New albums recommended: Fontaines D.C., The Avalanches, They Are Gutting a Body of Water, Bibio & Dorian Concept, banríon, chósta and more

Fontaines D.C. lead this week’s new releases with the biggest Irish album of the year. Around it, The Avalanches resurface after six years, Rachel Chinouriri and NAO return, Max Richter reckons with the state of things, and there is a deep seam of electronic music from Matthew Herbert, Jacques Greene, Two Shell, TSHA, Djrum and more. It is a huge week for Irish releases too, with new records from Arborist, banríon, chósta, Christian Cohle, Jack Tiraquon and The Kates, plus a 30th anniversary reissue of an Ash classic.

Nialler9 keeps a rolling list of Irish album releases for 2026.

Album of the week

Fontaines D.C. – Dopamine Chamber

Our album of the week. The Dublin band’s fifth album pushes electronics, trip-hop rhythms and cinematic, string-assisted atmospheres to the front while using four decades of rock as raw material. Reunited with producer James Ford, it is tighter and more defined than Romance, Grian Chatten edging towards rap in places over Tom Coll’s standout drumming. ‘Marianne’ sets regal strings against ’80s synths, ‘Mimesis’ rides a New Order-style bassline, and ‘Where Is Gone?’ brings in Rosalía for the band’s first studio guest. As we said in our review, it is a lush, stadium-sized modern rock record, uncompromising and cohesive as it becomes the first Fontaines album that barely feels Irish.

Read the review in full.

Recommended albums

The Avalanches – No Bad Memories

The Australian group return with their fourth album and first in six years, a sprawling 31-track collage that picks up the sample-stitched, sun-blind maximalism of Since I Left You and Wildflower. This time there is a concept under it: No Bad Memories digs into the overlap of advertising, memory and nostalgia, turning jingles, sonic logos, commercials and the hums of old technology into warm, euphoric portals back to childhood and collective memory.

The guest cast is something: Karen O, John Glacier, Rivers Cuomo, Barry Can’t Swim, Jamie xx and Loaded Honey among the voices, alongside Ryoji Ikeda, Portraits of Tracy, Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Haruomi Hosono and Suzanne Ciani, who helped build the sound of brands like Coca-Cola and Atari. Lead single ‘Can’t Get Over Losing You’ features Portraits of Tracy, and the centrepiece ‘I Give Everything I Have 2 U’ comes with a one-take video starring Haley Joel Osment weaving through Shibuya traffic, who also voices some of the fake ads along with Mike Patton

I hate to say it but No Bad Memories does very little to stir anything in me. It makes sense that the band that made Since I Left You 25 years ago would evolve their methods, but their answer these days appears to be let’s bring our sample-frenzied style into a modern DAW and apply the tropes of 21st century dance music that has sprouted around them since.

To the point where this cloying record just sounds like a metronomic hyperactive mash of everything you’ve heard in dance music before – with annoying advert interludes, the brief fizzy thrill of who’s-singing-next matched with dayglow sunny melodies.

It’s like being on a relentless attention-grabbing rollercoaster you just want to get off from. When it calms down and gives the music room to breathe in the second half of the album’s 31 tracks, it fares better but it was hard going to get there.

Bibio & Dorian Concept – Answers

A first full collaboration between Bibio, the British producer Stephen Wilkinson, and the Austrian keyboardist and producer Dorian Concept, out on Warp. The instrumental album Answers weaves Bibio’s woozy, pastoral electronica together with Dorian Concept’s fluid synth playing, the single ‘Lichen Trip’ showing how naturally the two sit together. Warm, intricate and gently psychedelic, it is a meeting of two distinctive voices on the same label.

They Are Gutting a Body of Water – KOOL FAITH / LOOSIES II

The Philadelphia project of Douglas Dulgarian pushes shoegaze through a digital blender, splicing blown-out guitars with glitch, digicore and hip-hop textures. KOOL FAITH / LOOSIES II is more of that restless, genre-melting noise-pop, equal parts haze and chaos. A thrilling listen for anyone who likes their guitars dissolved into static, and a follow on from one of my albums of 2025 in Lotto.

