Revisiting The Fourth Dimension
Some unearthed words on '90s Kerry's answer to The Prodigy
I’m running a bit behind on the latest New Irish Music round-up. Summer’s been busy and, between moving house and trying to keep cool, finding the time to put words down about recent releases has been tricky to say the least. Rest assured though, there’s a healthy crop coming any day now. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, I’ve been loving all the videos on Irish acts absolutely sending it at All Together Now festival this past weekend. It’s been heartening to see crowds gravitating to stages where artists like Rory Sweeney, Gilla Band, EMA, RÓIS, The Mary Wallopers, Trá Pháidín, Lullahush, Moving Still, Róisin Gowen and Ahmed, With Love continue to prove just how strong and varied things are sounding on home turf at the moment. And that barely scratches the surface.
Anyway, it reminded me that, in early August 1995, a young rave act from Kerry pulled an equally eager audience at the Féile in Cork’s Páirc Uí Chaoimh. I wrote about The Fourth Dimension back in 2019, when AOA lived over on The Quietus, and thought it would be fun to revisit that piece now, with a couple of small tweaks and additions.
Dive in below for a brief history of the first hardcore techno group to ever come out of Killarney, who toured with The Prodigy and Scooter, sampled Sharon Shannon on a gabber track, and left the national media bemused when demonstrating their set-up of synths and drum machines on live TV.
This article was originally published in The Quietus in 2019. Minor text updates and tweaks have been made.
There’s a photo of the late, great Keith Flint from 27th August 1993 in which, typically mad-eyed and soaked as seaweed, The Prodigy frontman is seen howling from the stage toward a hand outstretched to grab him. More photos show him and fellow dancers Maxim and Leeroy Thornhill flailing extravagantly in a room that could, if it weren’t for the spaghetti-like sign above them spelling “Gleneagle”, easily be mistaken for a big parish hall.
That Friday night in the Ballroom of the Gleneagle Hotel, Killarney, Co. Kerry became the stuff of legend – a party in which, mid-tour, an electronic act on the cusp of global stardom ventured where few international artists of the time would bother and subsequently wrecked the gaff.
In a venue more used to hosting showbands and weddings, The Prodigy were booked and supported by local brothers Steve, Moss, Matt and Joe O’Leary, collectively known as the burgeoning rave act, The Fourth Dimension. Formed that year after a while of organising parties under the Wild Noise banner, the brothers’ sound bolted from breakbeat hardcore, techno and acid into Irish trad on albums and EPs like Overground (1994), Around The Day In Eighty Worlds (1995) and Loverman (1995), while their live sets were notorious owing to their foxy-haired hysterics and unbridled sense of craic.
They would go on to play alongside Braintree’s world-conquering rave outfit over 13 times in the following three years, their grinning, gleeful performances complimenting The Prodigy’s rabid intensity.
The Fourth Dimension called it a day in 1996 following the release of their final EP, Big Rig Records, and a tour with Scooter, but they left behind more than enough bounties to keep their legend alive on forums and in YouTube comment sections to this day.
Tracks like ‘Late Arrival’ and ‘Train Of Thought’ boast flourishes of Dutch gabber and trance, while cuts like ‘Let Loose’ and ‘Nemesis’ are donk-cum-sesiún gems that wouldn’t go amiss nowadays in sets by DJ Bus Replacement Service or literally anyone who plays at Bangface. Their 1994 hit ‘Storm’ sampled an accordion part from Sharon Shannon’s ‘Blackbird’.
One appearance on 2TV in 1994 highlighted the bemusement of the national media toward this sort of music (”Do ye have Beats Per Minute?”). Speaking to 909 Originals in 2024, the brothers recounted how unusual it was that they were programmed as the final act to play on the main stage at that year’s Féile in Tipperary, after massive international acts including Björk, Blur and Rage Against The Machine.
They followed that set up with a now iconic performance at the Féile in Cork’s Páirc Uí Chaoimh in early August 1995. Archival videos of the performance serve as a reminder of just how ready, willing and able Irish crowds were for batshit local sounds once they were given the place to hear them. It’s an idea that’s worth holding onto, and running with, three decades later.