New Irish Music: January 2026

Like most people, I spent the first few weeks of 2026 thinking about 2016. I wouldn’t call it nostalgia exactly. All told, I seem to remember it being the first time in my life when there was a general consensus amongst people my age that things were really quite bad actually. Life may have felt a bit simpler, but that’s because I was 23 years old and had very little sense of responsibility outside of drinking pints and watching bands play at the Roisin Dubh.

That said, 2016 was pretty significant on a personal level: it’s the year I moved to London. I have vivid memories of my first few weeks here, scrabbling around trying to adjust to life in pound sterling while listening to Jenny Hval’s Blood Bitch and Devendra Banhart’s Ape In Pink Marble, two albums I was reviewing for The Thin Air at the time.

Another LP inseparable from that period for me is Be Honest And Fear Not by Limerick alt-rock outfit Windings, an unsung epic that cut its ambivalence and anxiety with notes of humour and hope, and hooks that still get stuck in my head today. It’s one of the many great Irish records that came out that year. There was Katie Kim’s doom-pop opus Salt; The Altered Hours’ psychedelic post-punk debut In Heat Not Sorry; Rusangano Family’s South-West hip-hop scene detonator Let The Dead Bury The Dead; ELLLL’s haunted techno EP Romance; Sea Pinks’ jangle pop jewel Soft Days; Enemies’ post-rock swan-song Valuables. I could go on.

If there’s any one Irish release from 2016 that deserves a serious reappraisal today however, it’s Rollers / Sparkers Interior Ministry. The criminally slept on experimental outfit struck gold on their third album, mapping the terrain between Tortoise and Gastr Del Sol-style post-rock, Moin and Tomaga’s smoked-out psychedelia, and the STROOM catalogue’s avant-garde shadowplay. Collages of chiaroscuro ambience give way to stomping kosmiche jams, with tactically deployed vocal harmonies tying it all together with some properly memorable hooks. There’s an alternate universe where this record was a cult hit amongst the Boomkat faithful, but the truth is we haven’t heard from Rollers / Sparkers since. I really think you should give it a spin.

Gosh, maybe 2016 wasn’t so bad after all.

Anyway, onto the present. Lots of new music below, plus some stuff I missed at the end of last year. As ever, I’m appreciative of anyone who reads, subscribes and shares this newsletter around. I’m still trying to work out what to do with AOA this year: do I make the round-ups bi-monthly to free up more time for long-form writing? Do I need to start making reels? Should I start a podcast? Playlists? You tell me. I’m wide open to suggestions and ideas so please drop me an email at anoisosard@gmail.com.

If you’d like to support what I do, you can become a paid subscriber for around the price of a coffee per month. In the meantime, dive into the reviews below.

Eistigí.

Dove Ellis - Blizzard [Black Butter Records]

It may seem as though Dove Ellis emerged out of nowhere, carried on a rip tide of hype and a support tour with Geese. Sure, the young London-based Galwegian may have only released his debut bedroom-produced EP in late 2024, and yeah, save for a few slots at the indie star breeding ground Windmill Brixton, his gigs up until recently were all pretty small scale, but there’s nevertheless something about his meteoric ascent that feels organic and deserved. Say what you will about all the buzz around him, but there’s a maturity to the songs on his debut album that’s a lot harder to fake. I can’t shake the feeling that he’s the real deal.

There’s an exquisite mix of tenderness and drama in Ellis’ voice as he moves from a warbling falsetto to a belted-out tenor and back again over the course of these big and bold indie-folk arrangements. The comparisons to Jeff Buckley check out, particularly on standout tracks like ‘When You Tie Your Hair Up’ and ‘To The Sandals’. I can also hear a little bit of Andrew Bird here and there, but maybe that’s more the nostalgic headspace these songs have me in. If you wanted a more local angle, I’d point to the early albums of Kildare’s own Bell X1, who I’ve always had a real soft spot for and whose sentimental echoes can be felt in ‘Love Is’, ‘Pale Song’ and ‘Feathers, Cash’.

