Anois, Os Ard: March 2024
On Irish music's solidarity with Palestine, the closing shift, and new releases from wherethetimegoes, Fears, Moving Still, and (many) more
On 5th March 2020 I was in Dublin, sitting in some café and writing about Nun Attax. The Cork punks had an archival compilation coming out; as I dug through their catalogue of acerbic songs recorded in the early ‘80s, I was struck by how relevant Finbarr Donnelly’s disaffected snarls felt in a modern context. Here was a band whose anxious lyrics about Librium and hiding from your landlord still hit like a tonne of bricks some 40 years later. They were also a band who, like many others at the height of the recession, would later flee for London in search of success or, at the very least, stability.
I was visiting from the same city, having been very kindly asked to be on the judging panel for that year’s RTÉ Choice Music Prize. I was delighted when Lankum won later that night with The Livelong Day, not just because I was among those fighting its corner as the best Irish album of the previous year, but also because it tapped into the same timelessness I’d felt in Nun Attax’s music. Their heavy, doom-influenced renditions of old folk tunes and original songs that touched on subjects like suicide and marginalised women spoke to familiar themes in the Irish psyche, as prominent then as they had been for generations.
I was thrilled to see they’d won again this year with False Lankum. On stage, sporting a Land Back t-shirt as he spoke on behalf of the band behind him, Ian lynch once again used Lankum’s platform to speak on a subject at the forefront of everyone’s mind.
“We're very grateful to get this award, but to be honest, it's really hard to see how we can celebrate it with an actual live genocide going on,” he said. “To be honest, every day seems more and more hopeless than the one before it and we are trying to appeal to the consciences of people who may or may not have a conscience to begin with. There's a lot of despair out there. Maybe we can put enough pressure on the government to introduce some actual meaningful sanctions on Israel.”
He concluded: “We want [the Palestinian people] to experience justice, equality, self-determination, independence, and all those other basic human rights that apparently are afforded to everybody else in the world. So that's all we have to say. Thanks for the award. Free Palestine.”
You can read Lynch’s full speech here, courtesy of The Point Of Everything’s Substack. Where you wouldn’t have found it on the night, however, was anywhere on RTÉ’s website. While it was supposedly broadcast live, subsequent uploads of the show cut the band’s award out almost entirely. The station later cited technical issues and the “unexpected and considerable overrun in the live event”. Convenient.
Although the speech was shared on RTÉ’s website a week later, it was hard not to raise an eyebrow at the initial omission, especially considering the broadcaster’s priors in silencing pro-Palestinian voices.
All of this occurred about a week before every Irish artist who was scheduled to play SXSW pulled out of the festival amid revelations of its financial links to the US Military and defence industry. Kneecap, who led the charge, laid it out plainly: “That the organisers of SXSW have taken the decision to mix the arts with the military and weapons companies in unforgivable, that they have done so as we witness a genocide facilitated by the US military and its contractors is depraved.”
Irish musicians and audiences have repeatedly made their stance clear, from last year’s packed-out 3Arena gig for Gaza to a Vicar Street fundraiser that’s scheduled to take place on 4th April featuring OXN, Junior Brother, Pretty Happy and Mohammad Syfkhan. It’s a unified voice that’s more urgent than ever. Though Ireland’s solidarity with Palestine is well documented – I’d recommend this article in Al Jazeera and this one in NPR – our politicians continue to pussyfoot around the subject while shaking hands with their “very good friend” in the warmongering White House.
It’s recently been reported that, despite assurances to the contrary, flights carrying US weapons for Israel may be passing through Shannon Airport, resulting in protests in the departure halls. As Sally Rooney put it in her recent essay for The Irish Times: “Our Government can bask in the moral glow of condemning the bombers, while preserving a cosy relationship with those supplying the bombs.”
Look. I’d imagine if you’re reading this you probably don’t need me re-hashing this stuff. But if you don’t already, I’d suggest following the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Irish Artists For Palestine. Ní saoirse go saoirse na Palaistíne.
Anyway, anyway, anyway. This year, as the Choice Music Prize went down, I was a lot more sober than I was four years ago, and ensconced in my favourite nightly ritual: the closing shift. In the midst of winter blues, I’d recently started taking immense pleasure in the oh-so-peaceful acts of wiping down surfaces, putting away dishes and plumping cushions before bed, all while listening to minimal house and techno records by the likes of Move D and Sandwell District.
