• This Ship Argo – Always the Bees: Never the Honey

    Belfast’s Aileen McKenna, aka This Ship Argo, named her new album, Always the Bees: Never the Honey, after an old Irish curse: “May you find the bees but not the honey”. With a vengeful origin encased in natural imagery, it is a fitting title for an album that dwells first on negative emotions, only to later dispel them through pastoral sonic escape. The electronic compositions across these nine-tracks are deceptively low-key. McKenna includes a run of instrumental tracks in the first half, which reward close listening. She pays attention to each track’s subtle development, with peripheral sounds reappearing as primary…