Anois, Os Ard: April 2024
A bumper month with music and mixes from New Jackson, Eamon Ivri, pigbaby, Ar Ais Arís, Or:la, Rhyzine and more
Hi!
I’m a few days late in publishing April’s new music round-up. Real life and work have been busy, for one, and I spent last weekend blissfully off grid on Achill Island for my old friend Maurice’s stag do. For anyone who doesn’t know, Achill sits just off the west coast of Co. Mayo, connected to the mainland by a bridge. It’s home to dramatic sea cliffs and mountains, sandy beaches and some of the biggest skies I’ve ever seen. We sustained ourselves on fish and chips and Guinness, threw ourselves into the ice-cold Atlantic, explored an old ruin owned by the Pirate Queen Gráinne Mhaol and, in a tiny pub, got swept up in the songs of Luke Kelly played by a local musician who’d built his own bouzouki. We saw that cottage from The Banshees of Inisherin and all.
It was Maurice who took the few photos you see in this newsletter. As it happens, he also has a history Substack, and is publishing a book later this year called Hotel Lux, which follows the real story of the 1920s Irish radical May O’Callaghan and the forgotten communist activists she connected with in Moscow. Consider this a plug!
Anyway, a big chunk of my listening for this month was carried out in transit: on trains, planes, buses and while strolling around London in the mild springtime air. Maybe that comes across in the writing; maybe it doesn’t. Either way, there’s a tonne of stuff below to sink your teeth into. I hope you find something you love.
I’m going to take it a little easier this month. I want to appreciate the slow prologue to summer, and there’s also the small matter of turning 31 that I have to contend with. But I have some fun long-form pieces and interviews in the works, on harps and a legend of Irish radio. So until late May’s round-up, be well!
Eistigí.
New Jackson - Oops!... Pop [Permanent Vacation]
For a long time, you would have been forgiven for not realising New Jackson and David Kitt were the same person. The Dublin artist's analogue electronic experiments and club-tuned EPs for Permanent Vacation have evolved more or less independently of his esteemed work as an indie musician. Over the years though, the barriers between these worlds have become more blurred: an acoustic rendition of his moody vocoder bop 'Made It Mine' appeared on 2018's Yous; 2017's 'Put The Love In It' laid his smoky vocals over a metallic dub jazz groove; there’s even an audiophile bar named after his landmark 2001 LP, The Big Romance.
New Jackson’s first album in seven years illuminates this intersection more than ever. Across this nine-track ode to dancefloor, Kitt filters his open-hearted songwriting through a prism of full-bodied deep house, and invites a cast of friends and collaborators to help him add splashes of colour and light.
In the nostalgic synth-pop anthems ‘Out Of Reach’ and ‘The Night At Our Feet’, he sings candidly about halcyon times gone by, and longing to “see the sabbath in the half light” once again. His trusty vocoder returns in the gorgeous opener ‘Si Si Si’ and the slinky, Egyptian Lover-esque ‘Like’, but hits hardest in his stomping cover of The Stone Roses’ ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ featuring Rita Lynn.
'Day In Shock' flips Fehdah's 2020 single of the same name into a dubwise club tool, her voice a psychedelic siren call. From the shimmery electro bliss of 'Strobe' to the afterparty sub-bass blanket of 'The OK Hole', New Jackson has rarely sounded so free and at ease with the music he's making. With his heart on his sleeve and his feet on the dancefloor, no release has captured the breadth of Kitt's creativity in such a playful way.
Eamon Ivri - In The Red Eye of the Evening [Phantom Limb/Spirituals]
Over the past half decade or so, Cork’s Eamon Ivri has built a prodigious discography of experimental music that glitches and gleams in its own realm. Whether he’s crafting electroacoustic gulch as mineral stunting, longform autotune ambience as Bless Interior Heart Awash With Flames, or hypercolourful club EPs as Lighght, his amorphous sound designs frequently wriggle in the uncharted gaps between genres – it’s a personal sonic topography made up of bass-blazed percussive peaks and abstract uncanny valleys.
Ivri’s debut album under his given name bathes this terrain in a crepuscular glow of shapeshifting ambient, field recordings and spoken word; fans of claire rousay, Lia Kohl and Nate Scheible will relish in its iridescent haze. Over eight tracks – which unfurl at a frequency most like his 2022 LP, Holy Endings – he paints a portrait of liminal moments and spaces inspired by “spectral shades of night intermingled with twilight, car headlights illuminating a patch of wet grass, a person obscured by smoke, erased places, hypnotic, gurgle and shimmer, glimmer and fog".