As the season’s grip began to soften, and spring commenced its slow unfurling, so did my late-night listening habits, and I’ve spent much of the past month or so completely infatuated by The Bothy Band’s 1979 live album, After Hours. I’m not going to get into its transcendent trad magic here, but I’d really recommend popping it in your earbuds as you tackle a stubborn curry stain on your hob some night. You won’t regret it.
Right then. Okay. I’ve rambled. I promise these won’t always be this long. It’s been a big month for Irish music for a bunch of reasons, and there’s a lot of new (and slightly less new) stuff below to sink your teeth into to. So without further ado, let’s get into it.
Princ€ss - Princ€ss [wherethetimegoes]
Not to be insufferable but, where does the time go? It's been over a year since the last dispatch from Ireland’s eminent outpost for exploratory sound. After a fertile spell that found it releasing everything from ambient dub techno and DIY dream pop to organ drones, drill and ‘Intelligent Frog Music’, it took a break in 2023 to focus on its Fictionalism event series and let its multifaceted family cook up new music. Now, an anonymous “supergroup” known as Princ€ss have kicked things back into gear, alchemising the label’s disparate ingredients into a ten-track tonic that’s as elusive as it is intoxicating.
You can read into the band’s secretive sleight of hand as much or as little as you like. Keen-eared listeners will have fun sifting through these tunes – a shapeshifting hodgepodge of electronics, shoegaze guitars, grinding strings and soft-focus vocals – and picking up on familiar figures from elsewhere in the imprint’s catalogue. It lends the whole thing a SAULT-like sense of intrigue, while sounding more like an Irish answer to Lewisham’s expanded CURL collective, comprising the likes of Mica Levi, Brother May, Coby Sey and Tirzah.
Lean in a little further though, and the intended meaning behind the mystery reveals itself a bit more. An accompanying text explains that this album – which was produced during an “intense period of recording in the west of Ireland” – has arrived at a significant juncture for the island’s socio-political climate. From this tax haven for global tech firms, where the soaring cost of living is compounded by the gutting of liveable spaces in the name of “development”, a sterilised projection of Irish culture (including music) is often broadcast: a conceited, shamrock-touting Céad Míle Fáiltefication that speaks not to those who wish to make their homes here, but to vulturous venture capitalists, genocidal politicians and tourists with deep pockets.
Princ€ss – in their anonymity – ostensibly represent anyone who wants nothing to do with this contradictory depiction of Ireland, a country whose government uprooted over 100 asylum seekers from a makeshift camp in the capital days before the St. Patrick’s Day parade, and abandoned them out of sight in the Dublin Mountains. Though the music itself may not sound overtly political, it’s seemingly no mistake that the band make use of manipulated traditional instruments like the harp – once a symbol of Irish resistance – to create their future-facing soundscapes.
From its hazy melodic abstractions to its unintelligible indie-rock echoes, this album defies rigid definition, and instead invites you to untangle its significance for yourself. Like the rest of wherethetimegoes discography, and those artists who spoke out against genocide at SXSW, it symbolises a new generation of Irish musicians who refuse to be spoken for, and who are introducing themselves to the world on their own terms. There’s never been a better time.
The Last Sound - Veered [Cruel Nature Records]
Lately I’ve been thinking about the stuff we set aside, and how often we don’t even notice it happening. Life progresses in its slow, imperceptible arcs, and one day you realise you haven’t touched that MIDI keyboard in a while, your bike’s beginning to rust, and you don't listen to Stereolab as much as you used to. Or whatever. Unearthing these things – projects, hobbies, affections – from under the stairs and rekindling that relationship can instil in them a new significance: an echo of a phase you didn’t know was over.
It’s in this context I find myself swept up in this new/old one from prolific Dublin electronic musician Barry Murphy, aka The Last Sound. Produced (mostly) between 2006 and 2010, Veered documents a transitional period in his creative life – a time capsule trapped in dusty psychedelic amber.
Around this time, Murphy had been making woozy music in a Boards Of Canada/Autechre-ish mould for a few years, releasing his debut album as The Last Sound in 2002. After linking up with Magnetize to form the harsh noise/techno duo Whirling Hall Of Knives, his solo palette gradually became more tuneful. You can hear the most recent iteration of that evolution in his blissed-out pop contribution to Drogheda label 2 x 2’s 5” series.
