Music journalist Niamh O'Connor (DJ Mag, AlphaTheta, Mixmag, Resident Advisor, Discogs) joins us to discuss how trance music is the sound of an Irish summer, and hyperlocally in Dun Laoghaire specifically.

Trance music was primarily formed by producers in Germany, Netherlands and the Benelux countries in the early 90s where producers like German DJ Sven Väth fused techno-style beats with euphoric melodies, inspired by his time in Goa in india and listening to psychedelia. Paul van Dyk, Armin van Buuren, Tiësto and Ferry Corsten are some of the producers who were at the beginning of the genre.

Trance is hypnotic, euphoric, bombastic and bright – making use of repetitive overpoweringly melodic arpeggio synth lines paired with percussive builds, drops and trance gates to induce – the trance state – a musical attempt to replicate the altered euphoric state of mind, and the feeling of being high in the club a aided by ecstasy and mind-altering drugs.

Darude’s ‘Sandstorm’ is trance. Tiesto’s ‘Adagio For Strings’ is trance, Alice Deejay’s ‘Better Off Alone’ is trance. Robert Miles’ ‘Children’ is trance. Gigi D’Agostino’s ‘L’Amour Toujours’ is trance. The Big Brother theme song is trance.

Niamh joins us to enthuse about her favourite trance tunes, and talk to us about the DJs who are dropping trance in their sets these days.

We go on a history of trance music, trance in an Irish context, leading through the ’90’s to the chart poptrance, psytrance and recent music influenced by Trance from FKA Twigs, Burial, Oklou and Danny L Harle.

Are you ready? Let’s open the trance gate!

Niamh O’Connor’s Substack / Instagram

The Trance songs played on this episode.

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The Best of the Month episode is Patreon-only. Public subscribers get the first 25 minutes or so of the episode as a free preview. Members get to hear the whole episode on Patreon as part of a €6 a month subscription so come join us!

Andrea is taking the summer off the podcast and listening parties, so this month's special guest is Ailbhe Reddy, the Irish musician, songwriter and soon to be book author.

Ailbhe has recently started a really good Substack, and is working on novel and has a new album on the way, with new music coming in September.

Myself and Ailbhe discuss CMAT's gargantuan 'Eurocountry', Carving The Stone, the new album from For Those I Love, new tracks from Sprints, Chappell Roan, Laura Groves, Nuovo Testamento and Iona Zajac.

Plus we chat the new Clipse album Let God Sort Em Out, dip into the Irish underground with C2 and Beddyminaj and discuss is there a song of the summer this year? I put forward a contender.

We chat about All Together Now Festival, and some TV and films we have watched.

Ailbhe plays the National Concert Hall in Dublin on September 20th.

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The rapper, DJ and Dublin Don Mango joined us to discuss a rave-to-your-grave 90s UK dance music classic album - The Prodigy – Music For the Jilted Generation.

A classic ’90s rebellious rave album and sonic riposte to the crackdown on outdoor rave parites as a result of the 1994’s Criminal Justice Bill in the UK. Music For the Jilted Generation features Prodigy classics ‘Voodoo People’, ‘Poison’, ‘No Good (Start the Dance’, and ‘One Love’ and set the band off on a path of longterm rave and chart crossover that over 30 years later sees them as one of the premiere live dance acts in the world.

Listen to our chat about the album's background, the rave era of "toytown techno", the samples or are they samples and all things that lead to Vice call the album “dumb-fuck rock-raving”, and the album certainly opened the pit between rock and rave.

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ing in Galway nearly 10 years ago as a duo with Evan Campbell KETTAMA as VSN. The pair went on to form G-Town Records, and brought Galway to the world stages of dance music, with Shampain playing everything from Boiler Room to tours of China.

Shampain and Kettama’s Galway influence on the scene culminated in the pair taking over The Big Top marquee outdoors during the Galway Arts Festival in 2023, and putting on an eclectic night with drag artists and drone artists in Salthill.

