• The Nyahh made me do it: an interview with Willie Stewart

    October 25, 2022 - By 

    This interview originally appeared in The Thin Air’s summer 2022 print edition It’s spring in Leitrim. The sky is full of birdsong, trees and plants are coming back to life, and Willie Stewart has been mixing cement. Alongside his partner, the sound artist Natalia Beylis, he’s converting his backyard and old stone outbuildings into what he describes as a “future habitat for creative explorations”.  The pair’s life revolves around these explorations, which they frequently let out into the world via shared and respective projects. Both are members of the experimental psych band Woven Skull, and have a wide array of…

  • Irish Tracks of the Week – February 5th

    February 5, 2021 - By 

    It’s the day we’ve all been waiting for: the first Bandcamp Friday of 2021. If you’re going to pick up some great new Irish music, best make it today. Here’s our round-up of the best new tracks, LPs & comps from Woven Skull, The Department of Energy, Bangers ‘n’ Breakups, Arvo Party, Joshua Burnside x Sorbet, Slomatics, Any Joy, Tolü Makay & more. Woven Skull – Space City: Live In Glasgow Woven Skull – Space City – Live In Glasgow by Woven Skull The Department of Energy – Lee Lines (Landscape Mixtape) Lee Lines (Landscape Mixtape) by The Department of…

  • New Three-Day Irish Underground Festival Alternating Current Announced

    January 28, 2020 - By 

    A new, three-day Irish festival has been announced. Set to showcase Ireland’s underground as part of St. Patrick’s Festival 2020, the inaugural Alternating Current will take over Dublin’s The Sound House from Friday, March 13th to Sunday, March 15th. Curated by Dublin Digital Radio, Enthusiastic Eunuch and Tiny Cosmos, the line-up for the festival’s first outing is absolutely nothing to sniff at it, either. From ELLLL, BB84, Woven Skull, Vicky Langan, Crevice and Fixity, to Maija Sofia, Naive Ted, Post Punk Podge, Robocobra Quartet, Rising Damp and beyond, this is a bill that more than comfortably makes up for the absence of…

  • Sounds Of The Undergrowth: Open Ear redefines what an Irish festival can be

    June 11, 2019 - By 

    If there was ever a space to disprove the absurd notion that the world of Irish independent music is disjointed or lacks community it would be Open Ear – Not that it needed disproving. For the past four years, the small festival on Cork’s Sherkin Island has shone a light on a countrywide scene that has, for some decades now, been quietly growing – thriving in the undergrowth. Expanding this year to a capacity of roughly 600 attendees, Open Ear’s celebration of Ireland’s experimental music scene, from its stalwarts to its adventurous young artists, is a testament to the unity and…

  • Woven Skull – Woven Skull

    December 3, 2018 - By 

    The latest Woven Skull record may be self-titled, but it’s a long way off being their debut. One glance at their Bandcamp page shows just how impressively prolific they’ve been over the past decade, with all manner of singles, EPs, albums and collaborations of improvisational drone-folk creeping out of their Leitrim base. And that’s not to mention the various solo and side projects the group – original trio Natalia Beylis, Aonghus McEvoy and Willie Stewart, along with more recent addition Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh of Cian Nugent & The Cosmos – manage to keep on the go as well. If giving…

  • Album Stream + Interview: Woven Skull

    October 31, 2018 - By 

    Photo: Colum O’Dwyer Back at the end of 2016, we included Leitrim experimental/psych outfit Woven Skull in our 17 for ’17 round up of acts to watch in the coming year. We like to think we were fairly on the money with the trio, who both on an individual level and as an outfit delivered dividends throughout 2017 and well into this year… Mondola player Natalia Beylis, for one, developed her breathtaking field recordings and drones project with the release of The Sunken Hum Vol 1: Field Rhythms & Drones and Scchh​.​.​.​phh. Guitarist Aonghus McEvoy, meanwhile, continued his solo and…

  • 17 For ’17: Woven Skull

    January 17, 2017 - By 

    Including Woven Skull in our 17 for ’17 list feels like a little bit of a cheat, seeing as they have been producing music together since 2008. The trio have been lurking quietly in rural Leitrim, making music that is as rugged, gnarled and atmospherically captivating as the landscape they operate within. Utilising raw experimental sounds and field recordings from woods, hills and abandoned houses as textural enhancers has given Woven Skull’s output to date a depth of space and size that is exhilaratingly tense. While most of their releases up to this point have been collections of assembled field…

  • Reverberation Psych Fest Announces Lineup

    February 10, 2016 - By 

    The full line-up for the second annual (and comprehensively unmissable) Reverberation Weekend at Dublin’s Grand Social has been announced. The psych fest takes place over April 8 and 9 in association with Heineken Ireland Music, and features some of the best acts in the genre, from home and abroad. The lineup is as follows: The Cosmic Dead The Cult Of Dom Keller The Black Tambourines Twinkranes Woven Skull Beach Wild Rocket Fabric I Heart The Monster Hero Sun Mahshene Tickets go on sale from Monday, February 15, available at Tickets.ie.