New Irish Music: February 2025
Featuring Natalia Beylis, Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh, Decal, o.utlier and more
Before I get into this month’s new music round-up, there’s something special I want to highlight for London-based readers. On Saturday 15th March an all-star Irish underground line-up will be touching down in The George Tavern in Stepney Green courtesy of the lovely lads over at dfm. With sets lined up from Henry Earnest, Ana Palindrome, Seán Being and Better Living, the gig marks a new era for the promoter formerly known as Dancing For Money.
After throwing 13 DJ-focused club nights around London, founder Pat Shortall wanted to refocus his attention on filling a space he felt was lacking in the city: a gap that some of Ireland and the UK’s most exiting but less booked underground, alternative and otherwise experimental artists could occupy. After meeting fellow Irish music fan Sam O’Brien at a few gigs, the pair decided to join forces and rebrand Dancing For Money into dfm.
Their first line-up demonstrates the refreshed dfm ethos quite clearly: dream pop weaver Henry Earnest – whose album Blue Moon I wrote about here – has never played a headline show in London, despite glowing reviews in Pitchfork and a healthy cult following. “They perfectly represent what we’re excited about Irish underground music,” says Shortall. “Innovative music that draws on lots of different genres with beautiful instrumentation and great songwriting.”
It’s a vibe captured just as well by the other acts on the bill too, from the Glimmerman-fronted Shoegaze of Better Living to the experimental pop of Cork trio Ana Palindrome and wherethetimegoes affiliate Seán Being, who I saw play alongside Maria Somerville – who’s about to release one the best albums of the year btw – late last year and was excellent as ever.
The dfm guys are facing the tough climate of gig promotion in 2025 head on, hoping to build a loyal following based on trust and shared appreciation of music discovery. Their second show will take place in April, featuring a very special headliner from Bristol and a UK debut for another wherethetimegoes member, the ambient dub specialist Odd Ned, whose Long Mile Works LP is genuinely essential.
Follow dfm here and get tickets for their first event here.
Right, lots and lots of music reviewed below. A banner month if you ask me!
Eistigí.
Natalia Beylis - Coy-Koi [Longform Editions]
Sydney’s Longform Editions label bowed out this month with a final batch of extended ambient works from Fennesz, whait, Tujiko Noriko and Leitrim’s own Natalia Beylis, whose gorgeous 22-minute synth drift pays tribute to a local Koi fish and the small wonders to be found in life’s fleeting moments.
The prolific musician and sound artist – whose environmentalist audio project Lost - For Annie I wrote about here – provides a sweet introduction to the piece in its accompanying notes. I’d encourage you to have a read for yourself, but the gist is that after finding a Koi he’d inherited from his mother floating upside down in its tank one day, Beylis’ sometime neighbour Kevin decided it best to release it into a nearby pond; she took on the duty of sprinkling its daily food flakes into the pool and having one-sided chats with it. The music was written while imagining the fish adjusting to its new life, from swimming in tiny repetitive circles in its tank to having a comparatively vast world to navigate. As Beylis explained: “Thinking about the Koi fills me with hope and a deep sense of magic and the possibilities in life.”
It’s a feeling she conjures beautifully in Coy-Koi, which was recorded during a residency at the Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny, Co. Donegal. Like the fish exploring unknown waters, Beylis eschewed her penchant for field recordings in favour of the Arturia PolyBrute and Mellotron M4000D synthesisers, two instruments she’d never played before, to compose a piece that floats along its slow, elegant currents toward infinity – like her 2023 release Mermaids, its overlapping melodies sway and levitate from the depths before making their weightless way toward the stars. It’s pure ambient bliss – fans of previous Longform Editions from the likes of Celer, Melanie Velarde, Anna Peaker, KMRU and Taylor Deupree will love it. It’s music that gestures toward brief everyday marvels, when something as innocuous as feeding a fish can awaken feelings of quiet enchantment and appreciation – moments that, in their own way, take us out of the tank, and drop us into the pond.
I’m reminded a bit of Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, in which toilet cleaner Hirayama finds contentment in life’s simple routines, and in taking photos of the sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees. It’s quotidian magic like this that Beylis’ music reliably unearths, and does so in a lovely new way here. As she put it herself: “I have a deep curiosity about how humans engage with our everyday soundscapes… Where every rustle from a hedgerow and every pulsating drone from a kitchen appliance tells a story waiting to be discovered.”
