SPRINTS - All That Is Over (2025)

Give me Irish post-punk any time of a day and I will gladly accept it. Especially after last year's abundance of great releases within the genre. But if you add a deal of guitar noise to the picture, I'm immediately sold. This is the case of the sophomore album from the Dubliners of SPRINTS where the spirit is post-punk, but the music provides a significantly loud experience.

The band acknowledges a slight shift in their music by saying that the new release "pushes the dynamics of the band into richer territory, finding new space and nuance but also going harder than ever". And so the songs here are fast and short, hitting like some well-addressed punk punches with energy fueled by aggressive guitar sounds and extremely catchy melodies. But underneath it all, the artists incorporated meaty and noisy layers of guitars, a real and rarely found treat for the fans of noise rock.

I feel like the structure of most of the tracks is also richer and more interesting than at your obvious post-punkers. It's more the IDLES-like songwriting with changes in pace and volume (so great in Something's Gonna Happen) and other clever little tricks that make the album stand out. Also, I love how in Pieces, the guitar riff is so similar to... one from the Polish legendary post-punk band Klaus Mitffoch (from their song Muł pancerny), but I know it's a special thing only for me and a handful other people worldwide.

All That Is Over costs 10 EUR.

Check: To the Bone

Country: Ireland

Genre: noisy post-punk

Label: City Slang

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Maria Somerville - Luster (2025)

Taking inspirations from everywhere, but mainly her home Ireland, Maria Somerville creates dream pop with many faces, but one soul: it stays intimate and close to the audience thanks to the slow pace and ethereal vocals. The artist's sophomore album is all about this close artist-listener proximity.

On this album, the artist's range goes from ambient pop to acoustic dream pop up to almost industrial-like tones. But generally the vibes revolve around the slowest, most intimate of genres. A beautiful voice, background hums and maybe an acoustic guitar is all the artist needs to enchant us. With Projections, she proofs that it doesn't mean that her songs are not catchy, but generally the melodies are less important than the airiness and softness of the sound. And softness is what I seek on albums like this.

Luster costs 12 EUR (9.99 GBP).

Check: Projections

Country: Ireland

Genre: intimate dream pop

Label: 4AD

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Cruel Sister - Girls My Age (2022)

The "lover of big fields and forests" from Dublin, Faith Nico Boyd-Millar makes her music as Cruel Sister. And there's no doubt she is very talented as Girls My Age makes a very tasty noise pop dish.

The dream pop solo projects often rely on the lo-fi atmosphere to boost their oneiric capabilities, but it's not the case here: Boyd-Millar's music feels very well done, also quality-wise, and the noise we can admire comes solely from the quite heavy guitar sounds. The vocals are, of course, fittingly dispersed and, really, barely audible, but this is the point here. It's noisy and ethereal and, honestly, doesn't feel like a solo project. Maybe it's because in some fragments, the artist sings in choir with herself and it feels very authentic. It's always impressive how noisy one person can be and the Irish artist is a fantastic example here.

Girls My Age costs 4.5 EUR.

Check: too much

Country: Ireland

Genre: solo noise pop

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Submotile - One Final Summit Before the Fall (2022)

The Italian-Irish duo released their last album only a year ago and they are back again with the third one in their discography, ominously called One Final Summit Before the Fall. And I have to say, I dig the sound they achieve: the very noisy, very energetic kind of noise rock.

This sound is mostly the result of the extremely noisy and overwhelming guitar walls of noise that appear all over the album, ready to crush you in this sad but up-lifting kind of hug. Daniela Angione's dreamy, dispersed vocals have to fight their way through this guitar blizzard and these are the moments when I say "this is the shoegaze sound", especially in places like Resonica's finish.. And all of this doesn't mean that Submotile's music is not melodic. I don't know how they manage to produce this noisy but also fast-paced and melodic music so well. The overall feeling of the album certainly revolves around chaotic noise, overwhelming sound but also melodic rock and I like this combination a lot.

One Final Summit Before the Fall costs 7 USD.

Submotile - Sonic Day Codas (2021)

Check: From First Light Until Our Final Sleep

Country: Ireland/Italy

Genre: noise rock

Label: Shelflife

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A Ritual Sea - A Ritual Sea (2021)

Led by the couple of artists Florian Chombart and Donna McCabe, A Ritual Sea is a French-Irish band that is all about swift melodies and ethereal atmosphere. They released their debut album this fall and A Ritual Sea makes a great compilation of slightly retro dream pop-aiming music.

Fittingly inspired by the movie works by Tarkovsky, Altman and Bergman, the album presents a subtler face of indie folk/rock with a lot of airy/ethereal influences. The indie pop, even twee-like, melodies here are super swift and energetic but also delicate, just like the female and male vocals. And fittingly for the noisy dream pop genre, they are contrasted with noisy, guitar-oriented music - although I must say, it's not very loud, sounding more like a compliment to the vocals and melodies, with the noise suggesting the deeper, noisier realms but not showing those that often. Perhaps that's what "sea" in the project's name stands for: the suggestion of something massive and dangerous but showing mostly the pretty, calm face.