But DJing is not the be all and end all for Cóilí.

Shampain is a creative fella who doesn’t rest - that means presenting Éire Eile, a TV show on TG4 about subcultures, jointly running a barber shop called Poblacht in Galway city, doing alternative silent film soundtracks with Slaughterhouse, running a mixed media / magazine and label called Freak and this year, finally releasing his own original music, with more to come.

The night after our chat, Shampain plays the Big Top again with Interplanetary Criminal and Tommy Holohan and next week you can catch him at Jameson Connects The Circle Stage at All Together Now closing the stage after David Holmes.

The Jameson Connects: The Circle stage at All Together Now features some Nialler9 favourites including Dry Cleaning, David Holmes, Maria Somerville, God Knows, DUG, Sloucho, Curtisy, Róis, Shampain, Adore and more.

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God Knows is a favourite returning guest, one of the nicest men in Irish music, one of the finest rappers in Ireland, a man who always has time for others, has an open heart, who puts collaboration, creativity and lifting people up to their rightful place.

It's a great time to talk to God Knows because on September 26th this year, he will release a long-awaited debut album The Future Of The Past, featuring production by his close collaborator MuRli (we also get to hear where they first met which is a fun bit of trivia) and featuring the singles 'The Observer', 'The Art Of Alienation' and next week's forthcoming single 'Misplaced Empathy'.

GK played Cork the night before we chat at a  Jameson Connects The Circle event at Crane Lane, ahead of the rapper's live set at Jameson Connects The Circle stage at All Together Now, this August bank holiday weekend.

So we talk about this new music and its deep ancestral familial inspirations which have surprisingly links to an West Cork venue, growing up in a multi-cultural Shannon, DJing and pleasing the crowd (or not), our excitement about the new Clipse album and the weird stuff going on with AI in music at the moment.

The Jameson Connects: The Circle stage at All Together Now features some Nialler9 favourites including Dry Cleaning, David Holmes, Maria Somerville, God Knows, DUG, Sloucho, Curtisy, Róis, Shampain, Adore and more.

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I'm sure why it took me 18 editions of the Listen Closely live listening parties for me to think about recording them and putting them out on the Patreon feed but I finally had the idea last month.

And sure, when we had two sold out parties of people coming to hear some chat and a full-volume listen in The Big Romance of LCD Soundsystem's second album Sound Of Silver (2007), then it was a great opportunity to stitch together chats I had with two guests DJ Kelly-Anne Byrne and Eoghan O'Sullivan (The Point Of Everything), all about James Murphy, Losing your Edge, loving and hating new York, gout and more

The second album from record nerd James Murphy and company, cemented LCD's status as a defining band of an alternative generation, elevating and building on the wry wink-wink-reference debut album with a second record that felt less like Murphy play pretending his heroes but joining them with a record filled with vastly superior alternative dance and rock music that takes its influences and turns them into something greater, and more singularly LCD Soundystem with songs of the age - 'Someone Great', 'Get Innocuous', 'All My Friends', 'Us vs Them' and more.

We discuss the record first with Eoghan and then play the record (not broadcast of course) before coming back after with Kelly-Anne Byrne to post-mortem what we've heard.

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The Best of the Month episode is now Patreon-only. Public subscribers get the first 25 minutes or so of the episode as a free preview. Members get to hear the whole episode on Patreon as part of a €5 a month subscription so come join us!

Eoin brings a variety of mostly-Irish releases to discuss with music from Throwing Shapes, Amanda Feery, the Efa O'Neill curated Place: Ireland compilation, Days Of Heaven the new album from Belfast band Junk Drawer and the new album from London band Caroline.

I pick my favourite albums from the month of June and discuss including Turnstile's Never Enough, Little Simz' Lotus, Loyle Carner's hopefully ! along with underground cloud rap from deathtoricky and the psych-folk style of Poor Creature.

We chat about recent gigs attended, Glasto, books we're reading and films and TV shows we are watching.