Lyrically, Ellis plays his cards pretty close to his chest, opting for fleeting vignettes that allude to stories of love and the loss of it, but rarely linger for long enough to let the image fully sink in. It makes the points where you do catch them all the more poignant, and makes repeat listens all the more rewarding. “I miss your red pens, correcting my sins,” he croons in ‘Feathers, Cash’, a heart-breaker that also depicts an intimate moment, drawing a dog in the steam on a shower door. In the rousing piano track ‘Heaven Has No Wings’ – the most Cameron Winter-y of the lot – the story skews parabolic, with our protagonists catching falcons, raw meat in their hands, while another man “strokes their angry beaks”, “speaks to them his sickly truths”, and “sends them back into the sky saying, ‘Take me far away’.”

‘Jaundice’ is the only slight misstep – a dip into upbeat céilí trad that just about works – but at the very least it’ll make for a fun moment during the bigger and bigger live shows Ellis will inevitably be playing before long. With a debut this assured, he’ll surely have earned them.

Dylan Kerr - Confluence (for pipe organ and voice) [Discreet Editions]

When I interviewed Dylan Kerr back in 2023 for a piece exploring the drone in Irish music, they spoke about their proclivity for performing in churches, and how, in their practice, sustained tones serve a near-spiritual purpose. “I would describe the music that I make as sacred music,” they said. “The music itself is spiritual, but I guess I’m looking at the different types of spirituality that can emerge from this sort of sacred space: different ideas surrounding worship; what it means to be sacred.”

Enter Confluence (for pipe organ and voice), a deeply resonant composition that explores the relationship between “time, architecture, air, and breath”. Recorded live in St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University In New York, the 35-minute piece unfolds in slow, enveloping arcs, the oh-so-faint shuffle and echo of the room itself swallowed by full-bodied organ drones and unamplified overtone singing. Like sine waves interlacing in an endless knot, these components oscillate and weave in microtonal symbiosis.

Words like “meditative” might spring to mind, but in truth this music is far more energetically charged than that implies. It’s not calming per se – particularly not at the intense multi-layered peak that comes toward the end – but while listening to it on loop on a Monday morning, I did feel the anxiety in my chest loosen a little, and my breathing became just a smidge easier. Allow yourself to sink into its intrinsic pulse, and you just might feel something knotted inside you unravel ever so slightly. If that’s not sacred, I don’t know what is.

Maria Somerville - Luster (Remixes) [4AD]

Maria Somerville’s Luster was one of my favourite Irish albums of 2025: a celestial LP that found the musician’s dream pop signature reinvigorated, with reverberant shoegaze, folk and ambient instrumentals underscoring her hushed lyrical vignettes. Here, six artists harness the afterglow of those songs with a suite of remixes – a set of multi-hued reflections that illuminates new angles and nuances in its emotional topography.

Electronic post-rockers Seefeel engulf the twinkling haze of ‘Stonefly’ in ambient techno kicks and shadowy glitches, with faint echoes of Somerville’s voice cutting through the mix like something heard in a dream. Colle, aka Chanel Beads’ Maya McGrory, with whom Somerville toured last year, reconfigures the slow-burn shoegaze of ‘Projections’ into something a little softer, more melodic. If you loved that Milan W. album STROOM, this might be your highlight.

Fatshaudi’s cover of ‘Up’ is a delightfully romantic take on neon-hued ‘80s synth-pop, while YHWH Nailgun contort Ian Lynch’s uilleann pipes on ‘Violet’ through clattering percussion, Somerville’s voice taking on the timbre of a summoning spell. Dublin producers Oscar18 and Asa Nisi Masa push things even further, turning one of the album’s gentlest moments, ‘Corrib’, into an explosive cloudrap instrumental before Boris Luna – and I’m not kidding here – throws the lovely ‘October Moon’ into a digital black metal blender. It’d be hilarious if it wasn’t genuinely great, but when the material you’re working with is as strong as the songs on Luster, I guess anything is possible.

