Boards of Canada return after 13 years with a new album on Warp. Aoife McCann’s AE MAK releases her debut full-length of “cosmical, spiritual folk”, co-produced by Ye Vagabonds’ Brían Mac Gloinn. Rosie Carney delivers an alternative take on her Donegal-recorded fourth album. Pittsburgh band Feeble Little Horse release their latest glitchy rock album. Vince Clarke, Neil Arthur and Benge link up as Doublespeak. Hamburg’s Digitalism return with Optimism. LA-via-Northern Ireland producer Principleasure delivers his third LP. Irish country supergroup Chuck Squires release their debut, Wynona Bleach drop their album, and Muirgen, SexyTadhg, Seamus O’Muineachain, Daragh Fleming and Throwing Snow, and Milk Rain round out a stacked Irish week.
Nialler9 keeps a rolling list of Irish album releases for 2026.
New Albums and Releases
New Albums + EPs
Album of the week:
Boards Of Canada – Inferno (Warp Records)
It is finally here. The Scottish electronic duo of brothers Marcus Eoin and Michael Sandison release their first new album in 13 years on Warp, following 2013’s Tomorrow’s Harvest. A return this long-awaited carries a weight that goes beyond the music itself, with cryptic messaging, worldwide listening parties and a Guardian review that prepped fans for disappointment.
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Thankfully, Ben Beaumont-Thomas’ assessment of Boards Of Canada’s fifth album is wildly off the mark, Inferno has a depth charge to its sonic world that is fresh for BOC’s 30 year discography.
The DNA of retrofuturistic sounds drawn from snatches of dialogue of degrading media is of course, present with the themes of religion, occult and spirituality all dominant.
Boards of Canada have always made music that feels older than the technology that produced it – sun-bleached analogue synths, frayed-tape rhythms, half-glimpsed melodies suggesting both ’70s educational films and something more uneasy underneath.
Inferno, the title alone setting a darker tone than the pastoral hauntology of earlier records, sounds like a deepening of that world rather than a reinvention.
The construction of the record is also something new for the brothers. Writing and production is credited solely to Mike Sandison with Marcus Eoin and Sandison credited on the album as instrumentalists and sound designers.
Yet, if ‘Prophecy at 1420 Mhz’ suggested a twist towards more John Carpenter-esque horror scores and there is plenty of eerie synths and lulling meandering atmosphere to unsettle, Inferno is not without its moments of rapture – the hymnal beauty of ‘Age Of Capricorn’ being the most surprising with ‘You Retreat In Time and Space’ also achieving a weightless euphoria towards the end of the record.
Inferno is also full of sounds that are new for BOC that sit alongside their established palette – the new-age Hare Krishna chant of ‘Naraka’, the serene slowed down shoegaze vista of ‘Memory Death’, the Air Virgin Suicides-esque robotic atmosphere of ‘The Word Becomes Flesh’ and the sitar playing on ‘Blood In The Labyrinth’.
Inferno, in its music and the surrounding fervour is a ritualistic and communal as recorded music can get these days. Boards Of Canada still manage to make music as if it’s beamed from another dimension but Inferno, this time around feels it has one foot in the fractious modern world.
Feeble Little Horse – bitknot (Saddle Creek)
The long-awaited new album from the Pittsburgh fuzz-pop band, the follow-up to their 2023 breakout Girl with Fish. Few American indie bands of the last few years have built as devoted a following on as little, with their hazy, sample-and-noise-laced songcraft sitting somewhere between bedroom-pop intimacy and shoegaze blur. Lydia Slocum’s vocals remain the centre of gravity, and bitknot is one of the indie releases of the year.
Dublin show in November just announced.
AE MAK – Folk Songs for Mama & Papa
The debut album from Aoife McCann’s AE MAK project lands on Spacer Records, and it represents a shift from the art-pop she is known for. Folk Songs for Mama & Papa is a “cosmical, spiritual folk record rooted in voice, breath and emotional resonance”, influenced by Björk, Judee Sill, Aldous Harding and Paul Simon.
