Nialler9

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...

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 their member feeds or on Patreon direct. Welcome back. Kicking off season 5 of the Nialler9 Podcast with the return of our regular series in which Nialler and Andrea Cleary share their favourite music of the month. Discussi...

Our final podcast of the year is the fifth annual Nialler9 Podcast Awards. Niall and Andrea hand out gongs in categories: Best live TV and web video performances, sax solo of the year, the Andre 3000 award for best guest verse, best film soundtrack, song featured in a TV show, duds of the year, the heroes and villains of 2024 (Irish artists at SXSW, Drake, Spotify and more), best rap beat, trend o...

Episode 272, the second of our Best of 2024 trilogy of podcasts is all about the albums of the year. Andrea and Niall share a selection of their favourite albums of the year. Featuring discussion and reasons for best albums from Charli XCX, Jessica Pratt, Mabe Fratti, MJ Lenderman, Adrienne Lenker, Cindy Lee, Bricknasty, Father John Misty and Curtisy. Show notes: Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get e...

Episode 271 kicks off our Best of 2024 trilogy of podcasts with a look at the songs that defined our year. Andrea and Niall pick a selection box of their songs of the year and talk about them. Featuring songs from Charli XCX, MJ Lenderman, Waxahatchee, Burial, Baby Rose, Laura Marling, Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Fontaines D.C., Róis and more. Show notes: Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discou...

The Best of the Month episode is now Patreon-only . Public subscribers get the first 25 minutes or so. Episode 270 is partly a review of our favourite music of the month, and partly a chat about what's happening with Kendrick (new album) and Drake (lawsuits lol) in November. Andrea tells us why Drake is suing UMG, the label both him and Kendrick are on, and why he is also suing the label for defam...

Podcast 269 is all about the 23rd edition of Other Voices in Dingle and some of the acts playing the Jameson Music Trail from November 29th to December 1st. The Jameson Music Trail will present 100 live sets from dozens of Irish artists we love, with many acts playing twice in the town’s 16 venues, including a Jameson Connects stage at The Dingle Bridge House for the first time. For this episode,...

Earlier this year, the Tallaght rapper Curtisy released the debut album What Was The Question? one of the finest Irish rap albums, nay, Irish albums of the year. With a Deluxe version of the album out now, I spoke to Gavin Curtis aka Curtisy about starting out rapping in 2021 and meeting Ahmed, With Love and making their first song 'Men On A Mission' in 2022 with Rory Sweeney. Curtisy has a prolif...

Episode 267 with Andrea and Niall sharing their favourite music of the month. [Patreon Preview] In this episode, Nialler and Andrea kick off the chat with Halloween experiences, Andrea stays up for the Trump show, and advocates for leaving Twitter you guys. Then we highlight our favourite tracks and albums from October, including new albums from Irish artists like Fionn Regan (O Avalanche), Silver...