A regular dig through bandcamp.com for independent Irish music.
Inland Taipan
Inland Taipan live shows can be collaborative affairs, but the creative source is Co Clare-based composer, musician and sound artist Aisling Davis, who gleans as much from her surroundings as she does from her instruments and electronic processes. Davis showcased her ‘Turf’ project at Scale gallery in Liverpool last year, with fantastical sculptures of preserved bog-wood. Her latest work Fractured Lens was composed and recorded for an installation in the Burren in Co Clare, which chimes and scrapes like a more rural Koyaanisqatsi.
Roo Honeychild
One of Roo Honeychild’s most recent Bandcamp releases is called More Aul Shite, and it’s a gabber techno remix of Kokiri Forest from the SNES classic Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. It follows the EP Aul Shite, featuring ghetto-tech hyper bootlegs of Musical Youth’s Pass the Dutchie and Mariah Carey’s Emotions, while her latest EP October Trax is another juke/footwork energy bomb. It’s a good hint that she’s constantly sticking two fingers up at so-called dance culture norms, and a reminder that there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure.
It’s not all high-bpm late-night nostalgia trawls, though. Roo Honeychild is all about political partying — she’s a co-founder of Dublin’s Club Comfort, a 180° sprint away from tops-aff, bro-vest clubs, with themed nights in the past such Women Loving Women, as a protest against a British trans-exclusionary group visiting the city. This year she also created a mix for Nialler9’s ‘Clubbing Is Culture’ series, weaving in speeches of people protesting the property development on the Viking settlement at Wood Quay in 1979.
But still, it is about the party at the end of the day.
Derek A Mc
Dublin artist Derek A Mc Donnell’s latest track Breathe is an impressionistic, neoclassical piece that begins with far-off crashing waves and seagulls, and builds into a nine-minute wash of strings, down-tempo electronica and echoed, trailing vocals. His take on avant-garde ambient pop nods to Clint Mansell, Kate Bush and the less harrowing aspects of post-Nite Flights Scott Walker. To be honest, he has way more tracks on Soundcloud, from psychedelic post-punk, to atmospheric ambient instrumentals, drone pieces and left-field covers including Suicide and Vangelis. But this is called Irish Bandcamp Weekly, and you can’t buy his music on SoundCloud.
The Nook Collective
Dublin-based label The Nook Collective only formed in June this year, but they already have over 20 releases on their Bandcamp. They’re described as an “international experimental music collective”, veering between industrial noise, outsider folk, chopped & screwed lo-fi trap, dark ambient, fantasy dungeon synth, spoken word and warped retakes of Bjork, Kurt Cobain and Grouper. Start with the all-in collaborative album Antilegomena, featuring members of Swampy G, Bradford Wallsbury/Celebrimbor, The Crustacean, and Yung Boder, as well as outside collaborators alfy, Hexa and Saulė.
Moo Kid 