There’s not enough theatre in Irish music. Maybe as a small nation where everyone knows everyone else or is only a friend away from an introduction, it’s just not something that’s explored that often in a musical guise. Laura Sheeran and Marc Aubele’s Nanu Nanu project flies in the face of such sentiment by doing the character immersion thing well. Calling themselves Glitterface and Mirrorman respectively, they are musicians who make “Alien-pop” music.
Unit One is the duo’s debut and it perfectly encapsulates that sentiment. The ten tracks conjure up music made in the future, or at least, the hopeful sound of what music will sound like some time away from the present. It’s an album with experimental flavours, featuring songs that are electronic in vein, which touch on coldwave synthesizer sounds, industrial tones, synthetically-altered vocals, electro flourishes and dark-edged rhythms.
Standouts include the driving digital siren-pop on ‘The Gift’, the previously-released dystopian pop of ‘Skin’, the Steve Liriks-rap-featuring dub-hop of ‘The Drop’ which reminds me of Anti-Pop Consortium and the cold electronic soundtrack feel of ‘Dirt’ while ‘Pocket Of Gold’ really exudes the “alien-pop” tag.
The album is released on Flaming June Records this Friday and is accompanied by a comic book “featuring the adventures of Nanu Nanu in various locations and times in Earth’s history.” Launch gigs take place this Thursday at Tower Records’ Live at Madison at 6:30pm and later that night at Zebra in Whelan’s from 10pm.
Tour dates
May 30 – LAUNCH, DUBLIN, 6.30pm– Tower Records live @ Madison
May 30 – LAUNCH, DUBLIN, 10pm Zebra @ Whelans
May 31 – CORK, Half Moon Theatre.
June 7 – GALWAY The Factory
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, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
Awesome <3, can't wait to get a copy.