In Veered, we hear the many facets of Murphy’s sound converge in a kaleidoscopic 10-track blend. From rowdy analogue kosmische (‘Drugged On The Rugged Plain’, ‘DOTRP Macrolabyrinth’) and ecstasy-fueled post-punk (‘Outskirting’, ‘Underling’) to dizzy shoegaze dreamstates (‘Regenerative’, ‘Cold Is The Brittle Hand’), it’s the ideal entry point to his expansive catalogue.
Fears - affinity [TULLE]
There’s a diaristic intimacy to Constance Keane’s music as Fears. Her second album was written and recorded between Dublin, New York and London; across 10 tracks, her minimalist indie-pop framework provides a pillowy foundation for her reflections on life, and how her surroundings impact the music she makes.
Speaking in the Digital Terrain radio documentary series, Keane described how, while in New York, her listening comprised mostly older guitar music from the city and the industrial grind of the subway. The track ‘NY’ opens with a field recording of exactly that, before strummed strings and a buoyant beat glimmer into the mix, carrying frank, conversational lyrics directed at someone who’s no longer there: “I walk around a new city, trace my footsteps back to you. I don’t know what I’m meant to do.”
‘11249’ was written after a phone call Keane had with her mother while sat on NYC’s North 5th Street Pier, and finds her ruminating on how grateful she is to be alive, and the joyful feelings and interactions she gets to experience now, having not died when she tried to some years ago. The song, which features backing vocals from Jemima Coulter and Ailbhe Reddy, uncurls with reverberating chords that evoke Low’s ‘I Could Live In Hope’, while yearning trumpets cushion Keane and her companions’ voices.
Fears’ debut album, Oíche, was a solitary project: a document of self-rediscovery in the aftermath of a breakdown, which she wrote and produced between “three bedrooms, hospital, and at the Domino Recordings studio in Brixton”. In contrast, affinity sees Keane embracing the world around her, and finding strength in friendship and collaboration. In ‘cliff’, she sings of “trying to save something special before it combusts”, accompanied by gossamer harp plucks from Aga Ujma. It ends on the bittersweet ‘16’, which features Keane’s late friend and trans rights activist Sophie Gwen Williams, whose cello courses through the album’s final, bodhrán-inspired beat. Despite the song’s pensive subject matter – “It’s been a while since I’ve cried. Unusual for me” – Keane wields it with an unwavering hand. It’s a powerful softness that affinity brims with.
Blue Whale - Last Immediate Images
In a recent interview with The Thin Air, Blue Whale guitarist Ben Behzadafshar spoke about some of the unusual sounds and recording techniques that went into the band’s second album: “A soundscape of pots and pans, primitive smartphone keyboards, and ambient free jazz drumming; sounds of guitar strings tied to a practice room shelf, banging on the shelf and then manually adjusting the pitch with a whammy pedal; a piece with hundreds of single notes that sound like chords that would be physically impossible to play on guitar…”
You’d expect no less from a group who once played an improvised live set with Damo Suzuki, forming the Belfast branch of his global Sound Carriers network in 2017. The same restless creative spirit that made the late Can frontman such a force of nature is heard all over Last Immediate Images, which finds the instrumental rock outfit team up with Gilla Band bassist Dan Fox on production duties.
The crunchy guitars that packed their 2019 debut Process are here, with a bonus jolt of Jesus Lizard discordance on tracks like ‘Otic Brawl’, ‘Carpet Man’ and ‘Reimer’. The interlocking licks and rhythmic ingenuity of ‘I Wanna Be Your Da’ evvoke early Tortoise, while ‘Saint Of Florists’ sounds a bit like Mogwai at their most monumental, but, as ever, Blue Whale take a hard swerve when such comparisons get too close. They’re at their best when leaning into their most adventurous, Beefheartiest tendencies, making weird, collage-like compositions that sound like no one else.
Jasmine Wood - Piano Reverb [AD 93]
Speaking in the piece I published last month about the drone in Irish music, Dylan Kerr, aka Baptist Goth, described the “energetically heavy” nature of making music in churches. These resonant spaces, of which there are over 3,000 in Ireland, can awaken the extraordinary potential of sustained tones. It was in one of these – St. Finian’s in Dublin – that the Portland, Oregon-born multi-instrumentalist Jasmine Wood recorded Piano Reverb, an album that explores exactly that.
