It came as no surprise to us when we discovered that Herb Magee aka Arvo Party was nominated for last year’s Northern Ireland Music Prize. In his review of the Belfast-based producer and musician’s self-titled debut album, Cathal McBride said, “With great Irish electronic acts like Solar Bears and Adultrock having called it a day within the last year, Magee sounds more than ready to take up the mantle they’ve left behind.”
Seven months on, Magee continues to uphold this promise in style. A masterfully propulsive six minutes of electronica blurring sonic lines via late 1990s trance worships, simmering ambience surges, full-blown nu-disco and dancefloor-ramming house histrionics, new single ‘Liberté’ is not merely Magee’s finest single effort to date, it’s very easily one of the Irish tracks of the year thus far.
