Without Alan Duggan Borges, the shape of contemporary Irish guitar music would be very different indeed.
If you’ve even slightly followed Irish music over the last decade, you’ve heard Alan Duggan Borges. His work in Gilla Band hasn’t just pushed the boundaries of noise and post-punk (a term that has of course been curiously appropriated left, right and centre in recent times): it redrew the map entirely. Without him, the current wave of young Irish guitar bands simply wouldn’t exist in the same way. But with The Null Club, his new project, Borges steps away from six-string obliteration and into a soundworld of submerged electronics and wonderfully fractured no wave.
The project’s debut EP, out 4th April, features a stacked lineup – Faris Badwan (The Horrors), ELUCID (Armand Hammer) and Valentine Caulfield (Mandy, Indiana). First taste ‘Slip Angle’ finds Borges and Caulfield locked into a masterfully mangled, air-sucking tension. Across four minutes, it cascades through stifling patterns, the kind that has made Gilla Band one of the island’s all-time greats, but now warped through a new lens: drubbing electronics, lacerating textures and a Suicide-esque sense of menace.
Borges, who recorded and performed all the instrumentals himself, describes it as the most techno-driven track on the EP:
“I tried to mix techno and noise with this one. I first saw Mandy, Indiana in Manchester at Psych Fest in 2021. We managed to say hello, and from there I reached out to Val to see if she would be interested in working on the track. Thankfully she was into it. I sent her on the instrumental, and she came back with rough vocals using the mic from headphones for phones. We re-recorded the vocals in her home in Manchester in 2021, surrounded by her cats, but actually kept some of the headphone takes in the track.”
Recorded between his home and studio in Dublin, the EP was mixed by fellow Gilla Band member Daniel Fox (who positively shares the above plaudits re: the scene) and mastered by (Holding Hands With) Jamie Hyland. If anyone deserves extra credit for the precision and sheer physicality of ‘Slip Angle,’ it’s Fox and Hyland, who bring the whole thing to life with a sharp, unrelenting mix.
Alongside the record, Borges will take The Null Club on the road this May, reworking the EP live with synths, noise machines, guitars and loops feeding through a big old wall of amps. First stop: The Workman’s Club, Dublin, on 2nd May.
Photo by Borg Se.