In Wood’s hands, sustain itself becomes an instrument. Recording just the reverberating tail ends of notes and chords she played on the church’s antique grand piano, she weaves these uncanny timbres into an enchanting ambient and modern classical tapestry. Embracing the old Blüthner’s imperfect inflections and deep, echoing rattle, the album’s unique textural palette results in music that swells and hovers like an iridescent cloud, but not without the risk of thunder.
Though there’s a little bit of pitch-shifting and note stretching going on, the individual layers of these eight pieces are left mostly untampered with. By assembling them “like an orchestra”, Wood becomes a conduit to the strange, inherent magic that emerges from the cavernous space as it interacts with this instrument.
Fans of Kali Malone and Oren Ambarchi will relish in the transportive tonal hums (‘II’), quaking growls (‘III’) and ethereal quivers (‘VIII (Tremolo)’), but Wood does include small reminders of the real world outside too. Snippets of church bells, flute and distant conversation emerge in moments of unexpected clarity, while ‘VII’ introduces a fleshed-out piano composition that feels like a storm finally breaking.
Ordnance Survey - Taurus [Scintilla Recordings]
Speaking of reverberant spaces, a substantial amount of this new-ish one from Ordnance Survey was recorded in ancient wedge tombs around Ireland. Over the course of eight tracks, each named after one of these megalithic sites, the ever-reliable electronic artist – aka Neil O’Connor and Somadrone – uses field recordings as the basis for music that flourishes at the intersection of contemporary classical, avant-garde ambient and krautrock psychedelia. Certain pre-recorded instrumental sections were also re-amplified within these passages, infusing the album’s strings, pianos, drums and synthesisers with ancient acoustic properties.
Fans of Ashra, Tangerine Dream and Brian Eno will obviously love it, but where their works look outward to the cosmos, O’Connor’s remain rooted in the landscape itself, locking into the potent energies exuded from these historic plots. The persistent crackle and augmented gusts of his recordings hold the tracks in rugged rural situ, even as they move in mysterious, otherworldly spirals. ‘Four Knocks’ morphs through phases of birdsong, bubbling synth and reversed choral vocals; ‘Newgrange’ and ‘Knockbrack’, which feature Gareth Quinn Redmond on violin, unravel like Alva Noto + Sakamoto collabs extracted from a bog, with just a touch of Jabu’s plaintive ambience. ‘Dowth’ and ‘Oweynagat’ play a similar trick, bridging the gap between early Bonobo albums and the Boyne Valley.
Turus – meaning ‘Journey’ – is the latest in an impressive string of releases from O’Connor, whose recent works have also included 2023’s modular synth-based Oscillator Suite and an album reimagining the music of visionary Irish composer Sean O'Riada. After 20 years in the game, his music is as innovative and exploratory as it’s ever been, and this is a new high point.
Aidan Thomas Tobin - A Faithful Terror
A wicked debut album here for fans of Christoph De Babalon’s haunted breakcore and the murkier depths of the Rua Sound catalogue. Aidan Thomas Tobin is a musician and writer from Meath whose work I hadn’t encountered before now. The only other release on his Bandcamp is from 2017, an eerie ambient EP called As Our Bloods Separate; his Soundcloud is peppered with a decade’s worth of improvised piano sketches and lo-fi electronics. Meanwhile, his published writings on subjects including diabetes and the music of John Hassle and Björk are detailed personal treatises that splinter off in fascinating tangents, but stay fixed on their core message.
It’s a level of detail and intensity that’s reflected in these 10 tracks, which feel tailor-made to soundtrack an edgy action horror flick. Cinematic strings slice through pillars of smoky sound design; Mezzanine-esque beats and frenzied drum breaks are subsumed in howling drones, fugue-state synths and weird melodic glimmer. Woven into this ghostly fabric is an enticingly unspoken narrative. Attempting to unravel it as you listen is a thrill.
Moving Still - Club Bizarre [No Bad Days]
As Moving Still, Dublin’s Jamal Sul has spent the past few years refining his flair for festival-ready dance bangers. The Jeddah-born DJ and producer specialises in hi-NRG disco edits of classic tracks from the SWANA region, such as Algerian singer Cheba Yamin’s ‘Sidi Mansour’ and Bashar’s ‘Omrena’. Meanwhile, his original EPs for labels like Cooking With Palms Trax and Jive Hive have illustrated his taste for acid bass and electro-singed synths.