For more on Longform Editions, you should read Andrew Ryce’s interview on the Substack, and Philip Sherburne’s on . You should also subscribe to label co-founder Andrew Khedoori’s newsletter for some great music recs.
Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh - Lux Gratis [KRAAK]
One of the first sounds you’ll hear in Lux Gratis is that of a military shipyard in action. Amidst the scrambled frequencies and snatches of bass clarinet that introduce the album, industrial machinery rumbles in the background, assembling a hall where warships will one day be built. ‘Fuck BAE Systems and the military-industrial complex Part 2’ sets the tone for this seven track suite from the Dublin-born, Glasgow-based multi-instrumentalist Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh, who explores the idea of “treating machine sound as music and musical sound in a more mechanical way.”
The shipyard’s clatter, which Nic Oireachtaigh could hear clearly from the park near her house, emerges at multiple points throughout this record, alongside other undefined recordings that echo, buzz and rattle amongst her and Sam Comerford’s viola, brass, woodwind, guitar, church organs and electronics. These sounds coalesce in uncanny ways: minimalist drones and bells feel at once menacing and meditative (‘sour rain, sweet rain’); industrial echoes morph into the scratch of bowed strings (‘a thread of glass’); layered saxophone sighs converse like factory apparatuses (‘fruiting 7’). The intention behind it all, Nic Oireachtaigh explained in the album’s accompanying notes, was to consider the ways we think – or don’t think – about the sounds around us, and the meaning and information we can glean from listening closely to our environment.
So, Lux Gratis is a body of work with purpose, but before all that, it's just beautiful to listen to. In centrepiece ‘Beon’, deep organ tones ebb and flow like breathwork, buoying rustling plucks of electric guitar and wavering keys a lá Bitchin Bajas. In ‘Long tones for a big room’, the sound of air passing through numerous pipe instruments creates a crackling texture, underscoring groaning viola bows and woodwinds. Fans of Kali Malone and Sarah Davachi will relish in the layered flutes and church organ drones of the title track, which lull things toward a slowly whirring conclusion, like a machine powering down, drifting into industrial slumber.
For more writing focused on environmental audio, subscribe to ’s Through Sounds Substack.
Various Artists - A Collection of Slow Airs by Some Very Fine Fiddlers [Nyahh Records]
The second instalment of Nyahh Records’ trad series does exactly what it says on the tin. A Collection of Slow Airs by Some Very Fine Fiddlers comprises 10 homespun recordings of tunes played in the instrumental style derived from sean-nós singing’s open-ended structure. Like 2023’s A Collection of Songs in the Traditional & Sean-Nós Style, this is trad music made for listening rather than dancing, and the DIY nature of the recordings helps place us right there in the room with the musicians as they play – it’s about as close as you’ll come to that hallowed, quiet moment in the session without actually being there IRL.
Contributions come from the likes of Lankum’s Cormac Mac Diarmada, Saileog Ní Cheannabháin, Tola Custy and Martin McGinley, all excellent players whose renditions of traditional and original tunes are enough make you shed a tear into your stout. As a Tipp man, Lucia Mac Partlin’s take on ‘Sliabh na mBan’ struck a particular chord, while Ultan O’Brien – who’ll be releasing a solo album for the label in March – conjures a flurry of legato spirals and droning double stops in his interpretation of ‘Seán Ó Duibhir A’ Ghleanna’. Danny Diamond’s ‘A Dream Of Home’ is accompanied by the background chatter of wildlife, and it’s wonderful to realise how much those incidental sounds enhance the experience of the music – it’s so simple, but oh so effective.
Decal - The Echoes Are Decoys [Front End Synthetics]
Following last year’s Trama Artifacts, a collection of unearthed material from the archive of pioneering Dublin electro project Decal, Alan O’Boyle returns to Front End Synthetics with his first new music under the moniker since 2007. It’s not like he’s been resting on his laurels since then – his more experimentally-inclined Of One alias released an absolute scorcher in the form of Domains last year – but it’s still a buzz to find him fully back in the club zone across these 13 tracks.
Tapping into the sizzling techno and electro NRG of the project’s early releases – back when O’Boyle was accompanied by Dennis McNulty – The Echoes Are Decoys wastes no time in getting going. ‘Freekin Failures’, ‘Eject’ and ‘Wasted In Region’ offer an opening triptych of urgent 808s, rumbling bass and crunchy melodies, before giving way to the early-Warp pulse and swirl of ‘All Night’, a spiritual successor to ‘Excelsis’ from their 1994 album ‘Ultramack 004’.
