Nialler9

This month's best of the month podcast guest is Manchester-based Irish BBC 6 Music presenter Deb Grant. Deb started out with Jazz FM in Dublin before moving to the UK at 19 where now based in Manchester, she has been a regular BBC Radio 6 Music presenter since 2023, currently presenting the New Music Daily Fix show with Nathan Shepherd from Monday to Thursday from 7pm to 9pm. Deb will be in Ireland over the coming months in her role as ambassador for Heineken Greenlight. Music discussed and chosen on the episode from Angine De Poitrine, Wax Head, Avalon Emerson, Shortstraw, Baalti and Lapgan, Hannah Peel and Beibei Wang, Isa Gordon, Carol Maia and Jeremy Gustin, The Scratch and Rua Rí. Plus Deb talks about being a judge on the Choice Music Prize, seeing Madra Salach in a tiny venue, and David Byrne's live Who Is The Sky? tour. My Best albums of March piece. Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Podlink * Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and access our Discord community.

The 1998 album marked a turn for the trip-hop visionary band's to the dark side. Niall is joined by Craig Fitzpatrick discuss the record in front of a live audience at at Listen Closely, our series of monthly album listening parties in the Big Romance. Massive Attack - Mezzanine (1998) The third album from the British pioneers radically reshaped the band's own bright trip-hop, soul and hip-hop with darker tones of electronic, industrial, and gothic distorted guitars. Mezzanine eschews the band's trademark warmth for magnified atmospheres drawing on paranoia, negative space, and whispered vocals to create a mood that mirrored the anxieties of the digital age. The album caused internal drama. The dark, guitar-heavy vibe of Mezzanine pushed the band into new territory, but it also led to major tension. We revisit the record and talk about the band's career's highs, lows and live shows in The Big Romance with a live audience. Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Pod.Link * Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and join our Discord community

The debut album from Bloc Party remains a seminal record of a key time in UK guitar music. Niall is joined by author and writer Dean Van Nguyen discuss the record in front of a live audience at Listen Closely, our series of monthly album listening parties. Bloc Party – Silent Alarm (2005) Bloc Party’s debut album quickly became a seminal indie record of the 2000s with big frenetic indie zeitgeist hits like ‘Helicopter’, ‘Banquet’, ‘This Modern Love’ and ‘Like Eating Glass’. Silent Alarm presented a poppy spin on taut post-punk, edgy pop and alternative ballads, with Kele Okereke’s lyrical explorations of matters of the heart, modern anxieties, intimacy and alienation. Silent Alarm felt like a manifesto. It bridged rock and dance culture before LCD Soundsystem and others made that fusion mainstream. We discuss its beginnings, its impact, what came after for the band and some recommended further listening. We revisit the record in The Big Romance with a live audience. Dean's book about Tupac is recommended. * Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and join our Discord community Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Pod.Link

This month's best of guest is Cork pop culture writer Mia Tobin Power who joins Niall for episode #309. In the recommendations corner this month are albums from Mitski, Cardinals, Charli XCX, Archive, Jill Scott, Vegas Water Taxi, Puma Blue, Nashpaints and David DeBarra. Plus a song from new Cork band Maicín. Plus some chat about the phenomenal Industry Season 4 and some other films and TV we've enjoyed this past month. I wrote about my choices here this week. Follow Mia on Substack. Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Podlink * Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and access our Discord community.

It's been a whirlwind of a week for Dublin nightlife enjoyers. Last Friday, it was reported that newly refurbished Dublin hotel The Hoxton (formerly The Central Hotel) sought an High Court injunction over noise bleed issues against its adjoining late night restaurant and night club space Yamamori Izakaya while it plans to open its own nightclub. Both parties are in disagreement over what has taken place in attempts at dialogue. In the meantime, a protest took place last night outside the hotel, which showed people's clear frustration with the threats put upon Dublin's cultural and arts spaces. Dublin folk musician and People Before Profit Dublin Central candidate Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin spoke at the protest last night, and was part of a Stand Up For The Arts public meeting in The Cobblestone afterwards. Eoghan spoke to me about the broader implications of government policies that prioritise corporate interests over cultural preservation, he emphasises the need for grassroots movements to protect and advocate for the arts. The chat highlights the importance of community engagement, the untapped potential of publicly funded cultural venues and the recent failure of the government to save The Complex. Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Podlink * Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and access our Discord community.