The songs here differ as far as the quantity of noise is concerned; I prefer the tracks that are more into the exploration of the guitar loudness - like Prisms for example where the pop tunes are only an excuse to make something messier, but truth be told, melodies like the ones in Serpentine or Saving Grace are so attractive that it's difficult not to be affected by their charm.

A Ritual Sea costs 8 EUR.

Check: Prisms

Country: Ireland

Genre: melodic noise pop

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Inwavves - This Summer (2021)

Formerly known as Adasteris (a name that still shows in many places and is now used as a moniker for a small label the artists established), Inwavves is a band from Dublin that "combines elements of alternative metal, shoegaze, post-rock and Boards of Canada-esque electronica into it's own sound" and their (what seems to be the third) album This Summer shows how gracefully they can do that.

The music here is clearly a combination of several music genres. The overall psychedelic rock atmosphere encompasses very dreamy vocals that appear concurrently with metal-like screams (slightly hidden in the backgrounds, so impressive in Siebenundsiebzig) in what can only be described as trip-hop-like dreamy compositions. They can, and usually do, easily get louder and strictly guitar-based (as is the case in This Summer, the title track) and turn into post-rock-like crescendos. Truly, almost every track here sounds as if taken from a different music world, while together they still seem to keep a coherent whole. So there's some neoclassicism in Forever, some dad-rock guitar riffs in Someday Soon or the already mentioned metal-like vocals. This complexity of genres, this eclectic style of the band is something that attracts towards this release.

This Summer costs 7 EUR.

Check: Siebenundsiebzig

Country: Ireland

Genre: eclectic psychedelic rock

Label: Ad Asteris

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Ian Nyquist - Endless, Shapeless (2021)

The Irish artist Ian Nyquist released his second (it seems) album under the experimental umbrella of LAAPS records. This is some music for the people who seek something that can be described and want to truly feel it. Perhaps they should reach for Endless, Shapeless.

This is a disturbingly chaotic music in a sense that it doesn't go in one direction for a longer time.  That's probably the reason for the "shapeless" in the title. There's a lot from ambient and electronic music as well as neoclassical bits (violins provided by Cornelis Jordaan and cello by Kristin Nyquist). Especially the electronics sound very tasteful and impactful in a non-invasive way (if it's not an oxymoron) - but this is what I take from songs like Plateau.  And of course the whole experimental stuff that includes unnerving and uncomfortable sounds like it is in Field & Cliff in which they are not soothed even by the ethereal backing vocals that support the composition.

The album comes to an end finally so the title's first part is an exaggeration but there are moments in life in which this album could play on endlessly providing the perfect soundtrack slowly dissolving into neoclassical soundscape.

Endless, Shapeless costs 6 EUR.

Check: Plateau 

Country: Ireland

Genre: experimental ambient

Label: LAAPS

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Submotile - Sonic Day Codas (2021)

Submotile is an Italian-Irish band of musician inspired by noisy and psychedelic face of pop-rock music. There's tons of guitar loudness and background noise with light melodies on the foreground. This sums up their second (?), released in April album called Sonic Day Codas.

And as it is the way with this kind of music, the psychedelic is what drives it throughout the whole album. Soothing and ethereal vocals singing out graceful melodies are one thing but what is most attention-worthy is what happens in the background. And it's usually a real storm of distorted and overdrive-full guitars raging their way to be heard. The band surely knows how to use their energy not to overwhelm the compositions and to sound like My Bloody Valentine in the backgrounds (so good in Microdose!) but a neat dream pop band in the foregrounds.

What strikes me the most while listening to this albums is the quality of the noise sound, it is not easy to deliver such a dirty-sounding material without sounding super lo-fi but Submotile did it. There are also some parts that stand out in this fairly homogeneous blend of psychedelia this albums is. Most certainly the whole song Cyanotic with raging guitars, fun melody and such an impressive finish making me think of Rev Rev Rev's Blame. Another thing is that they can also create captivating ballad-like pieces (like Anhedonia for example) for which the level of psychedelic fun is the same although the pace changes to slower one that makes it only more mesmerizing.

Sonic Day Codas costs 6 EUR.

Check: Cyanotic 

Country: Ireland/Italy 

Genre: noisy psychedelic pop

Label: Shore Dive Records

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Hilary Woods - Birthmarks (2020) EN

It seems to me that the extremely dark dream pop drawing from folka and noise of all kinds, let's call it Chelsea-Wolfe-ism, recently is really powerful. I've just mentioned Mirny Mine and now I'm simply amazed by the new album from Hilary Woods Birthmarks.