For every slice of Drexciyan electro (‘Coast II’, ‘Lateral Shift’, ‘Worms’) there’s another that shows O’Boyle bringing other genres into the fold. ‘In The Absence Of Sense’ is basically a synth-pop tune in techno camouflage, and there’s some serious ‘80s euphoria in the Italo-electro rush of ‘Slowly Melting Away’, like ‘Spacer Woman’ racing her way through the streets of Detroit. O’Boyle has worn multiple hats over the years – from electroacoustic works on Planet Mu to collabs with drummer David Lacey as Legion of Two – but sometimes all you really need to make magic happen is a few machines and someone who knows how to use them. As The Echoes Are Decoys shows us, three decades in, Decal has got it down to a fine art.
Alannah Thornburgh - Shapeshifter
I’d highly recommend walking around your nearest green space with this one on. On a Sunday morning, the park near me is normally pretty overrun with prams, dogs and joggers, but once I was accompanied by these folklore-inspired compositions from Mayo-born harpist Alannah Thornburgh, I may as well have been wandering through an ancient woodland.
Alongside the likes of Méabh McKenna, Róisín Berkeley and Úna Monaghan, Thornburgh is part of a new wave of Irish artists who are taking the harp in fresh, experimental directions while remaining true to the instrument’s roots. Throughout Shapeshifter, you’ll hear subtle nods to ambient, Ethio-jazz and medieval music, but the pillar of traditional Irish folk is never far from the surface, stitched with a contemporary thread that feels entirely her own.
There are some lovely guest features: Laura Quirke and Joshua Burnside’s vocals pour like velvet over Thornburgh’s plucked strings in ‘Hare Song’, a tender ballad accompanied by Conor Cunningham’s clarinet and Lorcan Byrne’s brushed percussion. Thornburgh’s brother lends purring saxophone to ‘Away With The Fairies’ and ‘Peadar’s Lament’, a gentle embellishment matched elsewhere by Stephen Doherty’s bodhrán and Aoife Kelly’s violin.
Really though, the album is even more collaborative than all that. Thornburgh spoke to almost 50 storytellers, historians, family members, friends and “local characters” on the subject of folklore and mythology during the writing process, composing music in response to what she heard and weaving a few recorded snippets into the mix here and there. It seems apt that the album came about this way – its themes are the stuff of oral tradition and local legend, and what better instrument to accompany that than the harp?
Ginnels - The Picturesque [Tenorio Cotobade]
When Mark Chester last released an album under his Ginnels alias in 2014, Dublin’s “bockety pop” era was at its peak. Alongside contemporaries like No Monster Club, Paddy Hanna and Squarehead, the North England native formed part of a prolific DIY scene that buzzed around the Popical Island collective. Halcyon days for sure, but over time, things slowed down as they always do: people got a bit older, new responsibilities took hold, and new releases and gigs became a bit more sporadic as the torch made its inevitable way into the hands of a new generation. 11 years later, a dispatch from that circle tends to land with a side of nostalgia, a feeling Chester channels nicely into The Picturesque, a 12-track suite of jangling indie-rock that nonetheless shows us a songwriter content with where they're at right now, relishing in memory rather than wallowing in it.
By his own admission, little has changed in the way Chester writes over the years: you sift through phone demos until you’ve got enough good stuff for a record, and then you make it. It’s a simple formula, but it’s key to the melodic spine of these songs; it glimmers in the dreamy chorus-and-reverb-soaked guitars of ‘The Body Was Gone’, ‘Promise To Never’ and ‘Nothing Doing’. His flair for storytelling and an ear-worm vocal hook feels more refined than ever on songs like the melancholic ‘Promise To Never’ – “On a journey down from Castlebar you said never felt so alone” – and the incredibly sweet bop ‘To Love, To Love’.
While not averse to letting rip a little – ‘Men Of A Kind’ – there's a mellowness to most of these songs, the restless youthful edges that scuffed the corners of his The Country Life LP smoothed by family life and a musical maturity developed over years spent producing for others and playing in bands like the erstwhile Autre Monde. It’s not an album without bittersweet moments (notably, ‘About A Year Ago’) but the overall sense is of someone opting not to dwell, but to take the best bits of the past forward with them. “You can’t put your arms round a memory,” he sings in ‘Johnny Thunders Said’, but you can pop them in your bag and take them with you regardless. You never know when they might come in handy.
