lullahush announces new trad electronic album Ithaca

The Irish producer Daniel McIntyre announces an album that follows up the 2024 EP that wondered sonically how to bring Irish trad and electronic music together.

The Athens-based producer from Dublin Lullahush will release Ithaca on April 11th through Future Classic, home to records from Flume, Chet Faker and Sophie previously.

The album “explores how a holistic marriage of traditional Irish music and contemporary electronica can express a unique perspective on modern Irish identity.”

‘Maggie na bhFlaitheas’ (Maggie of the Heavens) is the album’s lead track, and the record continues that theme while interrogating ideas of “pride, home and belonging.” The song takes the reel ‘Over The Moore To Maggie’ and bends into into a fast-paced electronic number.

The album features input from Maija Sofia, Sean-nós singer Saileog Ní Cheannabháin and the artist’s 97-year-old great uncle Jack.

More about the record:

Longing for home in exile has been widespread amongst the Irish diaspora over the years. This includes 19th-century famine refugees, 20th-century exiles fleeing the Catholic Church’s oppression, those who left during the economic depression of the 1980s, and more recently, those affected by Ireland’s housing crisis and Dublin’s embrace of Big Tech. Daniel explores all of this as well as his own odyssey with him now living in Europe as a result of his homeland becoming “economically uninhabitable.” “I miss it, but I have a difficult relationship with it” says McIntyre. “‘Ithaca’ is where Odyssus is trying to get back to in the Odyssey — my search for a sense of home since leaving has made me think about what Ithaca means. Maybe it’s not a place, maybe it’s a series of circumstances, maybe it’s something internal, maybe it’s something you carry around with you.”


This statement of intent sets down a series of aesthetic declarations that form a modern interpretation of Irish romanticism. “I am very excited by the power that sampling offers a bedroom producer like me to build multi-layer narratives and self-referential worlds,” says McIntyre. This is expanded upon across the first half of the record, which opens to the cry of a curlew before leading into Sean-nós singer Saileog Ní Cheannabháin’s ethereal rendition of “An Droighneán Donn” (The Blackthorn Bush). Elsewhere, Maija Sofia’s voice drifts through “Jimmy An Chladaigh” (Jimmy of the Shore) and the bodhrán breaks of “Maija an Uisce” (Maija of the Water), culminating in “Maddy na Farraige” (Maddy Of The Sea), where the maritime longing of The Grey Funnel Line is reimagined as a contemporary Garage workout.

Side B shifts into darker territory with “Kitty na Gaoithe” (Kitty of the Wind), a haunting deconstructed techno interpretation of Irish keening (a funeral singing tradition), followed by the experimental “Dónal na Gealaí” (Daniel of the Moon), where fragmented samples and a Berghain-heavy bass concertina drop create a sense of emotional collapse. A hidden love story threads through the album, reaching its climax with “Máire na Réiltíní” (Mary of the Little Stars), inspired by Odysseus Elitis’ Maria Nefeli and layered with captured moments of an ephemeral affair. The journey concludes with “Raglan Road”, built around a WhatsApp voice note of the artist’s 97-year-old great uncle Jack singing the Patrick Kavanagh poem, interwoven with the artist’s own unadorned voice—bridging generations and leaving the listener with a sense of timeless connection and yearning for unreachable Ithacas.

The next stage in this project’s development will be a collaboration with an ensemble of like-minded musicians who have a shared interest in exploring what the future of traditional music can sound like. “I am trying to find ways of bringing risk and chaos to the show, to make something fragile and intimate that lives and breathes in front of an audience,” continues McIntyre. “My collaborators and I have been working with tapes, feedback, contact mics, live sampling and a haphazard pile of synths, pedals and whatever is lying around in order to articulate live the sentiment of what those processes created.” With gigs planned for this summer the dates will set out not to recreate the album but to expand on it. Every show will be an experiment, no two will be the same, as Lullahush creates arrangements that engage with their subjective experience of each song and its wider cultural context, delving into their stories and iterations as well as the folklore surrounding them, in an attempt to show how electronic methods can really serve the tradition in a comprehensive and reverential way.

Live dates:
1^st May – The Workman’s Club, Dublin w/ Róis (SOLD OUT)

Ithaca is out 11^th April via Future Classic – Pre-save HERE

Tracklisting:
01) An Droighneán Donn
02) Maggie na bhFlaitheas
03) Jimmy an Chladaigh
04) Maija an Uisce
05) Maddy na Farraige
06) Kitty na Gaoithe
07) Dónal na Gealaí
08) Máire na Réiltíní
09) Raglan Road

Follow Lullahush:
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