Here’s a rundown of new releases on DSPs and physical releases in record shops this week.
Nialler9 keeps a rolling list of Irish album releases for 2025.
New Albums and EPs:
New Albums
Black Country, New Road – Forever Howlong
Black Country, New Road’s first studio album since 2022’s seminal Ants From Up There, and since the departure of singer Isaac Wood. This third album is produced by James Ford (Fontaines D.C., The Last Dinner Party, Beth Gibbons), and vocal duties shared between Tyler Hyde, Georgia Ellery, and May Kershaw.
A detailed record that draws from everything from folk to prog via baroque pop and touches of alt-rock – with nods to everything from Joanna Newsom to Randy Newman via Fiona Apple and Janis Ian.
Black Country, New Road announce EU, UK and Irish dates
Penelope Trappes – A Requiem
Brighton-based Australian vocalist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Penelope Trappes (The Golden Filter) releases a fifth solo album on One Little Independent Records.
‘A Requiem’ collects ten haunting, ambient soundscapes – incantations of dreams and nightmares, of death and grief, as well as power and autonomy. Carnal, transcendent cello drones are used to exorcise historical and generational traumas in an evocative and macabre piece of gothic experimentalism.
Seeking solitude for what she knew would be an intense and cathartic writing experience, Trappes travelled to Scotland and isolated completely. Amidst meditative and psychedelic states, she channeled demons and accessed parts of herself she’d long desired to cleanse. During candle-lit recording sessions she found herself drawn to cello, an instrument she has no formal training in, she explains, “I always felt an affinity toward the cello, I embraced it, held it, and became one with it as a way to accompany my voice. The nerve-like strings of the cello became external chords of my vocal folds… I scratched on them, leaned into them, and conjured all of the textures I could muster”...
Jinx Lennon – The Hate Agents Leer At The Last Isle Of Hope
The Dundalk punk poet releases his fourteenth studio album.
The album title is a “a nod to the perilous state of affairs we are encountering as a nation on the outer edge of Europe and the rise of the anti immigration groups”, Jinx says.
It features 26 songs with titles like ‘BMW’s Don’t Like Bikes’, ‘Mad For Mass’, ‘Stop Hiding Behind The Flag’, ‘Bouncy Castle Catholics’, ‘Unwanted Attention In The Gym’, ‘Pub Drama’ and ‘Music Is My Alcohol’.
As is celebrated on the new single ‘What Else’, the album opener the album features “songs about modern life in Ireland the madness and the magic of it and the belief in song and the good crusade of the van on the road spreading the tunes as far as we can go.”
The Hate Agents Leer At The Last Isle Of Hope was recorded and engineered by Chris Barry in Dublin an features sean-nos experimental producer and singer Róis, Jamie Bishop (Muckno/Shamrock Showband) and Conor McAuley (Shamrock Showband).
Djo – The Crux
Stranger Things’ actor Joe Keery’s alternative pop indie project releases album three.
Building on having one of the most streamed song of the year on Spotify last year, Keery has become a huge concern. He’s on tour all summer and supports Noah Kahan in Marlay Park this summer.
The Crux was co-produced by Keery and his long-time collaborator Adam Thein and recorded Electric Lady Studios . It features lush guitars and instrumentation reminiscent of late 60’s and 70’s pop.
Dj Koze – Music Can Hear Us
Everyone’s favourite psychedelic house producer’s first album in seven years. The new album takes in dancehall, Afrobeats and downtempo-flavoured angles of house and electronica, and features Damon Albarn, Sophia Kennedy, Sofia Kourtesis, Soap & Skin and more.
Σtella – Adagio
Greek artist Σtella (pronounced Stella) new album on Sub Pop is a pop record that feels like a warm blanket; it swaddles its listeners with nylon-string guitars, featherlight percussion, psychedelic keyboards, and staccato drums.
Written and recorded over the span of five years with a consortium of international collaborators, including !!!’s Rafael Cohen and British songwriter Gabriel Stebbing, Adagio is a 27-minute meditation on love and desire, rest, and time.
Though the bulk of it is sung in English, as all her records have been, Σtella also delivers her first two songs in Greek, “Omorfo Mou,” and a cover of a 1969 cult classic of the Greek New Wave, Litsa Sakellariou’s “Ta Vimata.”
Barker – Stochastic Drift
This new album from electronic producer Barker’s moves his approach even further into “harmonic chaos and dreamy freeform float.”