The Best of the Month episode is Patreon-only. This is a preview on the public feed. This month's best of the month guest is music writer Vanessa Roulston Mooney. We pick our favourite music of the first month of the year, from midwest desert post rock of Winged Wheel, new releases from Irish artists Maria Somerville, Madra Salach, Ailbhe Reddy, Ye Vagabonds and Caitlin Orla Eve, the cosmic collab between Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore, the Norwegian artist Sassy 009, the "Britainicana" band Westside Cowboy and Chicago experimental trio Bitch Bajas. We also talk recent gig experiences and the Choice Music Prize Irish album of the year. Follow Vanessa on Substack. The These New Puritans interview Vanessa did for us.

A catchup with the Limerick rapper, poet, thinker, writer and actor Denise Chaila. Denise Chaila has been working on her own artist development in recent years. The Limerick artist has spent time away from the spotlight surfacing only to offer a glimpse of what's preoccupying her eloquent mind. A lot has happened in the five and half years (!) since Denise and I sat down with pals to have a chat for the Podcast. This time around, it's just the two of us, with Denise sharing the journey that took her from Ed Sheeran remixes and support slots to an artistic and creative re-evaluation that prompted her to put the breaks on her career as it barrelled ever higher and forward. In this episode, Denise tells us why she shunned the limelight, and the machinations of the music industry around her, and illuminates on recent times that have taken her to visit the childhood homes of J Dilla (Detroit) and Michael Jackson (Indiana), making a film with Limerick-born LA photographer and director Brian Cross aka B+ about the Supremes performing in Limerick, meeting Erykah Badu and her recent experiences exploring traditional Irish music and sessions. On Friday, Denise Chaila performs a rare hometown show as part of All We Have Are Days, with the show at billed as an in conversation and performance, which as Denise told me will aim to tear down the barriers of performer and audience. * Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and join our Discord community Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Pod.Link

For our latest Live Listen Closely album listening party chat podcast, we are chiming in with My Bloody Valentine fever as the band prepare to play Dublin for the first time in 33 years this week. Their seminal and definite album Loveless is considered a classic of shoegaze, a totem of the genre. If shoegaze is about building sonic cathedrals, Loveless is the La Sagrada Família of shoegaze. Nialler and Aoife Barry discuss the album's fraught recording process that involved 19 studios, up to 45 engineers, two and a half years and approximately £250,000 of Creation Records for 48 minutes of music. But what music! Kevin Shields glide guitar and open tunings added an otherness to the record, as did the mono mix and the Enforced Method Acting of getting Belinda Butcher to sing after immediately waking up. Loveless is a nebulous thing - it's more of an ambient wall-of-sound than a guitar rock record at times, that nearly bankrupted the label and turned one label exec's hair white. We discuss it all. This is an addendum podcast to our original 2022 episode about the album. Our next listening party event is Outkast's Stankonia on Wednesday November 26th. * Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and join our Discord community Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Pod.Link

The Best of the Month episode is normally Patreon-only. We are making this one fully public. This month's best of the month guest is Nialler9 Podcast regular Louise Bruton. We discuss the album of the month with the most chatter around it - Lily Allen's new direct diaristic divorce album West End Girl, along with records from Irish music scene stalwart Maykay with her long awaited debut solo album, the new sixth album from Florence + The Machine, Katie & Allison Crutchfield's Snocaps record, the supernaturally-inspired Old Earth from Dublin producer Rory Sweeney and friends, the Philadelphia shoegaze band They Are Gutting A Body Of Water and the new PinkPantheress remix album. Along with spotlights for previous guest Ailbhe Reddy and short king hater Alex Cameron. Plus some TV, film and books we've enjoyed. Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Podlink * Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and access our Discord community.

A live recording and chat with Aoife Barry from our recent Listening Party for Jeff Buckley's Grace (1994) at the Big Romance in Dublin. One of the '90s most revered albums, Grace is an astonishing debut LP from the American singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley. Sadly, it was to be his only album as he tragically died three years later but the album is considered a classic for its wide-ranging, reaching vocals (Buckley's voice spanned four octaves), its resonant melding of rock, folk, soul and jazz and songs of intensity, beauty and grandeur including of course, the definitive cover of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah', along with songs like 'Lover, You Should’ve Come Over', 'Mojo Pin', and 'Grace'. Baroque, sweeping, poetic, soul–baring, biblical, elemental and melodramatic Grace is considered one of the best debut albums of all time, and generally just one of the best records of all time. The high drama of his life imbues Buckley’s songs with a level of intensity and singular weight It’s no wonder that it’s an album that teenagers are still discovering today. We discuss the record in front of a live Listen Closely audience. Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Pod.Link

