A regular dig through bandcamp.com for the best Irish underground acts and labels.
Don Chi
Filipina-Irish rapper Don Chi apparently only picked up the mic a year ago, but she’s packed a load into her brilliant debut EP Vortex, that brings her story from a “tin hut in the Phillipines” to the seaside town of Bangor, Co Down.
She flits between a compelling, storyteller flow and Bangor accent R&B, weighing in on
whatever’s channeling through her head — whether that’s braggy bars with colloquial interjections, social media weariness, drug burnout or a harrowing recall of child abuse.
The beats are classic mid-tempo, effortless boom-bap, with the kind of soul samples you’d find in MF Doom’s record shelves.
Enter the Vortex.
Post Punk Podge & the Technohippies
If you thought the Rubberbandits’ disguise of plastic bags on their heads was unique, get a load of Post Punk Podge, another Limerick head whose method of disguise is a balaclava made from an An Post padded envelope covered in PiL, Crass and Joy Division stickers.
I did actually see him without the envelope, in the jacks after a bananas, sweaty basement gig in Belfast’s McHughs last year, but we won’t be doing a tabloid unmasking here.
With tracks that veer from surrealist sesh talk to Garda hit pieces and Limerick pride, there’s also a deadly serious undertone amid the ragged electronics and lo-fi punk guitars. He’s coming for gombeen politicians, for starters, and his new track Hard Man Single is a sneer at pathetic bro violence that does actually sound like PiL through a 90s hardcore mincer.
A Litany of Failures
Not a label as such, but a series of compilations of crucial independent and DIY Irish acts. Its started as a fourtrack comp in 2016, and Vol III is a double LP with 22 tracks including Rising Damp, Silverbacks, Grave Goods and The Bonk — and a zine with contributions from the artists.
It’s out on September 29 and there’s a preorder on Bandcamp.
Hurry up, only three vinyl left last night after I bought one…
Moo Kid 