Sophia Stel – the greatest album of all time

The rising songwriter makes her debut with the knowingly titled the greatest album of all time, trading in bright, sharp-witted electro-pop. Led by the single ‘I Do’, it pairs big hooks with a wink, announcing a confident new pop voice. A debut that backs up its cheek with the songs to match.

@ – Autosmile

The hard-to-google Baltimore-based art-folk duo Victoria Rose and Stone Filipczak aka @ make their 4AD debut with second album Autosmile, a subtly spellbinding blend of folk, ambient pop and gentle experimentation.

Lead single and title track ‘Autosmile’ is nearly seven minutes long and arrived on 4AD – a hypnotic song about the mystery of a strongly-tethered relationship  “I don’t know how I belong to you, but I do somehow,” Rose sings as the song makes use of the interlocking vocal harmonies, acoustic passages, guiro percussion and guitar-expressed colour.

A record that casts a slow, enticing spell.

They play Workman’s Dublin on November 16th.

banríon – Untarnishing

Róisín Ní Haicéid’s banríon steps from full-band indie-rock into something more intimate and revealing on Untarnishing, her debut album and the start of a solo era. Written as a time capsule of 2022 to 2024 and shaped partly by songwriting workshops with Adrianne Lenker and Florist, its nine songs turn over love, loss, belonging and self-forgiveness with her wit and candour intact. Lead track ‘HimNotTo’, born of her first queer relationship, channels Riot Grrrl defiance against the male gaze, while ‘Roseland’ reaches back to her grandparents’ home in Donegal and ‘Forgiving’ makes peace with a surgical accident she lived through at 17. A tender, clear-eyed record about looking back and staying in the present.

chósta – harmony in solitude

Conor Kelly’s second album as chósta is the first to feature his voice , folding an indie sensibility into the electronic and ambient textures he has worked in to date. The result bridges the head and the heart, song structure drifting in and out of atmosphere. A thoughtful next step from a producer with a fine ear for mood.

“A lot has happened in three years. I suffered heartbreak, lost my Grandmother (her voice is sampled on the track ‘Fragments’) and I’ve overcome a lot of self-esteem and anxiety issues in that time. I’ve actively tried to spend less time on social media. I mean, how do we navigate unhealthy comparison with others in an age when access to someone younger, more talented, entertaining, better looking or wealthy is available at the click of a button? To circle back to Heat, the antagonist Neil McCauley has a recurring dream about drowning which he signifies as not having enough time to accomplish everything he wants to, and I often have that same fear. When reflecting on this album lyrically, it certainly feels like me processing the death of a dream but maybe also the beginning of a new one. 

Being brutally honest, I wasn’t sure if I would ever release another body of work such as this. The campaign around Twilight Transmission wore me out mentally. Any momentum I had perished and I felt like the only artist ever to release a debut album and see their opportunities diminish. I put so much into it for minuscule return and it left me drained emotionally, financially and spiritually. At the same time, I also probably got caught up in aspirational ideas and wrapped up too much of my identity in being a musician and defining myself by that. A realisation dawned on me; I was doing it for the wrong reasons and had forgotten why I started in the first place – the love of music. Reconnecting with that has probably been the most valuable aspect of this entire process. “

Saint Abdullah & Eomac – When The Sandbox Has No Edge

A continuing collaboration between the Iranian-American brothers Saint Abdullah and the Dublin producer Eomac, real name Ian McDonnell. On their fifth album now on Planet Mu, the trio make dense, politically charged experimental electronics, folding field recordings and Middle Eastern samples into club-adjacent abstraction. Challenging, immersive music with a strong sense of purpose. Armand Hammer, Richie Culver and Abbas Zahedi are among the guests. This one has a more overt hip-hop influence.

Rachel Chinouriri – I Think I Spoke Too Soon

The British-Zimbabwean songwriter follows her breakthrough debut What a Devastating Turn of Events with I Think I Spoke Too Soon, another set of sharp, emotionally candid indie-pop. Chinouriri writes about heartbreak and self-doubt with a directness that has won her a devoted following, wrapping hard feelings in bright, hook-filled songs. A confident second step from one of British pop’s most relatable voices.

