Here is a real end-of-year treat: a thirty-two-track, two-disc set of recordings from Ireland’s experimental music scene, expertly curated by Nyahh Records. An Irish Almanac treats the terms ‘noise’ and ‘experimental’ not as genres but as broad umbrellas under which a multitude of musical, non-musical and anti-musical styles can flourish. If it’s an incomplete panorama – and no compilation of this kind could ever claim to be complete – it’s nonetheless a detailed one, cherry-picking a tantalising selection of tidbits from across the broad spectrum of the Irish avant-garde. It ranges from the folk-adjacent, the still and the meditative, to the distorted and the decayed, via beats, drones and found sounds.
There are some names that KLOF readers may recognise. Ian Lynch provides dark, decaying drone in the form of Glimpse, the Lankum alumnus straying further than ever from his folky roots. David Colohan (also known as Agitated Radio Pilot) contributes the Wicker Eel Trap, a spooky and sometimes squeaky soundscape that taps into Ireland’s watery landscapes. Cellist Eimear Reidy, known for her collaborations with Natalia Beylis, gives us the quick-fingered Fledgling Flight, a rubbery and energetic solo piece where every note is an unexpected twist. Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh’s Snow Learning uses bowed strings in a more drawn-out way in a piece loaded with ambiguous meaning and sedate beauty.
Some of the most successful compositions rely on quietness and subtlety: The Quiet Club’s Telepathic Listening is all twitch and flutter and electronic warp; it seems to hang uncannily in the air, or to haunt the airwaves. A real highlight is Amanda Feery’s Ducttaper, Boxticker, Taskmaster: eerie vocals float over deep, syncopated, dubby beats, before wavering notes and subtle shifts in melody and tempo seem to point away from pure abstraction.
Everywhere you look, there are different modes of expression on show, different types of intrigue: the cut-up vocal samples of Karl Burke’s Cage on a Stage, the uncompromising guitar distortion of Aonghus McEvoy and Adam Campbell’s Chariots of Crimplene, the collage of speech and crackle, piano and ancient-sounding croon on David Donohoe’s Maybe Infra. Opening track Tearing Out the Comms feels like a document of sound destroying itself: a brave but effective way to start the collection. One of the strangest and strongest pieces is by James King and Caroline Murphy: King emits a series of glossolalic trills and semi-human growls over strings that twitch and yelp. The pair have a history in clowning and cabaret, and that playfulness is evident here, cutting through any notions of staid intellectualism that sometimes accompany this kind of sound art.
That playfulness, which seems particularly ripe in the Irish scene, seems to lead to a greater variety of work, and variety is the key thing here. It creates bizarre juxtapositions: staticky slabs of futuristic electronic noise like Hillsongs’ The Wish sit next to experiments in vocal harmonics like Enola Christ Metalizer’s Full Body Transplant, whose opening minute sounds almost like medieval ecclesiastical song. Cyess Afxzs, with their track Ruth, Caroline, Cathy and The Twins, embody both sides of the coin, stirring up a mini-epic of occult freak-folk, soft drones, harsh noise and folky acoustic strumming in less than four minutes.
Rogue Spore repurpose folk instrumentation and a repeated snippet of speech to create something that feels connected with landscape and social history, but at the same time has the power to disorientate. With Lucky Bag, the brilliantly named Acid Granny build a fraught world of screeches, cries, grunts and manipulated electronic noise. Musique concrete remains an important facet of the experimental scene, and non-traditional/non-musical objects are put to good use by a number of the acts here: Irene Murphy, who performs here with Mick O’Shea, specialises in ‘amplified objects’; the duo’s piece The Green Beach recognises that landscape and studio need not be different places, that something as mundane as a crunch of footsteps can be interesting or even transformative.
One of the best things about compilations like this is the way they open up vast networks of potential discovery. You could spend days exploring the catalogues of the artists featured here, and weeks navigating the connections between them and their peers. This collection is like a fragment of a map showing a constantly growing, shifting underground world.
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