The Irish artist combines the aforementioned genres creating a super-rich and super-dark tribal cocktail. The richness and breadth of her horizons are well seen in the list of inspirations she accounts for that ranges from wet plate photography and wolves up to Chris Marker's movies. The album that was made when the artist was pregnant (definitely an inspiration for the title), impresses with the musical backgrounds of airy backing vocals, subtle neoclassicism and mind-invading noise.

The further into the album the darker and more eerie it gets. Like in Mud and Stones, dominated by the unnerving, creeping somewhere and barely audible noise and its whole dark tribal-folk-ambient vibe. Especially the use of the live instruments that often generate this atmosphere is something that should be respected, just listen to the first part of The Mouth and try not to feel thrills crawling up your spine.

Birthmarks costs 7.99 USD.

Check: Through the Dark, Love

Country: Ireland

Genre: noisy dark folk
Label: Sacred Bones

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Bokotono - Bokotono (2020) EN

The Irish band Bokotono from the very West of Europe, are slowly debuting solid artists from the borders of math rock, post-rock and generally instrumental music. After releasing some singles in the last years, they showed their second EP now, one called simply Bokotono.

The instrumental music of the band is supposed to "combine thunderous rock riffs with delicate progressive flourishes". Indeed, there's a lot of progressive spirit, post-rock atmosphere and math rock experiments there. But the best way to call this music is probably psychedelically instrumental. Their riffs are absolutely crazy, but besides the musical fluttering, there's also, at least in some places, heavy and nervous atmosphere. As in the impressive Butcher No Blood. Still, the most important on this album is how they play with heavy guitar sounds and how good they are in this.

Bokotono costs 5 EUR.

Check: Butcher No Blood

Country: Ireland

Genre: psychedelic instrumental

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The Mighty Avon Jnr. - Hold Everything Dear (2018) EN

Music project by the Irish artist Daragh McCarthy has finally released an album that had been created for almost 20 years (its opening track, Rapture Me Now, was released as a single in 1999). And it's wonderful news because Hold Everything Dear makes an utterly interesting composition with live instruments and poetry citing in the foreground.

Poetry is the correct word for McCarthy's lyrics. It's both intriguing and unsettling, one of my favourite fragments being certainly: "I asked you: Is that cigar smoke or teargas? You said, What’s the difference?” from Steeplejack Field Holler. From the music perspective, we deal with complex compositions in which the main part may be taken by either guitar drones (as in the monumental and absolutely beautiful Underground) or more traditional instruments, as for example trumpets.

Besides all of this, there are also other, non-obvious ideas from the multimedia artist's head: there are choir sounds (Wedding Chair), there are folk singing in the backgrounds, there are samples in Japanese (Jibutsu No Fokuroa), or a very much danceable chorus in Cobra Dear Heart. As stated here, the project makes  music that is so complex and complicated that no wonder that McCarthy calls is a "one-man band with a hundred members". 

Hold Everything Dear costs 7 EUR.

Check: Underground

Country: Ireland

Genre: spoken word post-folk

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Wild Surmise - Dropping Slow (2018) EN

Wild Surmise is both a microscopic record label and one of the projects of Thomas Power from Ireland. One because he creates electronic music as L'Homme Moyen while Wild Surmise is dedicated strictly to guitars. And it's so good I could hardly skip his new record.

There's plenty of guitar sounds and they are diverse. Sometimes they are like torrent's delicate whispers, sometimes, in the background there are strings handled with a bow while sometimes, frankly, quite often, this guitar music gets to be, yes indeed, powerful. The best thing is that all this can be heard during one track, like it is in an ultra atmospheric "Peace".

There's also some surprising moments, like the one in "Comes" where the show is stolen by this crazy tribal-black-metal drums rhythm  which, together with not very aggressive music, makes a unique combination. It's one of those projects you can't believe it's in fact only one man behind it.

"Dropping Slow" is available for pay-what-you-want.

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Frankenstein Bolts - Aglow & Spark (2017) EN

The two Irishmen are known as Frankenstein Bolts and create, as they state it, "synthy folky melodies with noisey bits and some beep beep boops thrown in for good measure". How could we not like them from the very first moment? Especially that those melodies make a top shelf dreampop music.

"Aglow & Spark" is the second album by the duo Cullen-Comerford. It's opened by a genius "Land and Water". It's a very subtle track, if it wasn't for the mesmerizing drums, it would even be sleepy. But the outstanding and airy chorus is worth waiting for. Other pleasant track would be a ballad-like "Languages (I Know)". However, the album's pace gets higher and higher with next songs and sometimes ("The Lonely Hour", "Anatomic Major") it's already a fast but stil delicate pop. The finish of the album gets back to the baseline.

And the baseline means a music that is as delicate as a lotion for a newborn ass. But applied via ears.

The album is not cheap, it costs 10 EUR for digital version. But you can listen to it via Spotify too.

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