‘given’, ‘perdition’ and ‘wasteland trust’ elicit images of dusk walks down deserted city streets, where the distant echoes of traffic, chatter and environmental audio mingle with faint singing, ambling piano and fuzzy synths. ‘glimmer and fog’ evokes an eerie coastal graveyard, where lighthouse flashes and disintegrating church bells cut through the mist and crow caws. ‘fountain’ moves with a shuffling pulse, wrapped in vocal shivers and harpsichord motifs; ‘inhabited vessel’ drifts on a gentle bed of kitchen clatter and muffled monologues, a comforting domestic soundtrack reverberating through a wall.
These hushed, soft focus spells between states can bring moments of clarity though, and it’s felt in the wavering vocals of ‘wud u’ and in the verdant keys of closer, ‘the smoke dissipates’, where Ivri describes being “outside in the aftermath of rain” and the earthy smell of petrichor that varies from place to place. You can feel it in your lungs as the album exhales to an end.
pigbaby - I Don't Care If Anyone Listens To This Shit Unless You Do [PLZ Make It Ruins]
There’s a push and pull effect at play in pigbaby’s debut album, which documents the pain and disquiet of big city life, intermingled with lovelorn memories and a longing to escape for somewhere gentler. Recorded in 2021 after fleeing “the world he knew” for a small cottage in rural Ireland, the music in these 11 tracks is imbued with the alluringly wild beauty of the countryside. At points, this expanse of reverberant bedroom pop, folk and ambient feels as healing as fresh sea air. With additional instrumentation from Maria Somerville, Max Granger, Felix Stephens and Cajm, and mixing from Rainy Miller, every glimmer of saxophone, synth, piano, violin and guitar is a lush brush stroke from a loosened soul.
But as much as the Rat Heart-like ‘Far from home’, lo-fi lullaby ‘I’m here, with you’ and drifting instrumentals ‘The Green Hills Of Cornamona’ and ‘Grandads Piano.’ are evocative of a brick being lifted off your chest, the up-close vocals and earnest lyricism that fill the album ache with tension. Amid the fuzzy keys and found sound collages of ‘Meep meep said the rat’, the stunning slowcore sway of ‘Crying In Burger King’ and the nocturnal indie of ‘Baby foxes and me.’, pigbaby’s straightforward storytelling can seem jarring at first, like listening in on a private spiral. But that’s sort of the point. In recording these frank, and at times uncomfortably candid, reflections, he casts them to the wind, relinquishing them from the city-shaped emotional pit from which they came.
In ‘Life moves fast, so take my hand.’ and ‘I Miss My Baby Girl.’, he fantasises about running away with his love. It’ll be a familiar yearning for many, an overwhelming urge to up sticks from life, work, the news, the lot. The push of sadness and burnout, the romantic pull of wide open spaces – it’s a daydream that this album lets you sink into, even in its most personal moments. And there’s nothing wrong with dreaming.
Neil Ó Lochlainn’s Cuar - Tairseach
Maria Somerville’s Early Bird show on NTS has set me right more times than I can count over the past couple of years. Her dawn dispatches from Connemara encompass everything from ambient, shoegaze and dream pop to folk and sean-nós and never fail to calm those Monday/Tuesday morning nerves. Last week, she had the musician Risteárd Ó hAodha on as a guest, and among his selections were a few cuts from Neil Ó Lochlainn’s Cuar project, whose enchanting trad-meets-chamber music combined with the sun cracking through my window and my second coffee of the day to really hit a sweet spot.
Anyway, Cuar has a new album out called Tairseach – meaning liminal space – which was created in response to the fiddle player Tommie Potts’ 1972 album The Liffey Banks. With Ó Lochlainn on double bass and flute, Ultan O Brien on fiddle and viola, and Sam Comerford on tenor saxophone, it's a minimal affair built around a small selection of intervals and chords, which recur throughout. Rather than recreate anything directly from Potts’ album, Ó Lochlainn tried to envisage what kind of music he might create if he were around today. The result is a suite that focuses far more on timbre and texture than it does on anything else, sounding like an Irish answer to some softer moments in the International Anthem catalogue and the works of Seán Mac Erlaine who, incidentally, mastered this album. A fascinating bridge from trad’s past and its multifaceted future.
