Best of 2024 | Best albums | Best songs | Irish albums | Best Of Podcasts | Guest lists |
Galway-based DJ and broadcaster Cian Ó Cíobháin celebrated 25 years of his radio show An Taobh Tuathail this year. When not on the airwaves, Cian has been hosting Disco Dána parties in intimate venues around the country and DJing alternative weddings for music-loving sweethearts.
See Cian’s previous choices from 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016. Over to Cian.
I’m going for an all-Irish top 10 again this year. The list isn’t in any particular order. I could’ve easily chosen over a hundred essential tracks. Thanks to all the music-makers for the great music you sent my way this year.
Ordnance Survey ft Colm O Ciosóig -1HZ Delta
For sheer productivity and longevity, there are few artists that can hold a candle to the oeuvre of Neil O’Connor, once of Somadrone, now of Ordnance Survey. His music has featured on my radio show for over two decades and this gorgeous collaboration from his recent LP Biofeedback Suite with My Bloody Valentine’s Colm Ó Ciosóig is as powerful as anything that I’ve heard from his extensive and brilliant back catalogue.
Stella & The Dreaming – A short ballad for frankie and everything we shared (in E flat)
As a non-musician / person-who-doesn’t-compose-music, I regularly wonder at the process of how artists bring new songs and music into our world. Sometimes the end result might come in the form of a complex work, full of exquisite layers that gradually come together to form a whole. But often it’s just about sheer simplicity – a pared back piano, a gentle voice where the ache is present, in the vein of this torch song, one of three drop-dead gorgeous songs that Stella Hennessy released this year.
Coolgirl – Biting Nail
This gorgeous instrumental from Lizzie Fitzpatrick (who sang and played guitar with Bitch Falcon … now Dose) was a piece of music that made quite an impression on me in 2024. The closest point of reference I found for it in the music library of my imagination, is right next to Mica Levi’s soundtrack for Under The Skin. I also love it for its timelessness: it’s almost impossible for a casual listener to pinpoint what decade it was made in.
Roslyn Steer – The Women About You
Some of the music on Roslyn Steer’s magnificent Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird album exudes a similar spirit as the instrumental piano pieces on the early solo albums of fellow Corkonian Peadar Ó Riada. Of this earth, as if wrung from the dark winter soil, yet somehow also incongruously connected to some other unseen dimension. She’ll take you there.
New Jackson – Out Of Reach
I bet David Kitt would make for a great human jukebox. Add a shilling to the slot and ask him to compose a song, any genre you fancy and he’ll deliver with panache. His breathtaking and diverse back catalogue certainly backs this up. There were numerous heavenly pop hits on his New Jackson project’s Oops …Pop LP this year and only because I can pick one, I’m opting for this sunny-side-up slice of disco-pop. A morning radio hit in an alternative universe if ever there was one.
Sal Dulu – Nafuschia
Snippets of choral music flit around a gorgeous classical arrangement, with odd sweeping drum brushes and scatter-dash bursts of unsettling noise, all seemingly incongruous elements, yet completely making sense in the way Sal Dule brings them together. The closest reference point for me was Oneohtrix Point Never’s R Plus 7 from 2013. Both brilliant, both utterly beguiling.
Naive Ted – Death Of Me
I’ve shoehorned this in here as a 2024 release because I wanted to draw your attention to the genius of Naive Ted, if you’ve not already had the pleasure of hearing his work. I say ‘shoehorned’, as this track was previously available, but re-surfaced of late on a compilation of Naive Ted’s work called Output (Works 2013-2021), which qualifies it as a 2024 release (for the purposes of this list). As well as being an outrageously talented DJ and a tireless activist in his local community, Naive Ted is a producer brimming with ideas. The compilation on which this features is chock-full of imagination and exudes the impish spirit of what I like to call ‘eerie Éire’ (where myths of the past collide with the tricka-trick-technology of the 21st century).
Christoper Colm Morrin – Sketches 5
I’ve only met Christopher Colm Morrin once. He called to my house one day and sketched a portrait of me. I’m not sure if I was aware of his talents as a music maker until earlier this year. He contacted me when he heard that my radio show would be celebrating 25 years on air in early May and that this milestone would be celebrated by only featuring previously unreleased music on the airwaves all week long. He sent me this sketch from an album that would be released on Stray Signals later in the year and it made an instant impact. So desolate, it practically re-arranged my heart-strings.
lullahush – An Todhchaí
Nothing terrifies me more that hearing that someone has attempted a hybrid betwixt Irish traditional music and electronic music of any form. When the press release on this particular release professed to merge trad with Chicago-style Footwork, I felt a deep apprehension in the pit of my stomach as well as an overwhelming urge to start a petition banning any household from possessing both a bodhrán and an 808. I expected to be utterly disappointed. How wrong was I? All three tracks on the EP are wonderful, fusing elements of both music worlds together with style and no shortage of wit. And, in the context of this track, the sample of legendary Clare accordonist Tony McMahon wondering about the future of Irish traditional music never sounded so apt.
Chequerboard – True North
For over two decades, John Lambert has been quietly making some of the most soulful music that I’ve ever ever heard. It amazes me that his music isn’t ubiquitous on the soundtracks of indie movies and leftfield TV shows. To sit and observe him play guitar in person is one of life’s great joys.
Best of 2024 | Best albums | Best songs | Irish albums | Best Of Podcasts | Guest lists |