The songs were written in a Berlin winter at a friend’s piano, during a period of emotional self-reflection. McCann then brought the demos to Brián Mac Gloinn of Ye Vagabonds, who co-produced and engineered the record with her, alongside Cian Hanley on drums and Kevin Corcoran on piano and bass. Parts were re-recorded in a farmhouse in Ravensdale Forest and in her family home in the Cooley Mountains, with the vocal-lead production drawing on the warmth of ’60s and ’70s folk and baroque pop, gospel-leaning organ and layered harmony.
The title is not a nod to The Mamas & The Papas, but to her own parents who raised her on folk records and harmony. The record includes a stripped-back cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright’ that she had been singing at parties and sessions while writing the album.
AE MAK tour dates
- May 29th – Spindizzy Dublin 5:30pm (Instore record release show)
- May 30th – Music Zone Cork 1pm (Instore record release show)
- May 30th – Steamboat Limerick 5pm (Instore record release show)
- May 31st – When Next We Meet, Raheen House, Co. Tipperary
- June 8th – London, The Lower Third
- June 12th + 13th – Beyond the Pale
- July 23rd -Workman’s, Dublin
Kurt Vile – Philadelphia’s been good to me (Verve)
The new album from the Philadelphia singer-songwriter and guitarist, the follow-up to 2022’s (watch my moves). The title is a small, characteristic Vile move – a sideways, generous statement that doubles as the record’s emotional centre. Kurt Vile has spent the last decade and a half making a body of work that quietly accumulates rather than chasing peaks, full of long guitar reveries, shaggy melodies and wry, half-mumbled wisdom.
Digitalism – Optimism
The new album from the Hamburg electronic duo of Jens Moelle and İsmail Tüfekçi, their first full-length in some time. Digitalism have been a defining voice in indie-electronic since 2007’s Idealism helped set the template for the blog-house, electro-pop era alongside Justice, Boys Noize and Soulwax. The title Optimism is an unmistakable callback to that debut, and an early signal that the duo are leaning back into the energy and direct hooks that made them so beloved in the first place.
Rosie Carney – doomsday (night tapes)
A self-produced reworked version of the recent fourth album from the Donegal-based singer-songwriter, recorded close to home in the wilds of the northwest.
doomsday night tapes was recorded and produced in Rosie’s childhood bedroom in Donegal. Carney’s recreation of the record is driven by Donegal as her most vital source of inspiration.
Principleasure – III
The third album from Principleasure, the Los Angeles-based producer of Iranian origin who hails from Northern Ireland, the result of almost four years of work in his vintage-synth-loaded LA studio. The press release describes a “Spinal Tap-esque collection of vintage analog synthesisers”, and the records bear it out – melodic techno of ’90s vintage, early EBM weight, soundtrack-leaning melancholy and electro-tinged disco glide, all assembled by an artist who calls himself a “backward technologist” and builds his own software synthesisers on the side.
Matias Aguayo – Anenoa
Anenoa finds Chilean-German techno and electro producer Aguayo in exploratory, rhythmic form, threading together his idiosyncratic voice work with loose-limbed percussion and psychedelic electronics. The record leans into his long-standing fascination with communal dance music, but it feels more meditative than peak-club focused, full of playful textures and organic grooves that drift between experimental pop, minimal techno and leftfield electronics. There’s a restless curiosity to the album that rewards close listening, even as it maintains an inviting pulse.
Recent single ‘El Internet’ is a quietly brilliant bit of off-kilter dancefloor music that somehow isn’t on this record.