Various Artists - ANSEO LIVE TAPE [SKELLYTAPES]
Last week it was reported that the bill that would allow for later nightclub opening hours in Ireland had been bumped off the priority list by the government – basically shelving it indefinitely. While Give Us The Night founder Sunil Sharpe described the move as "disappointing" but "partly expected", it was just another blow to a music scene that has faced repeated slaps in the face over the past decade. DIY venues and community spaces remain under constant threat – RIP Jigsaw, RIP JaJa Studios – leaving comparatively longstanding spots like Anseo to bear much of the load for independent artists in the city and further afield.
This new collection of live recordings from Anseo demonstrates how key it has been in platforming emergent rock bands. From jangling indie and slowcore (Robbie Stickland, Unstuck, The Low Field, Punches Pilot) into more angular art rock and post-punk (Stratford Rise, Echo Northstar), it’s a great primer for what’s happening in the country’s clattering undergrowth. There’s also scorched experimental noise from Nailbreaker, digi-club pop from Boyfrens and Spooklet, brutal hardcore punk from Catastrophe and Special Branch, and instrumental post-rock from Silverglass. The recordings are rough and ready, but that’s the charm – you genuinely can't beat the feeling of hearing stuff like this live, unpolished and potentially a bit shit. It bottles the feeling of being in a sweaty room with your pals, swilling lager and hearing a band you’ve never heard before for the first time. Hook it to my veins tbh.
All funds raised from the tape before the end of March will go toward a refurb for the venue’s gig space with new equipment, after which everything will go to Medical Aid For Palestinians.
Chalk - Conditions III [Nice Swan Records]
Belfast trio Chalk find the sweet spot in their post-punk-techno formula on the third and final instalment of their Conditions EP series. I’ll admit, I was sceptical at first. This is well trodden territory, and easy to half-bake – if I had a penny for every band who stuck a bass arp under some quantised drums and a distorted guitar and called it a day I’d have enough to buy shares in Berghain. I needn’t have worried. The reason these guys are making such a splash, I think, is that they’ve managed to straddle that basic framework and pull off their own thing with it – unearthing a sort of missing link between Gilla Band, Not Squares, Olan Monk and Autumns.
‘Leipzig 87’ starts in a way you might expect: a voice mutters in German over ominous sustain before an acid gurgle gives way to a deeply satisfying beat that’ll work for anyone who was into Daniel Avery’s Drone Logic. ‘Afraid’ is the hit, hyperventilating into action with strobing distortion and pulse-quickening drums before it all erupts in a proper squall of guitar and a sort of ‘Born Slippy’ style refrain. ‘Tell Me’ goes more industrial still, with a Factory Floor-like beat and bass combo underscoring Ross Cullen’s monotone snarl, before ‘Pool Scene’ ends it all on a cinematic slow-burn, reaching a dark pop climax of Arab Strap/The Twilight Sad proportions. Chalk are on a trajectory set for big things, so it’s refreshing to hear these references come through while still feeling fresh in their own murky way.
o.utlier - Biome [Animalia]
Galway-born, London-based o.utlier specialises in deep, dubby techno and ambient music. The Astral Industries affiliate’s releases for labels like Efdemin’s Naïf, Fred P’s Boards and Appian Sounds have showcased a taste for psychedelic sound design, so it’s no surprise to see him now arriving on Animalia, the imprint run by the much-hyped Melbourne DJ Kia, whose recent RA Podcast you really ought to hear.
The four tracks on Biome follow a similar trajectory to that mix, starting off with slow-moving sub throbs and swirling atmospherics on the A-side, before venturing further into a haze-filled dancefloor on the B-Side, a vortex of percussive grooves and oscillating bass. Overused words like “trippy” and “hypnotic” feel apposite here, but o.utlier’s music defies whatever clichés can so often come with that territory. It begs to be heard over a powerful system in a small dark club, or under the canopy of a forest festival late at night, but there’s an exacting, painterly touch to it that’ll rewire yr mind particles just as as effectively on headphones – file next to your Donato Dozzy, Rrose and Marco Shuttle records, switch off the lights, and ascend.
D*mp - surplus2requirements / SPÄTI
Ryan Dwyer doesn’t seem like the type to big himself up too much. When the producer known as D*mp shared surplus2requirements – a 10-track selection of unfinished beats that had been gathering dust on his laptop – he made a point of emphasising how “shitly” these demos were mixed, and how throwaway the thought of releasing them had been. While accepting that there was “something” in each of these hip-hop sketches initially, their arrival on streaming platforms felt less like a surprise drop and more like a break-up with one’s own ideas. “I don’t think I’ll finish any, and parting ways with them seems fair.”
