• Machinefabriek – With Voices

    January 26, 2019 - By 

    How much does concept matter? Hackneyed as it may be, it’s a question that comes up while listening to the latest album from prolific Dutch artist Machinefabriek AKA Rutger Zuydervelt. With Voices, as the title suggests, is an album of eight tracks composed around the human voice. Heard blind, it’s a fascinating document filled with fascinating sounds that evoke a host of different moods. Reading into it and things get even more complicated or interesting, depending on your view. Machinefabriek crafted a 35-minute piece of music that was sent to the eight vocalists involved, each of whom responded in their…

  • Natalia Beylis w/ AR~DS, Branwen Kavanagh, Little Movies @ A4 Sounds, Dublin

    April 23, 2018 - By 

    Hunters Moon presents An Evening of Experimental Performance + Sound took place in the gallery room of A4 Sounds, an art space off Dorset Street in Dublin’s north inner city. The night began in relaxed fashion, as Little Movies, the duo of Ben Donohue and Morgan Buckley, sat on stage facing each other across their modular synths. It looked like a game of Battleship and sounded like an alternate-universe take on ‘Dueling Banjos’. Two opposing banks of sound played out throughout the performance: one, a series of rippling waves, floating bubbles that shifted and grew to different shapes and sizes;…

  • Midland – FABRICLIVE 94

    September 20, 2017 - By 

    There’s a point early in Midland‘s FABRICLIVE mix where the swooping synths of Daphni‘s ‘Vulture’ are followed by the sparse ‘Demented Drums’ of Tres Demented, a Carl Craig alias from 2003 – the year Midland fell in love with dance music, according to the text that accompanies this release). It’s easy to picture a crowd’s reaction to that transition, the primal energy of those rolling drums, the track’s booming sub-bass evoking feelings of a dance floor brimming with tension, eagerly following the DJ’s direction. Midland, a UK DJ who occupies a curious space that covers “serious” heads-down club music as much…

  • Lawrence English – Cruel Optimism

    March 21, 2017 - By 

    I find it difficult to listen to Lawrence English‘s new album, Cruel Optimism. On first play, I thought it was “suitably bleak”. Further attempts sent me into a mini spiral of despair, thoroughly ruining whole days with its depressive claws. I left it for a while, returning to it tentatively in the hope of gaining more understanding. The album’s title comes from a work by Lauren Berlant, in which she posits that modern desires stand in the way of true growth. Whatever my inferences, English writes that the album is a “meditation” on the challenges we face in today’s world,…

  • 17 for ’17: ELLLL

    January 31, 2017 - By 

    Ellen King AKA ELLLL is a Cork City native who started a music degree with a background in classical piano. When the opportunity arose she immersed herself in every available course on tech and minimal composition, and around 2011 she started performing as ELLLL. She was soon supporting acts like Bee Mask, Vessel and Tim Hecker in venues across Ireland, as well as travelling abroad to support Carter Tutti Void in London. A slow but steady stream of cuts on SoundCloud have become gradually less abstract and more beat-focused, retaining the singular character that’s driven her approach over recent years. A…

  • Brian Eno – Reflection

    January 24, 2017 - By 

    Brian Eno invented ambient. Did he? Maybe. Who knows? He’s done a lot over the years – insert chronology here, from Roxy Music to Music For Airports, producing Laraaji, teaming up with Bowie and then U2, film soundtracks, Windows 95, and finally releasing albums for Warp. The latter is why we’re talking about him here, as he kicked off 2017 with a beautiful piece of work called Reflection, which was released on January 1. It’s the latest in a series of works in a bracket he calls “thinking music”; works that are “generative”. He takes a series of sounds, sets…

  • The Smoke Clears – The Smoke Clears

    September 15, 2016 - By 

    It’s a shame this album didn’t come out sooner. The Smoke Clears, the self-titled album under the alias of Galway resident and Berghain/Panorama Bar regular John Daly, is laden with the same feeling encouraged by Netflix hit Stranger Things. In the wake of its success, a flurry of mixes, covers and think-pieces have explored the show’s music, with the soundtrack already being released on vinyl, and Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein of S U R V I V E set to perform the score at Unsound in Poland next month. With the speed of passing interest, it seems too late to…

  • Rave New World: Bjarki, Frankie Grimes, Shanti Celeste

    September 9, 2016 - By 

    Aidan Hanratty takes you through the essential electronic gigs, tracks, mixes and releases of the week. Gigs Collate presents Bjarki Live, The Bunatee, Belfast Friday 9 September Iceland’s Bjarki hit the big time last year with ‘I Wanna Go Bang’, a silly banger on Nina Kraviz’s трип label, having previously featured on that imprint’s first two compilation releases. Since then he’s dropped “Б”, and Lefhanded Fuqs is due in the coming weeks. You can catch his blistering live set tonight at The Bunatee, but be warned, it will… bang. Sorry. Axel Boman, Kornél Kovács & Pedrodollar, Opium Rooms, Dublin Saturday…

  • Rave New World: Out To Lunch, Ambivalent, Twitch

    August 11, 2016 - By 

    A solo effort, Aidan Hanratty brings you the best gigs, tracks, mixes and releases of the week Gigs Out to Lunch August Weekender, Yamamori Tengu, Dublin Saturday 13, Sunday 14 August It’s all about Out To Lunch this weekend. In what’s probably the best lineup Dublin’s ever seen, we’ve got stellar international names like Ben UFO, Laurel Halo, Lena Willikens (who we’ve interviewed here), and Call Super (above), Irish upstarts like Lumigraph, Melly and Sage and the novel curiosity that is snooker legend-turned-electronica fan Steve Davis. I’m bubbling with excitement about it. There’s so much to say. See you there? Sense…

  • Interview: Lena Willikens

    August 5, 2016 - By 

    Out To Lunch has featured more often than most in the gigs section of our weekly Rave New World column. That may seem unbalanced, but the quality and variety of their bookings is simply undeniable. They’re taking a step into the unknown this month with a monster bash in their unofficial home Bar Tengu. A two-day affair (three if you count Friday’s opening party), it sees some of their previous guests (DJ Sprinkles, Call Super, Laurel Halo) and some new friends (Peggy Gou, Ben UFO, um, Steve Davis) coming together for a frankly ridiculous party. We’re talking three- and four-hour…