Rachel Chinouriri was just announced for 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin on Tuesday, 1 June 2027.

Dummy – do you love the color of the sky?

The Los Angeles band Dummy fold motorik krautrock, shoegaze and bright synth-pop into something hypnotic and melodic. do you love the color of the sky? leans into that collision of drone and tune, propulsive and dreamy at once. One for fans of Stereolab and Broadcast with a contemporary edge.

Dummy Live :

Thu. Jan. 21 – Bristol, UK @ Strange Brew
Fri. Jan. 22 – Leeds, UK @ The Attic
Sat. Jan. 23 – Dublin, Ireland @ Bello Bar
Mon. Jan. 25 – Edinburgh, Scotland @ Mash House
Tue. Jan. 26 – Manchester, UK @ YES Pink Room
Wed. Jan. 27 – Birmingham, UK @ Hare and Hounds
Thu. Jan. 28 – London, UK @ Moth Club
Sat. Jan. 30 – Paris, France @ Le Chinois
Sun. Jan. 31 – Tourcoing, France @ Le Grand Mix
Mon. Feb. 1 – Bruges, Belgium @ Cactus
Wed. Feb. 3 – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso Noord Tolhuistuin
Thu. Feb. 4 – Berlin, Germany @ Kantine am Berghain

Djrum – DJ-Kicks: Djrum

The London producer Felix Manuel, whose own music spans jungle, techno, ambient and modern classical, takes on the long-running DJ-Kicks mix series. Expect a deep, wide-ranging journey that moves between styles with the same fluid intelligence as his productions. A mix for close listening as much as the dancefloor.

Jacques Greene – jg

The Montreal producer has brought heart-on-sleeve emotion to dance music for over 15 years, and jg is the first record he calls built unapologetically for the dancefloor. His third album and first since 2019’s Dawn Chorus, out on LUCKYME, it sharpens his melodic instinct into 11 club tracks drawn from his creative circle, with guests including DJ BORING, Ouri, Jonah Yano, umru, crushed and Sølv. It arrives after his Venice-premiered film score with Nosaj Thing as Verses GT. Emotive, widescreen music still built for both the floor and the comedown.

Gotts Street Park – Somewhere Between

The Leeds trio built their name on warm, vintage-leaning soul, funk and cinematic instrumentals, and as go-to collaborators and producers. Somewhere Between was captured live in the room, and it shows in its easy, late-night groove, with guest turns including Pip Millett. Supple, soulful music made by players locked in together.

Max Richter – While The Flood Rages

The German-British composer and pianist returns with While The Flood Rages, a standalone companion work drawn from his third collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor, the ballet MaddAddam, itself inspired by Margaret Atwood’s trilogy. Across 15 tracks and three acts it engages head-on with ecological crisis, technological acceleration and human connection, building its textures from processed ocean recordings, electromagnetic hum and even manipulated gunfire, a falling piano motif returning throughout. Out on Decca, it closes on the luminous lead single ‘Now We Can Sing’. A typically absorbing record from one of the defining voices in contemporary composition.

NAO – Autumn

The London singer returns with Autumn, more of the elastic, soulful pop she calls wonky funk, made with Dave Okumu. NAO has always paired a remarkable voice with adventurous production, and her songwriting has grown warmer and more reflective across each record and this is her fifth. A rich, grown-up return from a singular British soul talent.

Two Shell – Infinite Now

The elusive, perpetually online UK electronic duo deal in hyper-polished, playful club music that treats pop, rave and internet culture as one big sandpit. Infinite Now brings their restless, ultra-modern sound-design to bear on hooks that lodge instantly. Have completely lost interest in Two Shell with their increasing use of AI vocals and twist towards pure sugar pop dance music so be wary.

Matthew Herbert – Theukhasmorefoodbanksthanbranchesofmcdonalds.com

The British electronic auteur has built a career turning everyday sound and political provocation into music, and the run-on web-address title here tells you exactly where his anger sits. theukhasmorefoodbanksthanbranchesofmcdonalds.com is an album by made entirely from samples of everyday food bank items such as pasta, cereal, tinned fruit, nappies and toilet roll, it represents the latest iteration of Herbert’s long-standing interest in food and the systems that underpin it (Plat du Jour, One Pig, etc). 