Personally, I think he’s being a bit harsh. Sure, these cuts are incomplete, but there’s something undeniably charming about it all. Like listening to a skilled guitarist noodle through some new ideas on the acoustic while you’re in the same room, there’s an unfussed cosiness in how these fragmentary, on-the-fly tracks play out. With its soul and jazz vocal samples, dusty drums, melancholic keys and old-timey film snippets, it’s all archetypically “lo-fi”, but you can sense Dwyer’s own signature in every beat. It goes down easy, and makes the promise of what’s to come from this producer all the more exciting.
In fact, we got a taste of a more complete work from D*mp just a few weeks before surplus2requirements. ‘SPÄTI’ is a very different beast – a two-track collaboration with Emily Beattie inspired by ‘90s jungle, grunge and trip-hop. The title track leads with Beattie’s wordless vocals, layered over aqueous ambient keys before rave breaks crash into the mix like ice water. ‘dresden freestyle’ evokes Deftones’ slowcore moments, its distorted drum loops and guitar carrying vocals that are tough to decipher, but feel crystal clear.
Jack Ward - Smooth Cream Pop
Sampling Prefab Sprout is risky business – how do you meddle with pop perfection and get away with it? BFTT pulled it off last year with the fidgety club stomper ‘Horsin’ Around’, and now the Limerick-born, Manchester-based producer and DJ Jack Ward has done the same with ‘Bully For You’, which interpolates the acoustic guitar from ‘Bonny’ and stitches it into a sugar-rush house tune that’ll hit your spirit like the first warm day of spring. The track’s Bandcamp description rightly draws comparisons to I. JORDAN and Finn – it’s got an oh so lovely organ bassline, an irresistible harmonica moment, ear-tickling vocal snatches, and a beat that’s more crisp than a set of freshly cleaned sheets,. An essential for anyone whose USBs need some brightening up.
The EP’s other two tracks are sprinkled with more filter house magic. ‘Spiritlines’ ups the tempo but maintains the latter’s lightness of step, a bouncy springboard for flickering vocal snippets and low-pass brass. ‘You Keep Feeling Me’ eases into action with pedal steel swells and muffled rhythmic shuffle before shifting gears and launching toward the dancefloor with a thumping beat, buzzy bass throb and chirruping melody. Top stuff all round – smooth cream pop indeed.
Tengu presents: Lúnasa ANL // 21.12.24
Here’s a useless anecdote for you: in the DJ Mag office where I work, listening to a techno mix over the system will usually prompt someone – well, me or one other guy – to loudly mouth trumpet Julius Fucik’s ‘Entry of the Gladiators’ – you know, the circus clown song – along as an accompaniment. Yes, it is hilarious, thank you for saying so. No, I don’t think it gets old, why do you ask?
You can imagine my dismay when, while listening to this set from Dublin’s Lúnasa alone in that same office one recent afternoon, that exact tune should appear in absurd breakbeat form courtesy of Malaise Vagal’s ‘musique de fête’, and there was no one there for me to enjoy it with. Ah well. Anyway, it’s one of many great moments from this all nighter in the capital’s favourite Japanese restaurant-cum-nightclub Yamamori Tengu: ‘Teach Me How to Dougie’ blends alarmingly well with Pearson Sound’s acid chugger ‘Earwig’; Special Request’s ‘Vortex 150’ launches into Flume’s remix of Disclosure and Eliza Doolittle’s ‘You & Me’ like a rocket bursting into another galaxy; the tightrope walk from Lankum’s ‘Go Dig My Grave’ into Minor Science’s ‘Balconies’ and The Cure’s ‘A Forest’ is a little wobbly, sure, but you gotta admire the audacity.
There are cuts from Joy Division, Simo Cell and Verraco, Keval, Doctor Jeep and Nikki Minaj, and Irish representation from Rory Sweeney, or:la, Plus One, Selky, Doubt and Lúnasa herself. And that barely scratches the surface of this techno, baile funk, breakbeat and hard drum marathon. By the time it all ends on Le Tigre’s ‘Deception’ and The Veronicas’ ‘Untouched’, you’ll be breathless, and possibly a bit sweaty – I can only imagine the craic that was had IRL.
That’s it for this month! Catch you next time.