Shed – Rave Echoes
Rave Echoes sees German techno producer and DJ René Pawlowitz aka Shed revisiting the foundations of his sound with a renewed focus on atmosphere and physicality. Drawing from classic warehouse techno, breakbeat pressure and rave-era textures, the album balances raw machine energy with moments of introspection. Pawlowitz has always excelled at making functional club music feel emotionally resonant, and here he folds nostalgia into something muscular and contemporary, with tracks that feel equally suited to dark rooms and solitary headphone immersion.
Penelope Trappes – Opvs Novum: A Requiem Reworked (One Little Independent)
Opvs Novum: A Requiem Reworked reshapes the spectral material of Penelope Trappes’ fifth album A Requiem through reinterpretations that deepen its emotional weight rather than simply remix it. Released via One Little Independent, the project expands Trappes’ stark, gothic sound world with collaborators who bend her ghostly vocals into new ambient, drone and experimental forms. Collaborators include St. Etienne, Flora Yin-Wong, Gazelle Twin, Juli Holter, Midwife and Dania.
KÁRYYN – PHYSICS UNIVERSAL LOVE LANGUAGE (PULL) [Mute]
The latest album from Syrian-Armenian-American composer, vocalist, and producer continues KÁRYYN’s singular blend of avant-pop, experimental electronics and emotionally charged composition. Released on Mute Records, the album explores intimacy, grief and connection through fractured rhythms, cinematic synth design and a vocal approach that feels both vulnerable and alien. It is ambitious and often challenging work, but KÁRYYN’s instinct for emotional tension gives the record a sense of purpose amid its sonic complexity.
Chuck Squires – The Late Great Chuck Squires
Chuck Squires are a new Dublin country project bringing together Daniel Fitzpatrick (Badhands), Ken Mooney (The Mary Wallopers), Chris Barry (Ailfionn Studios) and David A. Tapley (Tandem Felix).
The foursome have been quietly working on the album across 18 months, recording live together at Barry’s Ailfionn Studios in Dublin, tracking 11 songs over the course of just five days.
The approach was rooted in the fast-paced Nashville recording style of the 1960s and 70s, with minimal overdubs and spliced takes in place of elaborate production. The influences running through it are the outlaw country school, George Jones, Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard.
Doublespeak – Doublespeak
The debut album from a synth-pop super-trio of Vince Clarke (Erasure, Yazoo, Depeche Mode), Neil Arthur (Blancmange) and Benge (Wrangler, John Foxx and the Maths). For anyone who grew up on early-’80s British electronic pop, this is a dream pairing of three figures who helped define the sound, working together as peers rather than as a nostalgia exercise. Cold synths, dry drum machines, deadpan vocals, songs that sound both retro and entirely current.
The ‘Doublespeak’ album is divided between songs from the postpunk netherworld brought blinking into the light (Fad Gadget, The Sound, Young Marble Giants), pop radio monsters ushered back down a dark stairway into the club (ABBA, David Essex, The Carpenters) and buried treasures from the 1990s onwards (The Magnetic Fields, Ed Dowie and Laptop).
Modernlove. – modernlove.
Modernlove.’s debut album confident self-titled statement from the Drogheda four-piece, expanding on the glossy indie-pop and emotional directness that built their early following. The album leans into shimmering guitars, punchy production and diaristic songwriting, balancing youthful urgency with a more mature sense of 1975-esque popcraft.
Seamus O’Muineachain – Island of Flowers
A new self-released ninth album from the Dublin-based ambient and electronic composer Seamus O’Muineachain. Out now on Bandcamp, Island of Flowers continues his ongoing practice across ambient, modular and contemporary classical idioms – one of the more singular and quietly prolific voices working in Irish electronic music right now.
Wynona Bleach – Animal Style (Fierce Panda)
New album from the Northern Irish alt-rock band, fronted by Melyssa Shannon. Wynona Bleach have been quietly building a reputation over the last few years for shoegaze-leaning rock with real songcraft, and Animal Style arrives as a confident step up in scale and ambition.