To get the album you have to make promise to make a charity donation / take a leading question box-ticking exercise at the website.

Arborist – Looking For Love

The Belfast singer-songwriter Mark McCambridge returns as Arborist with Looking For Love, a record he frames as a love letter to his home city. His literate, Americana-tinged songwriting has always carried a strong sense of place, and here it turns that eye on Belfast itself, finding tenderness and grit in equal measure.

UK and Ireland shows this month:

15th October: The Harrison, Belfast
20th October: The International, Leicester *
21st October: South Street Arts Centre, Reading *
22nd October: Cambridge Junction, Cambridge *
23rd October: Adrian Flux Waterfront, Norwich *
24-25th October: Boia Festival, St.David’s, Wales
5th November: Cleere’s, Kilkenny, Ireland
6th November: Phil Grimes, Waterford, Ireland
12th Nov: The Cove, Hastings, England
15th Nov: The Waiting Room, London, England
17th Nov: Folklore Rooms, Brighton, England
19th Nov: The Empire, Belfast, Ireland
20th Nov: Yarn, Ballycastle, Ireland
22nd Nov: The Savoy, Cork, Ireland
26th Nov: Monroe’s, Galway, Ireland
*supporting Duke Special

Christian Cohle – Queen of Ashes

Heart-on-sleeve, throwback alternative art-rock with soft edges, Queen of Ashes wears its influences openly, drawing on Talk Talk, Bowie and Roxy Music. Christian Cohle leans into drama and texture, building songs that feel widescreen and deeply felt on his third album, a swerve from the first’s textured electronic-driven songs. For anyone who likes their rock romantic and a little theatrical.

Launch show Dublin on November 13th.

Francis Harris & Gareth Quinn Redmond – Eyes Bright and Low

A collaboration that blends analogue and digital synthesis with piano, Eyes Bright and Low brings together the American producer Francis Harris and the Irish composer Gareth Quinn Redmond, with guest vocals from Rachael Lavelle. The pair deal in slow, deep listening, the music patient and enveloping. A gorgeous, unhurried record for the headphones.

Jack Tiraquon – The World Overhead

The third and final part of Jack Tiraquon’s Mr. 8040 space saga (Space Dimension Controller) brings the story back to earth. It is an ambitious, concept-driven close to the trilogy, marrying narrative scope with the producer’s widescreen electronic pop. A satisfying landing for a project that has aimed to the interstellar throughout.

Jack Tiraquon live shows in Dublin and Belfast at the end of the month.

The Kates – Between Takes

The West Cork band’s Between Takes is both their debut and their final album, a record about making time for music alongside work and family. There is a hard-won warmth to that premise, and the songs carry it with melodic folk heart. They launch it at DeBarra’s in Clonakilty, a fitting home for a very West Cork farewell.

The title reflects the reason behind this, struggles they have faced behind the scenes as musicians, women, and parents, finding the time to pursue their passion, to follow their authentic truth and to create visibility for women in music.

The Kates are Eve Clague, Liz Clark, Mary Beth O Mahony, Míde Houlihan and Paula K.

Live shows:

• October 16 – DeBarra’s Clonakilty – Sold Out
• October 26 – Cork Jazz Monday, Crane Lane
• December 4 – Levis’ Ballydehob 

Cathal Caulfield – Welcome the Stranger into Tipsy House

The Mayo fiddle player and folk singer Cathal Caulfield, whose playing marked the return of For Those I Love on ‘Of The Sorrows’, makes his solo debut with Welcome the Stranger into Tipsy House. Most of its 15 tracks are unaccompanied solo fiddle, reels, hornpipes, airs and songs with roots reaching back to pre-Famine Ireland, partly born of Covid isolation. The banshee-haunted single ‘Finvola, the Gem of the Roe’, which he calls his most experimental fiddle song yet, shows how far he pushes the form. He launches it in the Backroom of The Cobblestone in Dublin on Saturday November 14th.