This new five-tracker for London’s No Bad Days finds him on top form, playing to his strengths while simultaneously flexing some new techniques. ‘Cuvaj’, ‘Banja’ and ‘Love Inferior’ are peak Moving Still with their disco-fied drama, irresistible bass arps and rousing vocals. On the title track, he turns his hand to drum & bass, serving up his Haram edit of German trance group U96 with the same breaksy zeal as his Boiler Room set. He rounds it out with ‘Bosa 2 Bosa’, an Arabic disco pumper with just a hint of Crystal Waters 'Gypsy Woman’ stitched in there. No one does it quite like him.
KAJA - MRNG TRX
Over the past 20 years or so, J. Cowhie has dabbled in lo-fi folk songs, recorded with Phil Elverum and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and produced an EP using recordings of his unborn son’s heartbeat from an ultrasound. The Malmö-based Dubliner’s 2016 album, VEIL, imbued crooning indie rock with frosty synths and moody atmospherics. His latest release under his electronic music alias, KAJA, relays a similar vibe, albeit through a prism of introspective deep house and dubby ambience. You can tell Cowhie is a live musician: these seven tracks awaken a feeling like being right there in studio with him as he layers analogue drum beats, bassy keys and oscillating synths over one another, stitching field recordings and resonant saxophone into the mix as he goes. It’s properly lovely stuff, and all proceeds will go toward the Palestine Children's Relief Fund.
Polyp - post-post
Polyp is part of a flourishing network of young DJs breathing neon-hued life into Irish dance music. As the co-founder of BPM – Bitches Play Music, an “ether-focused sonic gathering” – they’ve created a space for synapse-snapping sets that tap into a collective desire for digital dopamine rushes, hyperactive genre mash-ups and pure, euphoric silliness. It’s a vibe the Vietnam-born, Dublin-based party-starter demonstrates perfectly in this mix. They rifle through cuts from renowned club futurists like Sinjin Hawke, Mike Q and Rustie, meshing their rhythmic zaps and maximal sound designs with electrifying tracks from underground luminaries like De Grandi, OSSX, Muqata'a and Despina.
The mix’s title is fitting; this a proper post-genre affair. Jersey club clashes with trance, grime, breaks and experimental bass, but Polyp mixes these sounds with such iridescent dexterity that they all just fizz into one, glorious blast of energy and light.
Truancy Volume 322: EMA
EMA has worked wonders for Ireland’s electronic underground over the past few years. With her Woozy label, the Bray-born, Dublin-based DJ has built a vital platform for bass-focused club music; as co-founder of the Skin&Blister collective, she’s helped create a nurturing environment for female, trans and non-binary artists to flourish in. She’s also the programmer at Yamamori Tengu, a small but mighty venue located in the back room of a Japanese restaurant, where emerging DJs and local legends are billed alongside international heavyweights like dBridge, Peach and Call Super.
Her own sets map the space between bass-bin-shaking dubstep and more mercurial strains of modern club stuff, all mixed with fluid dexterity and a taste for trippy detours. This recent mix for Truants finds her mining the darker corners of her USBs, and delivering a 70-minute helping of shadowy low-end pressure. In its accompanying interview, she explained how she’d recorded this set during a low, anxious spell at the beginning of the year, and you can certainly feel a chest-tightening energy in the tense percussion, wiry sirens and snarling subs that fill the first half. A dulcimer melody signals a change of pace in the final 20 minutes though, and EMA slowly emerges from those depths with a flourish of toasty drumfunk and jungle, sounding energised and ready for more.
CÁIT @ ADONIS NYD 24
Whenever I find myself away from the club for a while, mixes like this leave me itching for the dancefloor like nothing else. Cáit Fahey is a DJ (and photographer, check Jasmine Wood’s album cover) from Dublin whose sets evoke the radiant energy of queer raving, and this live recording from Adonis’ New Year’s Day party is a 90-minute blast of pure delight. Ecstatic house anthems? Check. Voguey club stompers? You bet. Percussive rollers with a proggy trance twist? Naturally. By the time the acid-dipped edit of Missy Elliot’s ‘Get Ya freak On’ kicks in around the 40 minute mark you'll be well stuck in, but the payoff is superb, and it’ll send you into a sumptuously spangled finishing half.
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading! Keep an eye out in a couple of weeks for a deep-dive into Operating Theatre’s ‘Spring Is Coming With A Strawberry In The Mouth’, aka the Best Song Of All Time, featuring some very exciting interviews!