This is a repeat episode from 2021, ahead of our My Bloody Valentine's Loveless listening parties on Tuesday October 28th and Wednesday October 29th (this night is SOLD OUT). We revisit the classic 1991 record Loveless by the Irish/English shoegaze band My Bloody Valentine, ahead of their upcoming 3Arena show. On this podcast hour, you'll hear all the album's expensive gestation that took in countless engineers and many studios, the thousand of pounds that Creation Records boss Alan McGee sunk into for the recording without hearing a note, how Kevin Shields' perfectionism lead him to both his Glide Guitar technique and a near mental breakdown, why the album was recorded in mono, why the vocals sound like that, and the reaction to the album at the time. Plus, are MBV really that loud live? Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and join our Discord community Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Pod.Link

It's Andrea Cleary's final Nialler9 Podcast as the cohost! Since 2018, and nearly 300 episodes, Andrea has been a big big part of the Nialler9 Podcast and episode 300 is her final episode as she goes off to spend time in academia and finish her PhD. She will be back as a guest in the future but in the meantime: Her final episode is a chance to talk about all the big music things in our world at the moment.. Taylor Swift's 12th album The Life of a Showgirl is a certified stinker according to fans and critics alike. We get Andrea's take on why. Taylor Swift's 12th album The Life of a Showgirl is a certified stinker according to fans and critics alike. We get Andrea's always-insightful take on why. CMAT's Euro-Country - the CMAT stans put on their review stetson and discuss CMAT's third album which Niall thinks is her best. We enthuse about her songwriting once more. Geese - the explosive rise of the Brooklyn band has people calling them Gen Z's first great American rock band but they also sound a lot like the indie era Brooklyn-centric bands of the 2000s era - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Wolf Parade, TV On The Radio and more. * Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and join our Discord community Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Pod.Link

A live recording from our recent Listening Party for Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz! (2009) at the Big Romance in Dublin. The third album from the New York band of Karen O, Nick Zinner and Brian Chase marked out the trio from the scrappy garage guitar of their debut (Fever To Tell) and its restrained followup (Show Your Bones) to a glorious reinvention of synthesised art-rock filled with ecstatic and anthemic heights. Featuring two of their biggest hits in Heads Will Roll and Zero, the album brought disco and dance energy to their widescreen rock music, and was full of confidence and bolder sounds with sacrificing the YYYs identity. For Andrea Cleary's last listening party for the foreseeable, she posits the theory that the album marked the end of the indie era of the 2000s where indie music was practically mainstream and Beyoncé and Jay-Z were attended Grizzly Bear shows and New York rock bands were known to all. * Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and join our Discord community Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Pod.Link

This live episode of the Nialler9 Podcast was recorded in Segotia in Rathmines Dublin on September 27th as part of their one-day festival Me Au Segotia. Segotia is a community space for yoga classes, creative courses, art classes, exhibitions and events in Dublin. Our panel was about how to sustain independent music communities in Dublin. As music grows ever more entangled with unethical platforms and increased corporate interests – artists, organisers, and fans are rethinking their roles in the ecosystem, and building alternatives. This live episode of the Nialler9 Podcast explores how to build and sustain independent music communities in Dublin and what they look like. We look at how artist, collectives, and grassroots organisers are cultivating alternative networks — through co-operative communities, music collectives, community-run festivals to local independent venue spaces and more. Nialler9 and Andrea Cleary host with guests: Alba Molina Dublin Digital Radio, Synthesize_Her, Dublin Modular, Dublin Alternative Latin Night Inpar and curator/organiser of Alternating Current – Dublin Digital Radio’s annual of the experimental and grassroots currents in contemporary Irish music. Oisín Klinkenberg Oisín is an environmental researcher and project worker who hosts the show ‘amach anseo’ on Dublin Digital Radio. He now sits on the Steering Committee where he has been Project Coordinator. Siún Moriarty Siún Moriarty is the marketing manager in Button Factory, venue manager in the newly launched Curveball and founder of blankbar, an artist development & management agency working with artists Rory Sweeney and Vaticanjail.

A trip into Trance - the dance music genre that launched a thousand cheesy synth lines and Euphoria compilations. 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. What is trance music? 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. * Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and join our Discord community Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Pod.Link

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. Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Podlink * Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and join our Discord community

This live episode was recorded over July in The Big Romance on Parnell Street with a live audience at our latest album listening party Listen Closely. 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. Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Podlink * Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and join our Discord community

This week’s special guest is the multifaceted Cóilí Collins aka DJ Shampain. 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. Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Podlink * Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and join our Discord community