Rufous Nightjar - Songs for Three Voices
Folk, Acappella, Porcupines, Vibes, Whiskey, Dublin. Those are the tags that appear under the Bandcamp page for close harmony trio Rufous Nightjar, who take their name from a small South American bird known for its chirruping song, most often heard at dawn and dusk. The debut album from Branwen Kavanagh, Anna Bishop (aka Anna Mieke) and Zoé Basha delights in bright polyphony; bonded over their love of harmonised singing, you can tell how much fun they’re having as their voices bounce and swoop over original arrangements. Instrumentation is sparse; the fullness of the unaccompanied vocals of ‘Rise And Fall’, ‘Nettles’ and ‘Red Robin’ are enough to make you feel like you're floating on a soft breeze. The bluesy guitars and scratchy fiddles that join them on the swinging ‘Willows’ and the foreboding ‘Old Road’ would work wonders in the Fallout soundtrack.
The album is at its best when it’s allowed to breathe and branch out. In the lovelorn seven-minute centrepiece, ‘Jack Wither’, the trio’s vocals pour slowly over burly harmonium drones and cello. Their voices unravel in the 11-minute closer ‘Out In The Garden over mesmerising piano and wavering guitars. No longer singing in unison but in sustained symbiosis, it sounds like a murmuration in mid flight.
Ian Lynch ‘All You Need Is Death’ [Original Soundtrack]
Paul Duane’s All You Need is Death feels like the film Ian Lynch was born to score. The Irish writer and director’s cosmic folk horror follows a couple of young song collectors who awaken an ancient evil when they record and translate a cursed love ballad sung in a language older than Gaeilge. This haunted plot unravels like a psychedelic nightmare, and provided the Lankum musician – with whom I recently spoke about the power of the drone in Irish music – with an ample canvas on which to conjure a suite of harrowing trad-infused doom.
The soundtrack also serves as a sort of document of Lynch’s own musical history: the creaking strings and enveloping pipe drones evoke the heaviest moments of False Lankum; wavering tape loops and crackling synth beds crawl out of the same ominous pits of his One Leg One Eye album, … And Take The Black Worm With Me; there’s a nod to his former life in black metal outfit Sadb in the throat-ripping closer, ‘Old God Rising’, performed by death merchants Malthusian.
Producer John “Spud” Murphy adds his trademark low-end heft and distortion to the whole thing, while vocals come courtesy of stars Simone Collins and Olwen Fouéré, who deliver increasingly intense renditions of the film’s central ballad, and Dublin doom crooner Andy The Doorbum in the shadowy sean-nós song,‘Tráthnóna Beag Aréir’. Dive in if you dare.
NEW MEMBERS - ECO 1
Listening to the debut album from New Members feels like stepping in a new age album cover. Indeed, the artwork printed on the sleeve and inner labels of this double vinyl release channels the otherworldly imagery of certain Vangelis, Pauline Anna Strom and Iasos records. Faint echoes of those artists' music are felt in the foamy ambient synths and coastal field recordings that swirl around these tracks, but here they are alchemised with elements of balearic trance, breaks and downtempo.
The fact that some of these cuts were "excavated from saltwater-soaked drives" is almost comically on the nose, but wrap your ears around the cosmic keys of 'Eternal Now', the chill-out room trip-hop of 'Sentinel', the blissed-out house of 'Eagle Wing Ritual', or the breezy d&b of 'Golden Sunshine' and tell me you can't feel it.
The combo isn't exactly new, but across 14 tracks produced over the course of 10 years in a variety of countries, the Dublin artist finds a personal angle: a feeling like this music has lived with him for a long time, grown alongside him, and become something of a scrapbook for his creative life. It’s nostalgic, sure, but there's real love in it; this is no bargain bin balearic 12". Watching the sunrise out of a train window last week on my way to the airport, I let it all wash over me, and witnessed the picturesque scene unfolding, not on a record sleeve, but in lucid real life.