If you want to spend even more time in the extended Luster-verse, I’d recommend checking out the latest edition of Ghostly International founder ’s always fabulous Substack, in which he’s invited Somerville to make a playlist of tracks from friends and “people I was lucky to play with last year and keep coming back to”. Featuring tracks from the likes of Henry Earnest, Elaine Howley, Olan Monk, and more, it’s a real treat.

user - fervor [POWERBUTTON PRODUCTIONS.]

If you’ve ever doomscrolled at a site of outstanding natural beauty, this EP might just be for you. These six tracks stitch scrambled short-form video snippets, Chat GPT glitches and all manner of online ephemera into a patchwork of devotional music for the TikTok era. Celestial church organs and synths fold into moments of uncanny choral singing, warped distortion and fragmented drum breaks. It’s glorious, but frequently teeters on the edge of anxious collapse: bliss rattled by the sound of gunfire, sirens, and other decontextualised samples from the infinite coalface of content.

That feeling’s the point: it’s digital music that begs you to turn away from your screen and touch grass. Listening to it, I imagined myself standing on the gorgeous coastline of its cover art and throwing my phone into the sea.

I don’t know who user is, nor anything about POWERBUTTON PRODUCTIONS, but they seem to specialise in this kind of thing. The 13 releases on their bandcamp encompass everything from brain-fried beats to mind-melting longform ambience; Oneohtrix Point Never heads and fans of the Orange Milk catalogue will find lots to love, as will anyone who liked the metaxu tape I raved about last year. It’s a joy to rummage through, so stop scrolling and dive in.

V/A - An Irish Almanac of Noise and Experimental Music From 2025 [Nyahh Records]

Untangling Ireland’s musical undergrowth is Nyahh Records’ speciality, and this latest compilation is one seriously jumbled box of frayed cables and jacks. A very different beast from last year’s A Collection of Slow Airs by Some Very Fine Fiddlers, here we have 32-tracks from the scene’s unruly fringes – a spiritual successor to 2023’s Under the Island: Experimental Music in Ireland 1960 - 1994, and an essential document of discordance, drone and electroacoustic oddness.

You can start gently if you like: warm up with the hushed percussion of Claire Guerin & Katie O’Looney’s ‘Puca’; nestle into the warbling tape loops from Lankum’s Ian Lynch and Dennis McNulty; be submerged in the deep tones of Susan’s Gainey’s ‘Quickening’ and Declan Synnott’s ‘Facility’; float away on the muffled strings and woodwinds of David Colohan’s ‘Wicker Eel Trap’.

From there you can stretch the limbs out a bit: there’s skittering electronics, concrète collages and vocal works from The Quiet Club, David Donohoe, Rogue Spore, Neil P Quigley, Karl Burke and Amanda Feery; dizzying viola mutations from Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh and Eimear Reidy; and squidgy psychedelics from Fergus Kelly and Diarmuid MacDiarmada.

But now you’ll be well prepped for the myriad shades of harsh noise and screeching soundscapes provided by the likes of Dressing, Hillsongs, Aonghus McEvoy and Adam Campbell, Acid Granny and others. If you’re in the mood have your brain well and truly fried. Look no further.

Just Mustard - WE WERE JUST HERE [Partisan Records]

My email inbox tells me it’s been ten years since Dundalk’s Just Mustard released their self-titled debut EP, a since-deleted introduction to the seismic shoegaze sound they’ve been rewiring and refining ever since. Their third album, released late last year, is the biggest and brightest iteration of that trademark to date – a full-spectrum blaze that radiates from the billowing static of each song, embodying the emotional push and pull that vibrates at its core.

