9 of the best Irish songs this week.
Featuring Ahmed, With Love, Fixity, VERA, Arvo Party, Balderdasch, Emma Noodles, Kawaii Hoe, Seamus O’Muineachain, Honey Still.
The best emerging tracks we’ve selected from artists from the island of Ireland this week, with more playlist additions below the main list.
For more extensive Irish and new music coverage, follow our Spotify playlist or hit up the Irish section for individual track features.
Fixity
Why Wait
Wobbly eerie synths and discordant rhythms abound in the vaguely threatening lead single from Dan Walsh’s latest Fixity album 8. Don’t look at it directly in the eyes.
On the album, Walsh, plays drums, bass, synthesizer, piano, bass recorder, guitar, tenor and soprano saxophones, flutes and sings.
Emma Noodles
Breath Away
Kildare artist Emma Noodles dropped a roller-skating themed self-directed and made video for her recent song ‘Breath Away’, a glossy retro synth pop tune that immediately jumped out of the noise recently.
The video was made with the help of her dad who drove the car with her friend Jack with the camera in the boot. The incoming car beeps lead Emma to skate into the ditch and pick up some cuts and bruises.
All in the name of art.
Arvo Party
Optics
Northern Irish artist Herb Magee aka Arvo Party pops up with a quietly epic electronic track, with big percussive hits and synth lines that sound ready made for a festival set.
Ahmed, With Love
Whatchimacallit
Ahmed, With Love gives us a two minute new rap tune of duality – a song of two halves – with a switchup to a bass drill track built in.
“Check his hard drive.” indeed.
Ahmed best known for guest verses but his time to shine on his own is coming.
Vera
Reasons
Northern Irish band Vera are an alt-rock band lead by singer Sarah Toner, and the song is a litany of excuses for breaking up with someone that is a deliciously fun listen.
The song was recorded with producer/manager Declan Legge (Jealous of the Birds, Atlantic Records).
| “Reasons is a big, noisy, explosive representation of the barrage of excuses we’re up against trying to date in the modern world. The unimaginative and monotonous convictions we give and receive when cutting ties romantically. It’s a confessional of the four members’ scarcely credible romantic histories. Trivial, legitimate and sometimes far-fetched, Reasons is a ridiculous catalogue of failed relationships” |
Balderdasch
Gentleman Kill
Balderdasch is a new Cork artist who I’ve been keeping an ear on. The tunes so far are a little off-kilter, lo-fi spoken word and sung bedroom pop tracks.
‘Gentleman Kill’ is the best one yet, taking from a forthcoming EP Control The Ending, an atmospheric, alternative synth track, and discombulating vocals with surface tension.
The song was co-produced with longtime collaborator Pete Wareham, (Nadine Shah, melt Yourself Down and Mica Levi)
“The track is about being broken up with” says Balderdasch. “However, more specifically it’s about making the land so inhabitable by your own withdrawal, that you sort of force the other person’s hand on the matter. It’s being the cowardly gentleman and letting the other person do the dirty work. Then afterwards you’re left thinking, wow, I feel like I could have killed this with a lot more kindness than you, but I just couldn’t seem to be the one to take control of the end.”
Balderdasch plays Ireland Music Week this October, and has a debut EP tour in October, covering cities including Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Brighton, and London.
2-Oct, Glasgow, The Hug and Pint (here)
3-Oct, Manchester, Disorder (here)
4-Oct, Dublin, Ireland Music Week Showcase
9-Oct, Birmingham, The Victoria (here)
10-Oct, Brighton, The Hope & Ruin (here)
11-Oct, London, Two Palms (here)
Kawaii Hoe
What If I’m Rich and Famous
Irish hyperpop artist Kawaii Hoe is daydreaming about being in the one percent of the music game.
The producer also dropped a song about Charli XCX.
Seamus O’Muineachain
Cinnamon
Gorgeous minimal piano stuff from the Belmullet multi-instrumentalist composer and producer who has released his seventh album Liminality last week.
Recorded over a 2-year period in Thailand, Georgia, and Ireland, Liminality draws on O’Muineachain’s experiences of liminal places; airport terminals, impersonal accommodations, unfamiliar cities and towns. A state of flux is alluded to through compositions marked by brevity, but that search for moments of intamacy and comfort.
Honey Still
Onda Du Onda
Honey Still is Kevin Douglas, a London / Barcelona-based Dublin artist who featured here previously with ‘Don’t Talk’
‘Onda Du Onda’ is the first taste of a more substantial body of work, with somnambulist sunkissed guitar folk and gentle singing the vibe.
For more extensive Irish and new music coverage, hit up the Irish section for individual track features…
For this and more Irish songs, follow the Nialler9 New Irish Spotify playlist.
New Playlist additions:
- Skinner – New Wave Vaudeville
- a lazarus soul – The Dealers
- BICEP – CHROMA 004 ROLA
- D*mp – don’tunderstandaword
- Annie-Dog – violence’66
- Blimp – After All This Time, Always
- Laytha – throat of the wind – b-side
- KhakiKid – Bend
- Simon Bird – XEROXWAVEFORMGODLESSOCEAN
- Thee U.F.O; Unique Freaks – Flutter (I Found Love)
- Fintan James – Parade
- Susan O’Neill – Sign of the Times
- Blaskets; youlooktired – stay
- Olive Hatake – FELL IN LUV
- HANNAHBELLA – Keep Up
- macseoin – Longing (Ace)
- Evan Miles; Pat Lagoon – Bottom Line
- sagelike.; SASABA – Broken Promises
- Sister Ghost – Dark Matter
- Space Dimension Controller – Cryfaze
- Kayleigh Noble – NOTICE ME