Seán Clancy - Four Sections of Music Unequally Divided [NMC Recordings]
I recently spent a Sunday afternoon walking about South East London with this new one from the experimental musician Seán Clancy in my ears. As I strolled along the bustling streets and sat in a taproom below Peckham Rye train station, the sounds of cars, buses and people around me and the rumble of the Overground above crept past my earbuds and mingled with the sparse gamelan bells, synthesised drones and thundering low-end pianos that fill this 44-minute composition. As I listened, I tried to think of Sol LeWitt, the pioneering minimalist sculptor and conceptual artist whose famous wall drawings – and, more specifically, the simple, score-like instructions he provided on how to reproduce them – Clancy cites as a primary influence on his work.
What I understand about conceptual art could fit on the back of a postage stamp, but something about imagining the idea itself as the work of art, and the creation as an endlessly variable bonus, tickled the same part of my brain that loves field recordings, Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations, and the infinite interpretations of John Cage’s “silent” composition, ‘4’33’. I tried out some of LeWitt’s line instructions in my notebook, my hand guided by the slow-moving wall of sound swirling in and around my head, and felt as though every element of my reality was feeding directly into the music itself, like it were a canvas to be painted on. I’d only had one pint!!
The context in which we hear music will always affect how it feels in the moment, but when the work is as patient, distilled and simple as this, it leaves so much room for those individual listening experiences to evolve freely, and flourish into something wholly unique. Pretty cool imo! Who knows, maybe I’ve got it all wrong, but if you’re at a loss some Sunday afternoon, there are certainly worse ways you could pass the time.
V/A ‘Ar Ais Arís Volume 1’ [Ar Ais Arís]
Since launching in Galway’s Irish language venue, Club Áras na nGael, in late 2022, Ar Ais Arís – a popular phrase in Irish music meaning “Back Again” – has provided a “welcoming space for counter-cultural expression while prioritising inclusivity, diversity, and safety”. Its new label aims to platform emerging artists producing a variety of styles, from dubstep, breaks and leftfield bass to hard drum, jungle and garage. It’s first release comprises five tracks from “producers associated with Ireland's bass music underground and the AAA club night itself” including Flood co-founder Doubt, Club Comfort’s Roo Honeychild, cloudcore-club innovator Sloucho and Leipzig-based, Galway-born Free House co-founder Luke Kiid.
The EP’s lead track is a buzzing four-to-the-floor stomper from Dublin’s Plus One, complete with an infectious vocal flip that has been rinsed by the likes of Ben UFO. The whole thing is huge though, and in a month that’s seen two of Galway’s sorely missed clubs, Electric and Cuba, reopening, it signifies an energised new era for the west coast scene, with a refined focus on community and sonic experimentation.
Or:la ‘Moonlight Crush’ [fabric Originals]
Derry-born Or:la returns with her first solo EP in seven years, serving up three cuts of nocturnal house inspired by the extinct native wolves that used to roam Ireland and the UK, and which feature prominently in Irish mythology. The Céad label founder picks up where 2016’s ‘UK Lonely’ and 2017’s ‘Farewell 2024’ left off, bolstering their shadowy sub-bass, frosty melodies and subtle dark garage snap with newfound lunar heft. ‘A Howl’s A Howl’ is an optimum festival slot launcher, all swirling synths and growling bass laid over a slowly building beat. The title track deconstructs a deliciously proggy bassline into something more muscular, snarling, with extra bite; its ‘Floating Away Dub’ revives the Liverpool-based DJ’s knack for dub techno depth, turning the tempo down, stretching the beat out, and levitating straight toward the stars.
Decal - Trama Artifacts [Intrinsic Rhythm]
Over the past 30 years, the name Decal has been synonymous with electro. Originating as a duo in 1993, Dennis McNulty and Alan O'Boyle built their reputation for sizzling 808s, gritty bass zaps and Drexciyan bleeps ‘n’ buzz on two albums released via their own Ultramack label. (Listen to ‘Pigeyes Gets Whacked’ from 1998’s Lo-lite and prepare to get your brain fried). After grabbing the attention of The Leaf Label and Sabrettes, they released the 404 Not Found LP via Planet Mu in 2002, a glitching ambient swerve designed with the same acid-dipped palette, but with melodious acoustic instruments and vocals woven through the beatless fuzz.
