Here’s a rundown of new releases out today, including new albums and EPs on DSPs and physical releases in record shops this week.
Nialler9 keeps a rolling list of Irish album releases for 2025.
New Albums and Releases
New Albums
Sprints – All That Is Over
The Dublin alt-garage-rock band Sprints release their second album on City Slang worldwide and Sub Pop for North America today.
Featuring previous singles ‘Descartes’, ‘Rage’, ‘Beg’ and ‘Better’, the album came during a whirlwind of touring with Karla Chubb hitting a purple patch of songwriting.
“I was going through a big break up with my partner who I’d been with for eight years; Colm had left the band; we’d really progressed into being professional musicians, and I was at the start of a new relationship. But then you’d look outside and it’s like the world has never been uglier. I was writing every day because there was so much going on.”
Written on tour buses, in soundchecks and very much in real time, it’s an album set against the backdrop of a litany of atrocities – the war in Gaza, the wildfires in LA, Trump’s executive order denying the rights of trans people – that sees SPRINTS trying to make sense of a society gone mad.
The band are on tour in Ireland and UK later in 2025 and into EU in 2026.
God Knows – A Future Of The Past
Zimbabwean-Irish rapper releases his long-awaited debut album is out on narolane records. Same story, new journey.
Edited down from 50 tracks, with the the executive producer vision of Rusangango Family cohort MuRLi, you may expect a pure rap album from God Knows but A Future Of The Past is a much more varied record addressing Irish and African history shot through with a deeply personal perspective from Munya God Knows himself and of his family.
Black oppression and colonisation is a topic in the middle of the record on ‘The Heartless Stone’ and ‘Ode To The Ancestors’, in South Africa and Zimbabwe, the latter where God Knows illuminates the true story of his ancestor Chief Makoni who was beheaded by the British army in the late 20th century – and how the British took his head back to a museum where it still is stored to this day.
Ireland’s anti-jazz movement of the 1930s is an inspiration for a track ‘The Earth Is Ours, Immoral Azz’, along with the multicultural planned town of Shannon, by Brendan O’Regan where God Knows and family settled upon arriving to Ireland, which allows GK to illuminate thoughts on identity and expectation on ‘The Art Of Alienation’.
There’s also contributions from talented family members Godw1n and Dreddy on the drilly Afro banger ‘It’s Been To Long’ and sister Omgjojo sings on ’18 Inch War & Eternal’.
Among the Afro jazz beats and thoughtful verses are contributions from Jafaris, Doda Jawn, Farah Elle, Salamay and King Pallas.
Elaine Mai – For Us
Choice Music Prize-nominated Irish electronic producer Elaine Mai’s second album For Us follows on from debut 2021 album Home and explores “resilience, self-growth, and emotional clarity,” with repeat vocal collaborators MuRli, MayKay, Faye O’Rourke and Sinead White underscoring Mai’s uplifting and widescreen electronic productions. The children from the Lajee centre in Palestine also features on previously-released charity single ‘We Are’.
For Us is an album guided by American producer Rick Rubin’s simple idea of making art for yourself, then opening it up to others to shape the balance of personal and collective energy throughout.
Elaine launches the album at Button Factory on October 25th.
“The album is built around a single melody, one that guided me throughout the creative process. Writing this piece, I wanted to let go of expectations and focus on the journey rather than the outcome. I wrote the majority of the album in Daithí’s Aspen Lane Studio in Ballyvaughan. Daithí and I worked closely on the production and mixing, shaping the sound in a way that felt organic and true to the emotion behind the music”.
Elaine Mai,
In parallel with releasing For Us, Mai is also developing a series of one-day production-focused workshops supported by the Arts Council. Drawing from mentorships with UK producers Shadow Child and David Phelan, these sessions will share skills in production and mixing, giving participants the tools to independently create and release high-quality music. Applications to take part will open in the coming months, with the workshops specifically aimed at supporting women and underrepresented groups in the music industry.
Inni-K – Still A Day
Irish artist Eithne Ní Chathain aka Inni-K follows up the 2022 contemporary sean-nós album Inion today with her fourth record.
Eithne shared ‘Beatha’ with us a few months back, jazz-inflected song hold a tautness with off-kilter fiddle stabs and plucked strings under Eithne’s Irish language vocal., and is on tour this October and November.
The Expert – Vivid Visions
Irish rap and beat producer The Expert continues his collaborative forays with MCs across the pond on his new full-length.
After records made with NAHReally, Stik Figa, Jermiside and featuring Open Mike Eagle, Hemlock Ernst (Future Islands’ Samuel T. Herring), and more, Vivid Visions goes even bigger with 21 features from artists including Buck 65, Anwar Highsign, Duncecap, Rob Cave, and ShrapKnel and many more while Blu, NAHReally, Stik Figa and Donwill of the duo Tanya Morgan return.
Inspired by a batch of eerie saturated dreamscapes—The Monkees’s 1968 album Head and its companion film of the same name, the surrealism of David Lynch’s ‘Twin Peaks,’ kaleidoscopic ads pulled straight from the files of ‘Sgt. Pepper’—he wanted this to transcend being a simple compilation album by stitching together a theme: a psychedelic trip through the mind. While not a concept album per se, ‘Vivid Visions’ lives up to its title with verses highlighting each of its 21 guest features’ perspectives on the world. That’s right—this album features a whopping 21 rappers from across time zones, a combination of old and new faces ready to tear into these blappers like taffy.
Cate Le Bon – Michelangelo Dying
Welsh musicians and producer (Deerhunter, John Grant, Wilco, Horsegirl) Cate Le Bon’s seventh record returns to her woozy alt-pop trademark sound that I adored on 2022’s Pompeii with songs inspired by heartache sidelining a “reluctance to write an album about love, and in the process became a kind of exorcism.”
