigs" strand has seen its writers involved in live events, and its archive includes coverage of showcase nights such as Breaking Bands #1 at the Oh Yeah Music Centre in Belfast in April 2014 — the kind of grassroots gig where the next generation of Northern Irish bands cut their teeth.

The site also covers the industry-facing side of the scene: Output Belfast, the annual music conference and showcase, featured in its September 2026 coverage alongside the Oh Yeah Output Showcase, while its long-running festival coverage has taken in events from Stendhal Festival to the Atlantic Sessions on the North Coast. By reporting on both the gigs and the gatherings where the industry does its business, Chordblossom connects the bedroom musician with the wider music economy — another way the site invests in the scene it covers.