AOA Mix 001: De Selby

Anois, Os Ard is on Soundcloud! Plus, some housekeeping.

Hello!

How’s it going? Hope you’re hanging in there okay as the year avalanches to a close. I’m in the depths of End Of Year List season at work, so finding time to write this month’s newsletter has been tough. Rest assured though, there’s been a lot of great music released in Ireland over the past few weeks. I’ll try my best to get a full review round-up done before Christmas, but I do want to just flag one thing here from the get-go. Hunger Is Violence is a new compilation from Diet Of Worms that’s raising funds for the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC). Comprising 14 interpretations of Richard Berry’s 'Louie Louie' from experimental artists across the island including Natalia Beylis, Seamas Hyland and Coolgirl, it’s properly essential stuff. The cassette edition – with gorgeous artwork by Bournemouth Runner and Ed Kelly – will make a great stocking filler. Buy it here.

But alright then, what’s the point of this post? Well, I asked, and a bunch of you answered, so Anois, Os Ard is now on Soundcloud. Let’s get into it…

Okay look, it’s very bare bones at the moment, but the plan is to start hosting regular guest mixes from DJs in Ireland alongside short Q&As on here. In fact, the first of those is coming very soon indeed, so please give the account a follow and keep yr eyes peeled for that. Exciting!

To get the ball rolling, I’ve done a mix of my own – my first in over a year! It’s a 90 minute meander through Irish ambient, downtempo and dance music. There’s new stuff and older stuff; there’s a bit of a parable from John Moriarty; there’s a Planxty tune; there’s some skewed blends, but overall I’m pretty happy with the deep and dubby direction it went in. I’ll be doing more of these intermittently. Some will be all Irish music, others won’t. Let’s see!

Doing this has also meant having to suffer the great indignity of choosing a “DJ name” at the age of 31, which I probably agonised over for far too long before settling on De Selby, a reference to the daft savant that fuels one of my favourite novels of all time, Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman. Apparently Hozier named a song after him too, but that’s okay, he seems very nice.

Special thanks are owed to Anois, Os Ard’s paid subscribers, whose incredibly kind donations have made it feasible for me to fork out the money for a Soundcloud Pro account. I’m incredibly grateful. It’s also looking like we’ll just pip the one thousand subscriber mark by Christmas, which is baffling to me after under a year of doing this, so thanks for that, and welcome! I’m excited about where this is all going, and I’m glad you’re here.

Right. Onto the mix! Have a listen below or on Soundcloud, and don’t forget to subscribe. As ever, I’d love it if you helped me spread the word. The tracklist is below too. V tasty indeed. Until next time, be well!

Éistigi.

Tracklist:

Tony Quinn - Tramore Beach
Natalia Beylis - Prophecy of the Beetle [Excerpt]
Deathbed Convert - Kinnagoe Bay
Minced Oath - The Pickover Set
Pippa Molony - You Dream Of Me (feat. Rory Sweeney & Local Gods)
ELLLL - Earth Rotation
Fohn - Closer
John Moriarty - Story of Big Mike [Excerpt]
Róisín Berkeley - The Rock on the Clyde
Rod - Nothing Complex
Odd Ned - One Over Four
Sputnik One - Love From Above
New Jackson - The Gono Line
Glimmerman - Cutlass
Or:la - Sea Slugs
Fish Go Deep - Home
New Members - No Mind
Plus One - We Out Here
Clannad - Atlantic Realm
Muireann Levis - Same again but different
Maria Somerville - Projections
Mel Keane - Seán
Planxty - P Stands For Paddy, I Suppose