Here’s a rundown of new albums and EPs 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
Billy Woods – Golliwog
The Washington DC-based New York artist has released a number of records that are among the best in modern hip-hop albums, including 2023’s Maps with Kenny Segal, or 2022’s Aethiopes or 2023’s We Buy Diabetic Test Strips Armand Hammer record.
GOLLIWOG is a haunting collection that weaves horror, humor, surrealism and Afropessimism into a cinematic tapestry, aided and abetted by a murderer’s row of producers. African zombies, time traveling trap cars, malevolent ragdolls and a dying Frantz Fanon are just a few of the revelers in woods’ danse macabre.
GOLLIWOG features production from The Alchemist, Kenny Segal, EL-P, Conductor Williams, Preservation, Messiah Musik, Sadhugold, Ant (Atmosphere), Shabaka Hutchings, Steel Tipped Dove, DJ Haram, Willie Green, Jeff Markey, Saint Abdullah, and LA-based experimental jazz trio Human Error Club. Meanwhile, woods is joined on the mic by Backwoodz labelmates ELUCID and Cavalier, along with rappers Bruiser Wolf, Despot, Al.Divino, and singer-songwriter Yolanda Watson.
Billy Woods is playing Dublin in October.
VARO – The World That I Knew
The Dublin duo of Lucie Azconaga and Consuelo Nerea Breschi have a new album out today featuring a huge cast of Irish folkies.
The collaborative album is five years in the making and features a who’s who of Irish musicians in the folk and trad arena including Ian Lynch (Lankum), John Francis Flynn, Anna Mieke, Alannah Thornburgh, Junior Brother, Slow Moving Clouds, Niamh Bury, Inni-K, Ruth Clinton and Cormac MacDiarmada (Poor Creature), Lemoncello and Branwen.
Arcade Fire – Pink Elephant
The Canadians are back post-Win being a bit of a creep/sexual misconduct weirdness. The preview singles have been poor on this one, sounding like a band who don’t know where to go next, and a first cursory listen of the album doesn’t dissuade that notion. I’ve seen it called boring by some fans online already.
MIKE & Tony Seltzer – Pinball II
A followup to Pinball from March last year finds the New York MC and producer pairing making rap bangers in a mixtape format.
Men I Trust – Equus Caballus
The Canadian indie band are back in Ireland later this year, with their biggest show to date in Ireland, but before that they’ve released their second album of the year.
“Early in the writing and recording process, we realized we had a collection of songs with distinct energies yet equally meaningful to us. It became clear that we wanted to release them as two separate entities both from the same genus: Equus Asinus and Equus Caballus.”
Deradoorian – Ready For Heaven
Former Dirty Projector’s new album deals with “heaven and earth, damnation and salvation.”
“This album is partly about watching humanity erode. It’s about mental struggle, and it’s avowedly anti-capitalist. I mean; would we have all these identity labels we have to live by, if we didn’t live in a capitalist world?”
“I love the production more than the songwriting. […] In fact, I don’t even feel like a songwriter at times, I feel like someone who is just inspired by so much music. And I want to try it all out! Like Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Mingus, or ESG and Silver Apples, or making weird krautrock and industrial music. I love dub, and Sly and Robbie. I love the productions of those records and the collective energies released by their creators in the studio. It’s just a weird thing to do it by yourself!”
Nils Frahm – Night
Nils Frahm fulfills last year’s promise to follow up ‘Day’, the collection of solo piano music he released last March. ‘Night’, which contains five new tracks.
Nils recorded the pieces on ‘Night’ on the Klavins M450 piano, installed in his studio at the renowned Funkhaus complex in Berlin. It was built by German-Latvian piano maker David Klavins for the first Piano Day in 2015, a celebration that marked its 10th anniversary this March. At 4.5 meters tall and weighing over a tonne, the model was the largest upright piano in the world at the time.
Erika de Casier – Lifetime
Copenhagen alt-pop artist drops a surprise album leaning on R&B and hip-hop textures. It had the working title of Midnight Caller which helps set the vibe.
Das Koolies – Pando
Welsh band featuring some Super Furries release their second album of more electronic-centred songwriting.
Also released today
- Dope Lemon – Golden Wolf
- Kali Uchis – Sincerely
- Mark Pritchard and Thom Yorke – Tall Tales
- McLusky – The World Is Here And So Are We
- Moncrieff – maybe it’s fine.
- M83 – A Necessary Escape (Dakar Chronicles Original Soundtrack)
- No Windows – The Great Traitor
- PinkPantheress – Fancy That
- Preoccupations – Ill At Ease
- Rilo Kiley – That’s How We Choose to Remember It
- Spacey Jane – If That Makes Sense
- Various Artists – Planet Mu 30
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
