Best of 2023 | Best albums | Best songs | Irish albums | Best Of Podcasts | Guest lists |
Galway-based DJ and broadcaster Cian Ó Cíobháin has been presenting An Taobh Tuathail weeknights on RTÉ RnaG since 1999. Since restrictions lifted, his weekends have been spent hosting Disco Dána parties in intimate venues around the country and soundtracking alternative weddings for music-loving sweethearts.
See Cian’s previous choices from 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016. Over to Cian.
This year he has gone for an all-Irish top 10 (not in any particular order, they’re all number ones).
Aoife Nessa Frances
Fantasy
One of the year’s most beautiful songs. All the elements perfectly gel together: the lure of Aoife’s gentle vocals, the constant of Méabh McKenna plucking her harp, the barely-there but essential electronic atmospherics, the sheer otherworldly dream-space that the song seems to occupy.
The Holy Roman Army
Trans-Europa
The title suggests a link with the Kraftwerkian dream of linking the motorways and byroads of Europe (“Von Carlow nach Kharkiv, Von Tromso nach Faro”) and on this track I hear composer Chris Coffey yearn for this bygone era, when the dream of a connected, border-less Europe still seemed tenable, where the possibilities of the future seemed endless, endless.
Mike Smalle
Echoes Across The Waves
Every track on former Cane 141’s Mike Smalle’s Calling Long Distance EP deserves your attention, but most especially this slab of haunting electronica. I was particularly drawn the mournful and memorable riff that emerges about one minute 40 seconds in that gently tugs on the heart-strings and by the track’s finale has began to sound like a long, lost Durutti Column recording.
Super Extra Bonus Party
Line Before The Line (feat Emma Hanlon)
This song jumped out of the speakers when I first heard it in last summer, reminding me of ‘Forever Changes’-era Love, reworked by Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve, with Calexico on vibes.
Trá Pháidín
cé mo dhuine siúl sa hi-vis
Motorik psychedelia from An 424, title of Trá Pháidín’s debut album and the road known colloquially in Connemara as ‘Bóthar Chois Fharraige’, evoking a westward journey, rays of sunshine piercing through the ubiquitous stone walls, like diamonds in the distance.
Natalia Beylis
Black Sea, 1967
A gorgeous piece of instrumental music composed on a CRB Elettronica Ancona keyboard, located by composer Natalia Beylis in a tangle of old, discarded electronic flotsam in a recycling centre in Leitrim some time ago. The keyboard remained unused for many years until one day she plugged it in and after some minor repairs, set about making sounds that seem to move the composer in a manner that only water does. The entire album is worth investigating, but this track is an excellent primer.
SELK
I’ll Stay Here Now
Having enjoyed singer’s Anna Jordan voice on mostly songs of a folk-ish hue, her voice sounds especially distinct navigating the ambient terrain of this hushed number from recent album Shed The Skin.
Under Tears
Good Drying Weather
Originally from Dublin, but based in Berlin, you may have heard Julie Chance’s previous more synth-y tracks uder her Evvol electo-pop moniker (with Jane Arnison), but the minimal, acoustic arrangement of this break-up song powerfully hits in a manner that brings to my mind the atmosphere of Kristin Hersh’s 1993 debut LP Hips & Makers.
ZOid feat Miriam Ingram
Snowfall Present
The output from Dubliner Daniel Jacobson’s 2023 oeuvre was as varied as it was excellent, whether making jazz-tinged techno, flat-out acid trax, or collaborating with singers such as Miriam Ingram, on this, one of the stand-out orch-pop treats on his most recent and third LP ‘Internal Space Element.’
Jay Riordan
Doce Abóbora
Heart-of-a-Saturday-night electro banger from Dubliner Jay Riordan’s ace Power Moves EP on the consistent and enduring Takeover label (once of Belfast, now of west Kerry).
See all Guestlist of 2023 choices
Best of 2023 | Best albums | Best songs | Irish albums | Best Of Podcasts | Guest lists |