In an interview with Clash, vocalist Katie Ball and guitarist David Noonan spoke about the tension between wanting to write euphoric, joyful music to counteract dread and darkness, and struggling to do so truthfully because of those same feelings. The result is 10 songs that manage to do two things at once: Ball’s voice beams like a torchlight through thick fog as she wrestles in real time with what it means to carry and express what’s inside you with authenticity, while simultaneously navigating the desire to feel and convey something else entirely. “I don’t want to go where I can’t feel a thing,” she sings in ‘DREAMER’ over a flickering post-rock backdrop. “I want to feel something, hold it in my hand.”

Take the lyrics in opener ‘POLLYANNA’, itself a byword for someone who is “excessively optimistic” – they’re almost impossibly hopeful, but what makes them work is the desperate yearning in Ball’s voice as she delivers them, soaring through squalls of feedback and clattering drums. This isn’t blind escapism in denial of gloom; it’s an incantation to ward it away. You’ll pick up on this energy throughout the record: in ‘SILVER’, live D&B breakbeats underscore lyrics about watching lights dance on the ceiling, presumably in a club, but the ecstasy of the track’s roaring guitars and duelling vocals is cut with an anxious tightrope walk toward catharsis. “Can’t keep the pace,” sings Ball. “Take the silence away from me.”

It’s a sensation that lingers in ‘THAT I MIGHT NOT SEE’, an Icarian flight of galloping drums and thundering distortion that reaches heavenward, only to realise it’s come too close to the sun: “Is this how to see saints?... Maybe we are spinning too fast.” In ‘DANDELION’, a shadowy garage beat carries scorched melodies with a pleasing lightness of touch, but the weightlessness Ball sings of is decidedly more fragile. In their search for light on this record, Just Mustard have wound up finding something more: a vibrant darkness they can call their own.

Madra Salach - It’s a Hell of an Age

It’s easy to feel skeptical of a band as on-trend as Madra Salach. Take a dash of Lankum’s doom-folk, a splash of Mary Wallopers’ porter-soaked trad-punk, and a pinch of Lisa O’Neill’s poignant balladry, and you’ll land somewhere on the moodboard for this young Dublin outfit’s debut EP. Withhold your cynicism though – there’s enough fervor to these songs to ward off too much risk of pastiche.

The six-piece have blown up off the back of their rousing live performances and the full-pelt vocals of frontman Paul Banks. It’s an energy that’s thoroughly felt in singles ‘Blue & Gold’ and ‘I Was Just A Boy’, original ballads about scratch cards and romantic immaturity that surge with harmonium drones, thundering drums and spiralling mandolin motifs, each erupting with properly chest-pounding peaks. The feeling carries through in ‘The Man Who Seeks Pleasure’, a hushed folk lament that earns its throat-shredding finale. There’s a poignant anguish to it that Luke Kelly would be proud of, but what’s important is that Banks and company don’t over-egg it too much.

This release is at its strongest when it’s ploughing its own furrow, drinking deep from the Irish folk lineage that’s inspired it, sure, but not so much that it becomes a crutch. It’s why the two covers that pack out its tracklist are its weakest moments. Their rendition of ‘Spancil Hill’ – a 19th century emigrant ballad that certainly fits the EP’s themes of youthful misadventure and longing – is solid, but trudges through the motions a little. Their take on Frank Harte and Dónal Lunny’s ‘Murphy Can Never Go Home’, which laments the sense of faded identity and yearning amongst Irish labourers stuck in Britain, reaches admirably for the pathos at its heart, but doesn’t quite stick the landing.

They do a properly brilliant live cover of Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Black Boys On Mopeds’, but what Madra Salach’s debut EP really demonstrates is that, much like O’Connor, their own material is where they excel. If they can continue to harness that promise amidst the momentum they’ve got right now, there’s no telling how far they could go.

Mana Dealer - 1 [Drift Ritual]

It’s an Eamon Ivri double bill this month. First, in a change of pace from his ambient gulch and experimental soundscaping as Mineral Stunting and Lighght, we have the Cork artist’s debut release as Mana Dealer. It’s his most dancefloor-oriented material in a little while – three subaqueous club cuts that run deep, dark and dubby. It’s the sort of stuff you just might find in the early-doors playlists of DJs like Richard Akingbehin, CCL, Mia Koden, Kia or DJ Healthy.

‘Dream Tool Roller’ does exactly what it says on the tin, its palpitating kick pulse, glitching chimes and smoked-out motifs making for a nicely psychedelic techno mood-builder. ‘Greasetrap’ is Rhythm & Sound refracted into mechanical murk, building tension like a Timesplitters load screen. ‘Tankard’ stretches that same vibe over 11 minutes, all percussive thuds, sub-bass rumbles and snippets of voice, muffled in reverb, like a ghost gliding past your ear.

Eamon Ivri & JQ - Lattice of Memory [Shadow World]

Ivri’s skittering sonic ecosystems pair beautifully with Londoner JQ’s dreamstate ambience on this lush collaborative album, a pixelated sound collage that explores ideas of memory and nostalgia in the digital age. It’s an apt listen to accompany yr 2016 gallery scrolling: “I want to hold in my mind’s eye a piece of you, a low-res image on a computer screen,” mutters Ivri in the title track over a bed of burbling synthetic seafoam. “I want to seek out old experiences in a lattice of memory.”

Trash Guzzler - Poddle Bardos

Inspired by Dublin’s rivers (“the obvious ones, and some hidden underground”), this EP from psychedelic folk musician Trash Guzzler is described as an “homage to the life blood that flows culverted under our feet”. Over its six tracks, trickling field recordings and tenebrous currents of synth and accordion underscore Andy Irvine-esque mandola passages and ghostly vocals. It’s a pleasure to drift down its winding tributaries: ‘Droichead na Dothra’ takes an unexpected pivot into haunted acid synth-pop; shoreside splashes, church bells and birdsong waver and fade into quaking tones and tape noise in ‘Talk of Death’. ‘Léim an Bhradáin’ zig-zags between 7/4 and 3/4 time, simultaneously the EP’s most tuneful moment, and its most skewed.

It ends with ‘Sruth a’ Chnoic’, which melds roiling harmonium drones with a fiddle rendition of Paddy Tunney’s ‘The Mountain Streams Where the Moorcocks Crow’. At the EP’s wide open estuary, it feels like a glance back to the source – a gesture to the shared essence that flows between folk tradition and contemporary experimentation.

SLOUCH - Who Do You Think You Are? I Am.

Named after one of my favourite videos on the internet – in which the bowler Pete Weber roars the titular outburst upon rolling a winning strike – this new one from Dublin band SLOUCH is a trip down the varnished alleys of indie-psych rock. Trading the fuzzy hard rock heft of their earliest releases for locked-in jams with just a drop of acid in their system, it’s a six-track riff parade that stretches out wide and goes down easy, but still packs a satisfying punch.

Certain parts recall Mastodon’s aetherial prog metal masterpiece Crack The Skye, while others evoke Richard Dawson’s heavier moments or the krautrock joyrides of Kikagaku Moyo and Minami Deutsch. If Junk Drawer’s cosmic Ulster opus from last year did it for you, then this one’s a no brainer.

Moundabout - Esker Hippy Bastard Blues [Svensk Psych / Tesla Tapes]

Gnod’s Paddy Shine and Phil Langero return as Moundabout, summoning another free-form psych folk yarn inspired by a winter tour around Europe, and the nature that surrounded them on the shores of Lough Ree on the Esker Riada, where they recorded the album in a wooden cabin last spring.

After the heady brew this was last year’s Goat Skull Table, these five tracks are positively breezy; with a stripped-back set up of just two guitars and their voices, the pair jammed out their most melodic material to date as they watched the world outside come back to life after the colder months. As ever, threads of kosmische, drone and Amazigh blues help tie things together, but there’s a lightness to these tunes that feels new – you can almost sense the winter thawing as it plays, a suggestion of sunlight caressing your face.