Antoni O’Breskey & Consuelo Nerea Breschi – A Wild Inhabitation

A father-daughter collaboration, A Wild Inhabitation blends traditional songs with minimalism, electronica and jazz, moving fluidly across forms and generations. It is a warm, exploratory record built on a deep musical bond between Antoni O’Breskey and his daughter, singer and fiddler Consuelo Nerea Breschi (Varo / Landless / Rattling Ark). 

It also features esteemed Irish artists Ultan O’Brien (Slow Moving Clouds), Kevin Murphy (Rattling Ark), Paatho Cummins (Paahto & The Bull), Ross Chaney (John Francis Flynn band), Jack Duffy (Junior Brother band), Barry Carroll, Matthew Jacobson, Brenda Castles and Alex Borwick, alongside Italian cellist and producer Davide Viterbo (Distant City).

They launch it at the National Concert Hall in Dublin on October 22nd.

Ash – 1977 (30th Anniversary Edition)

Ash’s debut 1977 turns 30, reissued across 2LP, 2CD and digital formats. Still one of the great teenage rock records, its rush of ‘Girl From Mars’, ‘Goldfinger’ and ‘Oh Yeah’ captures the Downpatrick trio at their most giddy and tuneful. A reminder of just how many hooks they packed into one record before they were out of their teens.

Nikki Nair – Majestic Animals EP

The American producer Nikki Nair has become one of the most restless names in contemporary bass and club music, wrong-footing dancefloors with mutant rhythms and sly humour. The Majestic Animals EP is another hit of his skewed, high-energy approach – “something like Philip Glass composing for Sonic the Hedgehog, but built into dexterous footwork/jungle shapes.”

Declan O’Rourke – Oceanic

The acclaimed Irish singer-songwriter returns with his eighth album Oceanic, recorded in Sydney with his longtime friend and Midnight Oil guitarist Jim Moginie. It is a full-circle record: O’Rourke first put songs to tape in Australia at 19 and named his 2004 debut Since Kyabram after the rural Victorian town. The focus track ‘Miracles and Mirages’, written the day the pair first met 20 years ago and rediscovered for these sessions, sets the tone, and following the Paul Weller-produced Arrivals it is a warm, assured step on. He plays Vicar Street on October 17th.

Pebbledash – Live At St. Luke’s EP

The Cork band Pebbledash capture their feedback-laden, folk-indebted live sound on Live At St. Luke’s, recorded in the deconsecrated St Luke’s church in Cork City. It reimagines audience favourites ‘Killer Lover’ and ‘Tiles and Moss’ and leans into the traditional undercurrent running through their catalogue, taking in ‘O’ The Wind’, ‘Asha’s Waltz’, ‘Cell’ and the cinematic ‘Carraig Aonair’. Recorded, mixed and mastered by Enda Boyle, it is a vivid document of a band at their most transporting live.

NOTIFY – For Now

The Irish ensemble NOTIFY share their new album For Now, rooted in traditional music but built on improvisation and collaboration. The six-piece, Pádraig Rynne, Tara Breen, Davie Ryan, Adam Taylor, Rory McCarthy and Hugh Dillon, cut much of it live in the room, keeping first takes and letting unplanned ideas redirect the music, opening reels, jigs and slow airs into odd metres and less predictable shapes. Two-time Grammy winner Rhiannon Giddens and Galway songwriter Niamh Regan guest, and place runs through the record, its tunes named for the homes and landscapes that shaped the band.

TOMORA – Celebration EP

TOMORA is the project pairing Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers with the Norwegian singer Aurora. The Celebration EP sets Rowlands’s propulsive, psychedelic electronics against Aurora’s soaring voice, a meeting of big-room thrills and pop instinct. A follow on from February’s debut album.

Also released today:

• Brian Eno – Another Day On Earth / Drawn From Life (reissues)
• Caspian – Caspian
• Eels – Cookie Happened
• Flora Hibberd – Mammoth
• JGrrey – you, me and jen
• June McDoom – Follow The Light
• Lucky Daye – ALOUD!
• Richard Thompson – Hippies, Thugs and Heroes
• Sassy 009 – Dreamer+ Deluxe
• TSHA – Mi Casa EP

Nialler9 keeps a rolling updated list of Irish album releases.