Nialler9

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 an...

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...

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...

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...

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 p...

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 t...

It's always a good time to talk to God Knows, the Irish-Zimbabwean rapper based in Shannon. 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 S...

This live episode was recorded over two nights in June in The Big Romance on Parnell Street in front of an attentive live audience (and some people overheard on the recording from the main bar) 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...

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!   Andrea is taking the summer off the podcast and listening parties, so this month's special guest is Eoin Murray, the music writer behind the Irish Substac...

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 Doobi...

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 as...

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 m...

K.Dot's first masterpiece album is a coming-of-age story with Kendrick navigating life in Compton, resisting peer pressure, destructive behaviour and trying to stay righteous in a corrupted world. Ahead of our listening party at the Big Romance , Andrea takes us on the Hero's Journey of Kendrick Lamar's breakthrough 2012 second album good kid, m. A.A.d city. Subtitled A Short Film, this cinematic...

The avant-electronic and experimental Irish music festival Open Ear returns to Sherkin Island on the June Bank Holiday weekend. Open Ear is known for its preoccupation with illuminating music operating on the fringes, and the remote island setting of Sherkin Island off the coast of Baltimore in West Cork reflects this outsider ethos. The varied programme is drawn from electronic, techno, experimen...

Our monthly Patreon episode in which Andrea Cleary and Niall share our favourite music of the past month.   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 for a €5 a month so come join us! This month, we are discussing new albums from Torres and Julien Baker,...

The Irish-Palestinian singer and filmmaker speaks about embracing her Arabic heritage in her music, and the resurgence of interest in keening and Irish folklore. The Irish-Palestinian artist Róisín El Cherif has spent 18 months advocating for the people of Palestine, speaking out on the injustice and genocide in Gaza. El Cherif has begun singing in Arabic on stage, noting the connections between I...

It’s DILLA TIME This month's special is about Jay Dee aka J Dilla, a Detroit hip-hop producer’s whose work is so prolific and influential his MPC sampler is in the Smithsonian. Dilla worked with hip-hop and R&B greats - Q-Tip, A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes, The Roots, The Pharcyde, D'Angelo, Common, Madlib and made his own signature rhythm that others copied - he used a sampler like no on...

Our monthly  episode in which Andrea Cleary and Niall share our favourite music of the past month. The Best of the Month episode is now Patreon-only. Public subscribers get the first 15 minutes or so of the episode as a free preview. Members get to hear the whole episode on their member feeds or on Patreon direct. Discussing music from Lonnie Holley, Bon Iver, Adebisi Shank, Chappell Roan, Avalon...

Jamal Sul has been making Irish Arabic electronic music as Moving Still since 2016. His productions link his Arabic heritage, with his love of synthesizers, dance music and buzzy bangers. Moving Still’s music is unique in how it brings together styles of music from the  SWANA region (Southwest Asia and North Africa) with European and American club genres like Italo, electro, acid, breakbeats, hous...

Would you identify an AI song if you pressed play on one? Colm Cahalane and Niall explore what's happening in AI and music now, with an example drawn from the Irish music scene in recent months. Echoing the early Wild Wild West streaming era that we discussed last week with Liz Pelly that gave rise to Spotify's dominance , our chat this week with Colm Cahalane of Irish music Substack blog Fourth B...

The music and cultural critic Liz Pelly's new book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Cost of the Perfect Playlist  is a deep dive into Spotify's often contentious position in music today. Liz has been a philosophising on issues brought about by the streaming era's cultural impact for about 10 years now so the book collates a lot of work, thoughts, research and investigative reporting on Sp...

Our monthly episode in which Nialler and Andrea Cleary talk about their favourite music of the month. The Best of the Month episode is now  Patreon-only . Public subscribers get the first 20-25 minutes or so of the episode as a free preview. Members  get to hear the whole episode on their member feeds or on Patreon direct. Discussing new albums from Oklou, Horsegirl, Maria Kelly, Puma Blue and son...

The composer and producer, and multi-instrumentalist Ólafur Arnalds met the Cork singer-songwriter Eoin French aka Talos after he ran a marathon in Iceland. A friendship was struck, that quickly developed into a musical partnership, as seen at Sounds From A Safe Harbour in Cork in 2023, when the festival director Mary Hickson put the pair together for a collaboration. Now six months after Eoin's d...

    Niall and Andrea are running our mouths over what's been happening in mainstream music to this year.   Episode #276 is a grab bag of topics and events in music so far from Kendrick Lamar's Superbowl Half-Time Show, the Grammys to the music highlights of 50 years of Saturday Night Live.   We talk about Doechii's live performance at the Grammys, Robyn and David Byrne performing together and Laur...

Episode 275 is an interview with Kittser about his electronic project New Jackson. It may have felt like a side project when it debuted with The Night Mail EP in 2011, but over the last 14 years, the New Jackson releases have been so consistent across a multitude of EPs on Permanent Vacation, Hivern, All City, Maeve and more, with last year's second album Oops!... Pop softened the lines into a mor...