• Nigel Rolfe – Island Stories

    June 7, 2021 - By 

    The excavation of Ireland’s buried electronic past by All City’s Allchival imprint continues with a reissue of Island Stories, a contribution by English multimedia artist Nigel Rolfe, who moved to Ireland in 1974 to commence a long career in the fine arts. Recorded in 1985 at the famous Windmill Studios, assisted by a cadre of musicians and vocalists, Rolfe performed most of the songs on the ’80s defining DX7 synthesizer. While the idea of a solo keyboard album may conjure thoughts of minimal synth isolationism, this is a vibrant collection of tracks that sometimes approach Art of Noise-style avant-pop, with…

  • Buntús Rince: Explorations in Irish Jazz, Fusion & Folk 1969-81

    May 2, 2019 - By 

    Indie-punk wunderkinder Fontaines DC drew the ire of many an Irish music fan lately with the neophile claim that until Girl Band’s emergence, “the only way to sound Irish was to be fuckin’ ‘diddly-diddly-aye’”. Perhaps that statement is more telling of the limitations in Ireland on exposure to genuinely forward-thinking music on a grassroots level as it is of the band’s attitude. On an island the size of our own, there does tend to be room only for that lucky few in the bylines of the Great Irish Narrative, but that overlooks the communities of troubadours, session players and ubiquitous…

  • Michael O’Shea – Michael O’Shea

    February 5, 2019 - By 

    Look at any street corner in Galway, Dublin, Cork, London or New York and chances are, you’ll be met with crooners, folksters, dancers, trad musicians and poets. Some of the world’s best loved performers came to fruition through busking. B.B King was a busking youth before starting a career in recording and performing on stages worldwide. So too were Tracy Chapman, Glen Hansard and Laraaji. On a quieter end of the spectrum falls Michael O’Shea, the compelling Irish busker who travelled Europe, Africa and Asia, crafted his own instrument and whose singular contribution to recorded music has just been re-released…