O’Boyle’s been steering the Decal ship solo since 2003. The previously unreleased tracks collected now on Trama Artifacts act as a document of that transitional era, during which he continued to push the boundaries of his sound, while remaining true to its Cybotronic roots. Released via TR One’s Carlow-based Intrinsic Rhythm label, the album flirts with Warpy bleep techno (‘Literal Vibes’), IDM freakouts (‘Glitch’, ‘System Fecker Fixed’) and ravey peaks (‘More Space’, ‘Live All U Can (Hardcore)’), but at its core it's an electro tour de force, a style mimicked by many, but mastered by few.
Rhyzine - Mooar Residency 18.03.24
This new mix from Honeypot co-founder Rhyzine for the Moar Residency – which spotlights “experiments in music and sound by women, non-binary and GNC folk” – is described as following the “narrative of an imaginary science fiction film”.
I’m a sucker for themed mixes at the best of times, and it probably helps that I saw Dune fairly recently, so I found myself completely swept up in the world-building here. The opening act unfurls slowly: a mood-building blend of metallic bells, choral vocals, downtempo beats and cinematic strings that, to my mind at least, conjures panoramic visions of otherworldly landscapes. The Dublin DJ spends the subsequent 40 minutes swerving between deep, dubby techno, industrial dancehall and euphoric synth arps before landing back into more atmospheric territory, with recurrent voices and glitches keeping the vibe intact.
Like listening to Drexciya while playing a Metroid game, the whole thing just works: you could be on a dancefloor on a distant planet, or careening through the corridors of a malfunctioning mothership. Whatever narrative this mix whips up in your mind, it's a wildly enjoyable ride.
TANK Mix: Shampain
You'd have to wonder when Shampain sleeps. Whether he’s spinning hyperactive DJ sets around the world, leading Irish-language documentaries on alternative subcultures, or cutting hair in his Galway barbershop, the prolific polymath gives nothing less than 100%.
Lately, he’s been incorporating more traditional Irish music into his Rinse France mixes; he dropped Sinéad O’Connor’s ‘Óró Sé do Bheatha ’Bhaile’ in his Boiler Room, and this video of him playing Lankum’s ‘The New York Trader’ to a sunbaked Australian festival could bring a tear to your eye. He starts this new mix with an eerie ‘Go Dig My Grave’ acapella laid over Objekt’s ‘Another Knot’, before launching into an hour of high-velocity club gear.
DJ Something’s ‘Hundred Pounds’ is pure ecstasy; Fritz Schnackenpfefferhausen’s ‘Bratwurst Beatz’ is an outrageous blast of speed garage; there’s a Regal86/Charli XCX blend that’ll scorch the eyebrows off your face. These irreverent pop twists turn up throughout, administering jolts of serotonin amidst hammering techno cuts from Surgeon and Inland. “My life as of late has been one thing leading into the next with no rest,” he said in the accompanying text. “I would like to think this mix is much the same.” He’s certainly not wrong.
Celestial Mix 009 - JWY
I’ve never surfed, but I get the sense that listening to a JWY mix is comparable to catching a massive wave and riding the absolute shit out of it. In her sets, the Amsterdam-born, Dublin-based DJ cuts along torrents of crashing breakbeats, techno and garage, vaulting effortlessly over rip currents of UK rap and bass-heavy rave material. It’s a guaranteed adrenaline rush, but the sense of balance she pulls it all off with is key. With chops like this, it’s no wonder she’s made such a splash, and shared stages with the likes of Sammy Virji, Jayda G and Jeff Mills.
Her latest outing for Ethereal Skies is especially slamming. Ramping up the tempo, she taps into the crew’s taste for euphoria with an hour of blistering electro, hardgroove and jungle, with generous splashes of acid, trance and… is that donk? It’s a blazing demonstration of a DJ shelling it at peak peak time, entirely in her element.
Sticky Mix 018 - FORO4
JWY is also the founder of Foxgluv, a collective championing underrepresented DJs and creatives in the Irish scene. Its Blossom “N” Bloom mix series is packed with heat and this latest edition from FORO4 is a real sizzler. I first came across the Shanghai-born, Dublin/Limerick-based upstart through their mix for Honeypot’s Sticky series: a whirlwind hour of hard-edged techno, broken club music and slamming trance. This one leans more electro in the first half, all robotic sizzle and saucy square waves, before veering into rolling house, breaks and techno in the latter portion. In short, it’s a tonne of fun from an emerging selector I suspect we’ll be hearing a whole lot more from.
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading!