It’s St. Patrick’s Day, so a good excuse to revisit this 2023 compilation of Irish experimental and electronic music back to 1960 — especially as the label has some updates from the underground scene recently. From handmade instruments to bedroom-produced tape constructions and a healthy interest in UFOs, get ready for the strange.
“I wanted to drink coffee … I knew more than the map knew.”
That’s acclaimed actress Olwen Fouére, reading an excerpt of The Pentagonal Dream under Snow, a dream sequence monologue in five movements by Dublin-born poet/novelist Sebastian Barry. (Thanks, Internet.) Listen, move over, Laurie Anderson, because someone is getting murdered here for their opinion on the metaphysics of the color white.
Pieced together in handmade devices and peculiar tape constructions, every composition on this compilation is a total gem, unearthed from dusty resting places. As the archivists at Nyahh Records put it:
Further down underground, there were a few artists working away in their bedrooms and non-studio settings, experimenting with tapes and handmade instruments. Here for the first time is a collection of these artists and their work. Sounds that had been left in boxes on tape or cassette have now been cleaned up and presented together in a collection spanning over four decades.
This makes them all sound obscure, but there are significant artists here. That starts out with iconic artist Desmond Leslie, a WWII RAF Spitfire pilot who is a vital part of the history of electronic music, full stop. And Leslie was — a character. How much of a character? He teamed up with Polish-American writer George Adamski on a book called Flying Saucers Have Landed; Adamski claimed to have met Nordic Aliens. (From Pleiades, not, as I read that, from Helsinki.) And Leslie also punched a theater critic on live TV for insulting his wife’s play, an event you can watch.
You should really read about the tracks themselves in this terrific review on Scatalogik. Maybe we can convince them to start up the blog again. They provide a track-by-track rundown, and make up for the absence of good liner notes (which they lament).
A field guide to some of the artists:
Roger Doyle, Dublin, is a legend of electro-acoustic work, and … here he is in 1983 with a Fairlight CMI, also with Olwen Fouéré — this is also from their Operating Theater project.
And here’s what he’s been up to 2025 — a hybrid real/virtual piano exploration, and really lovely album, as if the piano expanded out into an idyllic digital world:
David Cunningham, Armagh, has a vast resume as sound artist, composer, record producer (including for Michael Nyman on the Greenaway films), and more, plus media art collaborations with Steve Partridge. Here they are in a truly obscure media art piece:
Daniel Figgis of projects like Virgin Prunes and Princess Tinymeat makes an appearance, too, and you can read a long portrait of him from 2018 in Electronic Sound.
Quite a few of this crowd are wonderfully multitalented performance and multimedia artists, not just music producers per sé. Take Nigel Rolfe, who this week is profiled by The Irish Times with the superb opening line, “Nigel Rolfe has been seen naked covered only in paint, dressed in a crisp white shirt plunging into the dark waters of a peat bog, wrapping his head in rope, and raising a gold-leafed fist to the world.” (Above: Nigel Rolfe, Live Action 10, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2015, from his site.)
Likewise, there’s Noel Molloy. (Recently aired work on Internet station onaironsite has a great name — “I ALWAYS DREAMED OF GOING SOLO but we are all in this together whether we like it or not.”) This label also put out a compilation of his work, profiled in The Quietus along with still other underground Irish creations.
John Carson is a widely exhibited multimedia artist who has tackled topics around post-conflict Northern Ireland, including research, teaching, and community work. That can also weave in the topic of technology, as in his class Art, Conflict and Technology in Northern Ireland.
Danny McCarthy is another name to know — sound artist, performance artist, co-creator of The Quiet Club performance group and prolific composer and artist.
Giordaí Ua Laoghaire, Ovens County Cork, is a founder of Nine Wassies From Bainne with some serious punk cred and plenty of bilingual lyrics.
Fergus Kelly you can track to new work Swarm Logic — see this review, or the composer’s own writeup (which reveals the use of Leafcutter John’s Forrester software). Or from 2016, this brutal recording from Dublin is “electromagnet recordings, no-input mixer, speaker feedback,” and “field recordings” — yet sounds like you’re trapped in an alien washing machine, in the best possible way.
Among the other great band names are outfits like Burning Love Jumpsuit out of Dublin.
Michael O’Shea is another titan, having invented a new handmade instrument partly because he’d sold his possessions. Details and some sounds:
Having sold his instruments to fund a nomadic 1970s lifestyle, eccentric Irish experimentalist Michael O’Shea was forced to create his own handmade answer to the sitars and zelochords he’d become accustomed to playing on his travels around the globe.
Using an old door, 17 strings, chopsticks and combining them with phasers, echo units and amplification, the new device was to become his signature sound, mixing Irish folk influences with Asian and North African sounds in a mesmerising and soulful new way that brought him to the attention of the leading improvisers of his day – Alice Coltrane, Ravi Shankar, Don Cherry and more.
I’m aware the 60s-early 90s list is very male-dominated. But happily, Nyahh Records put out a new compilation next year, which catches us up on a new generation with its greater diversity of people and ideas — plus the ongoing contributions of some of the originators above.
And the delicious strangeness continues. As they describe it:
This significant collection covers multiple generations of artists in the field of audio experimentation, including Danny McCarthy (turned 75 in 2025) and some new heads on the block like Francesca O and Enola Christ Metalizer.
These 32 tracks cover noise, acoustic, electroacoustic, electronics, Musique Concrete, tape music, and drone. Some with academic backgrounds and some total bedroom studio weirdos who don’t get out much.
We hope you enjoy this compilation and it brings you some kind of joy and/or discomfort.
No discomfort here!
But now, to reward those of you who have read here to the very bottom — Nyahh has a release that I think is genuinely exceptional. Dublin-based, Nigeria-born E The Artist finds utterly intense reconstructions of techno, “freak folk oddity” songwriting, and an assault of power electronics that produces a deep narrative. It’s arrestingly coherent, knocking you off your arse, even if pulling in wide-ranging collaborations and elements that are supposed to remain apart.
And then, it’ll feel as though you’ve been abducted by aliens.
I just feel satisfied when I point to this and Bandcamp Daily doesn’t. I win. You win. Go buy this album. That’s not a very music critic thing to say; it’s an instruction. Though I do promise you I won’t punch you in the face if you disagree. (That was a callback. Like I said, rewarding those still committed to the long read; I don’t think LLM’s long-term short-term abilities understand this yet.)
And dear Irish scene, I absolutely promise not to make this the only time this year I write about your music — that’s pretty funny that The Quietus also did an underground Irish music round-up in March. Yes, this has become the “nerdy music blog” equivalent of US TV doing this. Apologies. I’ll do better, true to my own Irish heritage.
But perhaps it’s also been a good ritual. I’m sure my Irish and Lebanese sides will find some sort of common output eventually, too.