“This sophomore album was recorded in an old ballroom above a working men’s club in Belfast. The band had just become a 4-piece, working remotely with London-based longstanding production collaborators Andy Bradfield (The XX, Rufus Wainwright, Queen) and Avril Mackintosh (Bryan Adams). Upon finishing the albums recording sessions, the band headed to the US to perform 22 shows across the US, including 10 showcases at SXSW 2025, NYC, Nashville and a personal invite to perform at Bob Clearmountain’s Apogee studios in Los Angeles. This led them to secure a deal with Propeller Sound Recordings in Nashville, and continuing their Fierce Panda Signing for the UK release.”
Animal Style is a return to the band’s basic loves, a more guitar-focused album with less guitars.”
Seánie Bermingham – The First Telling
Tipp-born Dublin-based folk artist Seánie Bermingham’s debut album The First Telling is a deeply personal album that traces how early experiences of anxiety quietly shape the way we live as adults.
It begins with a childhood moment – a music box from a school trip to Austria, where I had my first panic attack – and follows that thread years later into distant places like South America, where movement and adventure sit alongside internal struggles. Relationships blur into memory, lingering in rooms and in small details, while the urge to forget gives way to the realisation that nothing truly leaves us – we carry it all, just in different forms.
Gradually, the record softens into something more still, leaning into mindfulness and presence, before arriving at its emotional centre: the passing of my grandmother at 100, captured through family voices, shared space, and the quiet weight of final moments. What follows isn’t resolution, but a shift in perspective – towards acceptance, towards living without waiting for things to feel perfect. By the time it returns to the child it began with, the album lands on a simple, hard-earned idea: that healing isn’t about escape, but about learning to live fully alongside everything that’s shaped you.
SexyTadhg – Tadhg EP
New EP from Irish LGBTQ+ breakout SexyTadhg, fusing trad-folk with theatrical pop into one of the more distinctive Irish releases of the week. SexyTadhg’s whole project sits at an interesting intersection of queer identity, theatrical performance and rooted Irish songcraft, and Tadhg is the most fully realised statement so far.
Milk Rain – Saphic Failings EP
The debut EP from Irish garage-rock four-piece Milk Rain, a sharp and emotionally direct set tackling, as they put it, the joys and horrors of a dark queer romance gone wrong. Raw guitar tones, blown-out energy and a strong sense of identity at the centre of it.
Daragh Fleming, Throwing Snow – Welfare
A collaboration between the Cork-based writer and mental health advocate Daragh Fleming and the Donegal-based UK electronic producer Throwing Snow (Ross Tones, a long-time Houndstooth artist), Welfare brings Fleming’s words into the orbit of Throwing Snow’s intricate, club-adjacent electronics. One of the more unexpected and interesting cross-disciplinary pairings of the week, and one with form from a previous collaboration from this time last year.
More.
Muirgen – Loinnir EP
The debut EP from Cork musician Muirgen (pronounced Mwer-inn), self-released this week and featuring a guest turn from broadcaster and TG4 stalwart Hector Ó hEochagáin. Loinnir (pronounced Lun-Ur) leans into the Irish-language tradition while drawing in contemporary sounds, an EP that bridges generations and registers within Irish-language music.
Also released this week
- Anderson .Paak – K-POPS! (Music from and inspired by K-POPS! Motion Picture)
- ear – Rumspringa
- Francis of Delirium – Run, Run Pure Beauty
- Freddie Gibbs – RBT
- Freya Ridings – Mother of Pearl
- Guided By Voices – Crawlspace Of The Pantheon
- Iceage – For Love of Grace & The Hereafter
- Kim Petras – Detour
- Kutmah – Old Ghosts
- Latto – Big Mama
- Merzbow – Synthesis Post-Contact
- Paul McCartney – The Boys of Dungeon Lane
- The Bug Club – Every Single Muscle
- Turnover – Down on Earth
- Violet Grohl – Be Sweet To Me
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.