“I’d been working with an approach that was quite deliberate and goal-oriented before, but I realised this wasn’t so helpful in the context of uncertainty. Being suddenly unemployed and stuck at home for an indefinite amount of time, with one disruption after another, it was like the target kept moving and I didn’t know what to aim at.” Barker reflects. “I noticed this unpredictability starting to creep into what I was making, and tracks were ending up a long way from the intentions they started with. So the challenge for this record was to try to embrace that process, to let go of expectations.”
Anika – Abyss
Annika Henderson aka Anika is the British Berlin-based artist with new album out today on Sacred Bones.
Abyss was born out of the frustration, anger, and confusion Henderson feels from existing in our contemporary world. Notably heavier than previous releases, the 10-track album is raw, urgent, and fueled by strong emotions.
Anika has announced a full European tour for this spring including shows in London, Bristol, Manchester, Leeds, Belfast, Dublin and Brighton.
Anika plays Whelan’s Dublin on May 3rd.
David Longstreth, stargaze & Dirty Projectors – Song Of The Earth
Dave Longstreth gets top billing here with his band Dirty Projectors (Felicia Douglass, Maia Friedman, Olga Bell) performing alongside the Berlin-based chamber orchestra s t a r g a z e on album that is “a song cycle for orchestra and voices.”
The album also features Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie), Steve Lacy, Patrick Shiroishi, Anastasia Coope, Tim Bernardes, Ayoni, Portraits of Tracy, and the author David Wallace-Wells.
Longstreth wrote the first draft of Song of the Earth in six “manic” weeks for a commission arranged by s t a r g a z e, feeling disoriented, but also galvanised, by the moment he was in: the pandemic chaos, the “radical psychedelia” of new fatherhood, the novelty of writing for large ensemble. He then spent three years revising, rewriting, rearranging, and recording in studios and homes in the Netherlands, Los Angeles, and New York City.
Jane Remover – Revengeseekerz
The third studio album by the New Jersey musician Jane Remover. Danny Brown features on the album that draws from digicore, hyperpop, hardcore, and hip-hop.
The Null Club – The Null Club
Gilla Band’s Alan Duggan Borges new project releases an EP that features Mandy, Indiana’s Valentine Caulfield, Faris Badwan (The Horrors), Valentine Caulfield (Mandy, Indiana) and E L U C I D (Armand Hammer).
Better know as being the guitarist of Gilla Band, Alan Duggan-Borges has spent the last few years writing and producing music using an array of old synths, drum machines, and guitars – leaning into noise, techno and experimental hip hop, as well as post-punk.
Tour Dates
2nd May – The Workmans Club – Dublin
13th May – Corsica Studios – London
14th May – Rough Trade – Bristol
16th May – Yes, The Basement – Manchester
Skrillex – F*CK U SKRILLEX YOU THINK UR ANDY WARHOL BUT UR NOT!! <3
A surprise 34-track album from the EDM producer with guests 100 gecs’ Dylan Brady, Sigur Rós’ Jónsi, and Boys Noize all featuring. The album returns to complex electronic drops and dubstep-leaning beats after his more recent forays into bass on Quest For Fire and
It is likely Skrillex’s last album for for Warner Music Group sublabel Atlantic Records and begin his shift towards working as an “‘independent’ artist”.
During ‘Biggy Bap’ the song stops and “This beat drop has been seized by Atlantic Records and has been replaced with silence”.
Rustal – The Path EP
Dublin produccer Peter Sweeney brings deep dubby techno to a new release on New York label BlackCat Records. The three tracks were all made and recorded in one take last summer at BlackCat Recordings in New York with a contemporary dub reggae remix by label boss Jack Russell and the label artist Sonuga.
Vinyl only.
Dronal – If We Land EP
A companion piece to Alex Leonard’s Dronal project 2023 album Whilst We Fall, merging his passion for ambient/drone music with that of field recordings.
Also released today
- Boldy James & V Don – Alphabet Highway
- Rachel Chinouriri – Little House
- Craig Finn – Always Been
- Florist – Jellywish
- Elton John & Brandi Carlile – Who Believes In Angels?
- Panchiko – Ginkgo
- Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Death Hilarious
- Sleigh Bells – Bunky Becky Birthday Boy
- Yann Tiersen – Rathlin from a Distance | The Liquid Hour
- The Waterboys – Life, Death and Dennis Hopper
- Marlon Williams – Te Whare Tīwekaweka
- Dustin Wong – Gloria
- 2hollis – star
