• The Thin Air Podcast: Martin Newell (The Cleaners From Venus)

    June 19, 2025 - By 

    Today we’re meeting the jangling man, Martin Newell, a songwriter, poet and author – sometimes referred to as “the godfather of lo-fi music”. In the early 1980s, Martin began recording perfect pop songs under the name The Cleaners From Venus. Releasing albums on tape cassette and spreading through fanzine culture, his early work was later reissued in the 2010s by US label Captured Tracks. Quintessentially English in subject matter and undeniably melodic in production, for many Martin Newell is a missing link in the chain of popular music – a vital outlier and a testament to doing it yourself. You…

  • Through, Not Around: An Interview with Daniel Bedingfield

    April 17, 2025 - By 

    “For most of my life, I’ve lived with enormous, driven agony. Now, I wake up and I’m okay. Someone dies – I grieve, but I’m still okay. I could lose everything – money, reputation – and I’d still be okay. Something in me has healed, at a core level.” Go on there: forget everything you thought you knew about Daniel Bedingfield. What you thought you knew was only the sudden glint on the surface of something far deeper, freer, and more alive. You probably got the memo: he appeared, seemingly fully formed, back in 2001, an unknown Kiwi-Londoner with a…

  • The Long Thread: An Interview With Joshua Burnside

    March 21, 2025 - By 

    Released last month, Teeth of Time feels like the culmination of everything Joshua Burnside has been quietly perfecting: layered alt-folk that sits somewhere between memory and myth, soundscapes that smuggle in the ambient truths of everyday life and a voice that cuts clean through the noise with understated gravity. A month on from its release, Burnside’s latest LP has already marked itself out as a high watermark and with a new run of live dates ahead – including a return to one of Ireland’s finest folk venues, DeBarra’s in Clonakilty, and a milestone return tothe Ulster Hall in Belfast (among…

  • Gears 4 Tears: The Lost N64 Game That Became Ireland’s Quarest Musical Resurrection

    February 28, 2025 - By 

    Somewhere between folklore and forgotten code, Gears 4 Tears exists as a fever dream of Irish game development – a spectral relic from the golden age of the Nintendo 64 that was never meant to be found. What began as an unfinished experiment by St. Brides, a Donegal-based developer with deep ties to the Silver Sisterhood, has since evolved into one of the most singular, sprawling, and joyously collaborative restoration projects in recent memory – a communal act of digital archaeology driven by music, myth and a shared love of the absurd. The story of Gears 4 Tears is one…

  • Festival Preview: Faoin Tuath

    July 24, 2024 - By 

    Faoin Tuath makes its debut on the last weekend of July as a festival paving the way for the queer community in the west of Ireland. The three-day celebration of nature and the arts is set to take place from Friday 26th to Sunday 28th of July on the grounds of Common Knowledge in Kilfenora, County Clare. Common Knowledge was cultivated as a collective founded on the belief that connection through the artistry of practical skill has the power to encourage sustainable and revolutionary change. The organisation aims to connect its people through land-based skill sharing. From house building to…

  • Quare as Folk: An Interview with Sam Amidon

    May 9, 2024 - By 

    Ahead of his highly-anticipated return to DeBarra’s in Clonakilty on 19th May, Vermont folk master Sam Amidon discusses the ways in which lineage and collaboration interact with constantly pushing forward. Go here to buy tickets to Sam Amdson at DeBarra’s Hi Sam.
It has been a typically busy period for you. One happening I would’ve loved to have experienced was the 10th-anniversary show for your LP Lily-O, Was it, as I assume, really fulfilling evening, revisiting the record in that way? It was a beautiful night! It was actually the first time the four of us who made the album (Bill Frisell,…

  • Authentic and In Control: An Interview with Shiv

    April 16, 2024 - By 

    From on a blue velvet couch in a bustling hotel lobby in Dublin City Centre, Zimbabwean-Irish sensation Shiv chats to Ciara Byrne, reflecting on her unconventional journey to becoming a musician and the contributions and pitfalls of social media as a platform for self-promotion. Diving into her new single ‘Limerence,’ collaboration, working with Bricknasty and finding her own authentic voice, Shiv lays herself bare in the wake of her musical re-emergence Photos by Seán McMahon Shiv’s new album ‘the defiance of a sad girl’ is out on 4th July. Your music career started with a recording of you being uploaded to…

  • Thranifesto: An Interview with Leeann Toland

    March 27, 2024 - By 

    Ahead of live outings in Belfast, Derry & Dundalk for her first special, Thranifesto, Derry-based comedian Leeann Toland chats to us about the local scene, the etymology of thranness, bridging comedy and music, loving problematic men, and Madonna as a psychohistorical tool. Photo by Billy Woods How is the comedy scene in Derry, and how did you get started within it? The scene is quite small in Derry but strong, The Cosh – run by Fintan Harvey and Ro Boyle – has a monthly night on in The Brickwork – run by Peter E Davidson – too, where I’ll be…

  • Tight Unit, Closer Friends: An Interview With Search Results

    March 18, 2024 - By 

    Since featuring them as an Inbound artist late last year, Search Results have smitten many more listeners with their masterfully mercurial indie-rock craft Ahead of what’s set to be a packed few months, Danny Kilmartin chats to Dublin trio – guitarist Fionn Brennan, drummer Jack Condon and bassist Adam Hoban – about the road less travelled they have taken to their upcoming second LP Photos by Monika Ruman What’s in a name – why Search Results? Jack: We lost a bet with Shane Clifford. You started writing together very quickly after first meeting. What was it that brought you together…

  • Chatting To The Cheesemonger: An Interview with Danny Carroll

    February 28, 2024 - By 

    A quintessential indie rock showman-turned-millennial songsmith in the classical mode, we have a chat with Danny Carroll ahead of the release of his solo debut LP I Am The Cheese, out this Friday. Your debut LP I Am The Cheese shares its title with a 1977 young adult fiction novel, written by Robert Cormier. Could you tell us about the poignancy of that title to yourself and this body of work? It’s a book I read when I was 12 and was pretty haunted by. The final lines of the novel refer back to the folk song ‘The Farmer In…