As guitars and saxophones are pushed through pedals and percussion and voices are fed through filters, an iridescent, green and silky sound emerges, with flashes of the artistic singularities of David Bowie, Nico, John McGeoch and Laurie Anderson surfacing and disappearing below the waterline throughout.
What were left with is an ever-changing, continuous entity, a kind of song cycle. Each iteration reflects and progresses the last, each one a shard of the same broken mirror shifting, glinting, concealing and revealing, depending on how it is turned in the light. There are ultimately, Cate asserts, No revelations. No conclusions. There is no reason. There is repetition and chaos. I eventually allowed myself a vacant mind to experience it without resistance and without searching for a revelation or order to any of it.
Blimp – The World Is Yours
Irish electronic producer Shane Smyth aka Blimp released a full album last year called Kintsugi (named after the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery) and Smyth says this one “soundtracks a relationship”, with a “deep house/disco house/french house/lofi house odyssey.
I’ve always found making tracks to be very cathartic for me in terms of processing my emotions and this album is my most complete project to date.
Get the new one at Bandcamp from tomorrow – September 2th – Shane’s Birthday.
John Maus – Later Than You Think
American synth pop 21st-century philosopher-academic*-musician and composer releases sixth album on a new label Young which “explores themes of justice, confession, rebirth, transformation, and spiritual warfare, further expanding the liminal space where outsider art collides with art-pop, raw emotion, and intellectual depth.”
*Maus holds a degree in experimental music from CalArts and a PhD in political science from the University of Hawaii.
Automatic – Is It Now?
Automatic are an LA trio (Lola, Izzy and Halle) who make post-punk retro new wave music I’m always interested in hearing. Is It Now? is the band’s third album released on Stones Throw, made with producer Loren Humphrey (Tame Impala, Arctic Monkeys, Nice As Fuck, Cameron Winter) with stated influences Patrick Cowley, A Certain Ratio and Air.
The new collection cleverly uses their perky mnimalist grooves and pop melodies as a Trojan horse to wheel in political commentary about the world’s oppressive structures: automated warfare, mindless consumerism, and the political influence of oil.
Adore – Biter EP
Adore are garage punk pop from Galway, Donegal and Dublin.
The Galway alt-rockers Adore released their fifth single in May and today release their debut EP BITER on independent UK rock label Big Scary Monsters at the end September, alongside an Irish tour ongoing at the moment.
Vaticanjail – Sweets Bar EP
The Dublin-Chilean artist releases an 8-track debut EP that showcases her bright and experimental electronic pop style – featuring previous singles ‘Miel’, ‘Angel’ ‘Next2U’, shot through with “sonic magic realism”.
Illustrating survival in overindulgence and the fragility of human behaviour, translated by hedonistic soundscapes, deep-end drums and punchy bass lines, this EP tells the tale of man’s pessimistic existence and self doubt, morphing into a requirement to halt its thirst of vitality: partying to forget one’s weaknesses. The critique relies heavily on practical philosophy, for truth of action pervades possible salvation from damnation, where the wasted potential that amounts from expended participation in escapism can in fact be reversed by the understanding of action and its connection to intentions and beliefs. Or how Aristotle sets out to examine in the Nicomachean Ethics ‘activity of the soul in accordance with virtue’.
Fred Armisen – 100 Sound Effects
Call Super – A Rhythm Protects One
London producer Call Super revives the endangered art of the mix CD with a fluid, technicolour hour of elegantly advanced club music featuring a striking assembly of emergent artists.
Seaton set out to make ARPO — an acronym for A Rhythm Protects One — to honour the meaning of mix CDs in a world drowning in online DJ streams. Part of the generation raised on seminal series like the metal-tinned fabric and fabriclive (which Seaton themselves contributed to), they cast back to the lasting impression of landmark sessions like Coldcut’s 1995 opus Journeys By DJ: 70 Minutes Of Madness. These were mixes to absorb over and over again, where every deeply considered track and transition became lodged in your psyche.
As well as exclusive new material under their Call Super and Ondo Fudd aliases, Seaton seeks out uncanny talent from breakthrough artists in tune with their creative vision. In terms of slinky 4/4 groove and mid tempo pace, you might locate the likes of Conny Slipp, Scarletina and Clam1 on the wilder fringes of minimal tech house, but their productions teem with textural depth and melodic subtlety that reach past that scene’s typically functional tendencies. Curveballs abound, and Seaton relishes in the chance to divert into dramatic workouts like their own ‘Limelight’ and ‘mothertime’ or strip everything down for the striking, swooning poetry of Malgo & KVS’ ‘The Argosy’.
vi0let – ULTRAVI0LET
Irish-raised artist vi0let releases music of an electronic hyper pop persuasion, and ahead of their appearance at Ireland Music Week next week, releases a 6 song EP with 3 music videos.
Also released this week
- Air – The Virgin Suicides Redux
- Bright Eyes – Kids Table
- Doja Cat – Vie
- Falle Nioke – Love From The Sea
- Geese – Getting Killed
- Grandbrothers – Elsewhere
- Greg Saunier – No Timing
- Hatis Noit – Aura Reworks
- Joy Crookes – Juniper
- Jeff Tweedy – Twilight Override
- Kate Bush – Best of The Other Sides
- Neko Case – Neon Grey Midnight Green
- Princess Nokia – Girls
- Purity Ring – purity ring
- Robert Plant – Saving Grace
- Rochelle Jordan – Through The Wall
- Sir Richard Bishop – Hillbilly Ragas
- Sven Wunder – Daybreak
- Tom Skinner – Kaleidoscopic Visions
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Cara Magazine, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, co-founder of Lumo Club, event curator, Indie Sleaze club promoter, and producer of gigs and monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