Albums and tracks mentioned

Throwing Shapes - Chosen Talk

Loyle Carner - hopefully ! (album) - in my mind / about time

Junk Drawer - Days Of Heaven (album) - Nids Niteca

Little Simz - Lotus (album) - Flood / Enough

deathtoricky - motives

deathtoricky - praying for u

Ó-Pax - Bell Dent

Turnstile - NEVER ENOUGH (album) - Never Enough / Sole

caroline; Caroline Polachek - Tell me I never knew that

Poor Creature - All Smiles Tonight

Cocteau Twins - Watchlar

We’re not here for a long time, but we are here for a smooooooooooth time.

Grab your linen shirt and deck shoes as we will be taking to the gentle seas for some smooth sailing, daiquiri in hand, and with love on our mind, we are heading to the private island of Yacht Rock.

You can be a passenger on this ship.

Yacht Rock is the subgenre of music largely made by West Coast American artists The Doobie Brothers, Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross and their ilk with some of the best session players of the mid-70s to early-80s era.

Just why did music this smooth and melodic become so dominant? Why did they all love electric pianos so much? Did these progenitors all go sailing as their pastime?

Drippy keyboards, bright summery melodies, melancholic lyrics, impassioned sentiment, it’s the concerns of a heartbroken gentleman, it’s time to take a splash in the cool waters of Yacht Rock.

The Best of the Month episode is now Patreon-only. Public subscribers get the first 20 minutes or so of the episode as a free preview. Members get to hear the whole episode on Patreon as part of a €5 a month subscription so come join us!

It's the return of our monthly Patreon episode, but this time with a special guest.

Andrea is taking the summer off the podcast and listening parties, so I asked Mo Cultivation's Bekah Molony to join me in enthusing about our favourite music of the past month.

Bekah joins us to talk about Tyler, The Creator's recent Dublin gig, Forbidden Fruit, Lovely Days at Guinness Storehouse and more.

Then we discuss our favourite music from PinkPantheress, Khamari, Baxter Dury, Evan Miles, Mhaol, Billy Woods, Sammy Virji and Skepta, For Those I Love, Katie Phelan, Loyle Carner and Erika De Casier.

Plus some song of the summer contenders and chats about Sinners the film and TV shows we're catching.

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Albums and tracks mentioned

For Those I Love - Of The Sorrows

Sammy Virji; Skepta - Cops & Robbers

billy woods - Golliwog (album)

Khamari - Head in a Jar

Baxter Dury, JGrrey - Allbarone

katie phelan - nothing stays the same

Erika de Casier - Lifetime (album)

Evan Miles - It's On Me

Mhaol - Something Soft (album)

PinkPantheress - Stateside

PinkPantheress - Illegal

Sofia Kourtesis; Daphni - Unidos

Selena Gomez; benny blanco - Bluest Flame

Loyle Carner - all i need

Today's episode is a discussion with writer and journalist Una Mullally about artist boycotts, solidarity, Palestine, Israel, protest, cancellation, capitalism and the music industry.

We talk about how Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people has become a flashpoint of awareness about how modern music festivals work, specifically how private equity which invests in Israel operates in the live music industry.

We chat about why Kneecap's recent actions have drawn so much ire and anger in the US and  the UK, leading to the expedited terror charge of Mo Chara on June 18th, and calls (often successful) for cancellation of their shows.

Festivals owned by global events company Superstruct who own 80 festivals and brands like Sonar, Sziget, Boiler Room, Oya, Field Day and Mighty Hoopla have had artists cancel in boycott of Superstruct's owner KKR, the second largest private equity firm in the world, who  have documented ties to both weapons manufacturers and Israeli companies developing data centres and advertising real estate on illegally occupied land.

It feels like an unprecedented time for the visibility of protest and boycott by artists in recent years. A generational shift is happening -  Artists and DJs are showing moral opposition in this complicity in the face of political inaction. Lines are being drawn.