• Landless – L​ú​ireach

    July 10, 2024 - By 

    Landless is Lily Power, Méabh Meir, Ruth Clinton and Sinéad Lynch. Lúireach is the follow-up to the quartet’s 2018 album Bleaching Bones. When translated from the original Gaelic, its title can mean a breastplate or protective coat, or a hymn or prayer for protection. It’s an apt title. The album features 10 songs, many about strong women, that explore themes of “melancholy, love, death and mystery,” performed by four equally powerful voices that envelop each other without restriction of movement. Dublin-based Landless perform traditional and contemporary folk songs with sparse accompaniment. While it would be remiss to disregard the presence…

  • Landless Announce Second Album, Share ‘The Fisherman’s Wife’

    April 8, 2024 - By 

    Landless have announced details of their highly-anticipated second album. Six years on from their debut album Bleaching Bones – and us featuring them as ones to watch in our 18 for ’18 feature – the Dublin/Belfast quartet will release the ten-track Lúireach via Glitterbeat Records on 7th June. Teaming up once again with John ‘Spud’ Murphy, the Lily Power, Méabh Meir, Ruth Clinton and Sinéad Lynch have revealed that they haeve added sparingly-used instrumentation – including Lankum’s Cormac MacDiarmada on fiddle, viola and banjo throughout, as well as trombone from Alex Borwick on ‘The Newry Highwayman’ – on the album.…

  • The Lay of the Land: A Catch-Up With Landless

    January 24, 2023 - By 

    Ahead of their highly-anticipated headline slot at Letterkenny Trad Week this Friday (27th January) we chat to Landless about their upcoming second album, ten years of their world-beating unaccompanied traditional folk and the contemporary trad folk landscape of Ireland. Hi Landless. We last talked back in 2018, off the back of featuring you as our 18 for ’18 artists. Lockdown notwithstanding, you’ve covered some sizable ground in the in-between. Can you sum up how the last five years have been for you, collectively? Ruth Clinton: The last five years have been a blur of house moves, babies, study, work, and then of…

  • Landless Presents: Two Miles Of Earth For A Marking Stone

    March 8, 2021 - By 

    As part of International Women’s Day and the Capital Irish Film Festival, and commissioned by Solas Nua, traditional vocal quartet Landless have crafted a free concert film of traditional songs in collaboration with experimental visual artists Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty, titled Two Miles of Earth for a Marching Stone. Brigid, the Irish pre-Christian goddess of poetry, is the inspiration for a psychic vision exploring feelings of intangible longing arising from experiences of emigration. Film clips set in the North-West of Ireland will appear as interjections through the music, with the themes of the songs mirroring each corresponding scene in the saga. The songs will follow…

  • Moving On Music Set To Hold Online Concert Event ‘All The Noels’

    October 20, 2020 - By 

    Belfast-based tastemakers par excellence Moving on Music are set to hold unique online live music experience held throughout the Black Box, Belfast, titled All The Noels. The 30-odd-minute single shot, walk-through experience is set to showcase different music taking place across the various spaces of the venue. The video – recorded across one day by a team of audio-visual professionals – attempts to capture the feeling of being in possibly our favourite Belfast venue for live music. Performances come from some of TTA faves, experimental rock quartet Blue Whale, traditional Irish vocal quartet Landless, Irish jazz pianist Scott Flanigan‘s Trio, jazz drummer Steve Davis, folk duo Laytha and traditional flute & whistle player Martha Guiney with Shane McCartan. Speaking of the project, Mick Bonner of Moving on Music said “it was…

  • Monday Mixtape: Son Zept

    October 19, 2020 - By 

    Recently championed and playlisted by the likes of by ourselves, The Quietus, DJ Mag and leftfield DJ par excellence Avalon Emerson, “Northern Ireland’s resident electronic compositional polymath” Liam McCartan, AKA Son Zept has just released his second mini-album of 2020, B. Today, he gives us an uncharacteristically abridged mixtape of some current favourite tracks. I tried to keep this as just a stream of thought and not cram in stuff that I’d end rambling about daft things like cheeky hauntological anti-memory sound (*ahem*). Excluded tunes from Aphex Twin + Aphex covers, Mal Waldron, Oneohtrix Point Never, Eprom, Lyra Pramuk, Pinch & Mumdance, Holly Herndon, Chassol,…

  • Watch: Landless – Via Extasia (Live at St Joseph’s Church)

    February 11, 2019 - By 

    If you’ve managed to catch them live recently, you’ll know that Dublin/Belfast-based vocal quartet Ruth Clinton, Meabh Meir, Sinead Lynch and Lily Power AKA Landless are a force to be reckoned with. Last week, the foursome effortlessly brought Belfast’s Sunflower to instant pin-drop silence. Hosted by the Sunflower Folk Club, it marked the first date of the foursome’s current run of Irish dates, which also took in Cork’s Quarter Block Party yesterday. A highlight from the foursome’s stellar debut album, Bleaching Bones, ‘Via Extasia’ reveals the wonderfully daedal arc and flow of the quartet’s traditional craft. It’s something that’s doubly on display on Joe…

  • Bare Bones: A Conversation with Landless

    March 6, 2018 - By 

    One of our 18 for ’18 Irish artists, Landless are a rarity in today’s traditional music landscape. Their unaccompanied vocal folk has been described by ourselves – and doubtless many others – as ‘evocative, celestial, ethereal and, above all, extremely resonant’. Having formed in 2013, their debut album, Bleaching Bones – recorded in a variety of sonically rich, luxurious spaces – finally gets its release tomorrow through recently-formed Irish independent imprint, Humble Serpent. Alongside acts like Lankum and Brigid Mae Power, they’re responsible for the establishment of folk music that’s as appropriate today as it was in its stages of infancy; a conduit for the human spirit, and a platform from which greater ideas…

  • Watch: Landless – Doomsday

    February 15, 2018 - By 

    In what’s one of our most anticipated Irish releases of 2018, traditional vocal quartet Landless have released the video for ‘Doomsday’, the first single from debut album Bleaching Bones. First heard on their eponymous debut EP, the Belfast & Dublin-based outfit’s brief & minimal video highlights the qualities – “Evocative, celestial, ethereal and, above all, extremely resonant” – that make Landless such an important prospect in the current resurgence & contemporary progression of Irish traditional music. Bleaching Bones is out on March 9 through Humble Serpent Records, with the Dublin launch at St Ann’s Church. More details here. Read Dominic Edge’s 18 for ’18 piece on Landless.

  • Landless – Bleaching Bones

    January 16, 2018 - By 

    Dublin/Belfast-based vocal quartet Landless are set to release their debut album in March 2018 on new Irish label, Humble Serpent Records. Landless was formed in 2013 by Lily Power, Meabh Meir, Ruth Clinton & Sinead Lynch, and subsequently released their Landless EP the following year. They’ve spent the last year recording in a variety of churches, corridors and other acoustically fascinating spaces with ‘Spud’ Murphy, who’s responsible for some of Ireland’s most important releases in recent years – notably Lankum, The Jimmy Cake and a number of Ireland’s finest. Entitled Bleaching Bones, we have good faith that the LP will be another feather in the cap of an Irish folk resurgence that…