Nialler9

Palestine, Kneecap and why artists are boycotting music festivals

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.
 

Revisiting: Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d city

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 rap masterpiece was a huge mainstream success, and crowned Kendrick as the voice of modern hip-hop (Dr. Dre literally appears to do so on the coronation track 'Compton') and it's narrative storytelling tells the story of a 17-year-old Lamar on a quest for a girl before being sidetracked by homie peer pressure and the more dangerous elements of his surrounding landscape.
It features the songs 'Bitch Dont' Kill My Vibe', 'Money Trees', 'Backseat Freestyle', and the accidental frat anthem 'Swimming Pools (Drank)'.
We revisit this modern rap masterpiece, Kendrick's first of many.

Going to the Island with Open Ear Festival

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, experimental folk and trad, jazz EBM, bass music and art rock, and this year features the likes of Irish techno legend Sunil Sharpe, Scottish piper Brìghde Chaimbeul, Cork sean nos rockers I Dreamed I Dream, Belfast Sound Advice record shop owner Marion Hawkes, Limerick rap and production duo Citrus Fresh and 40Hurtz, Catalan/Italian EBM duo Dame Area, Autechre collaborator Rob Hall, and lots more. The programme features one artist at a time across various stages on Sherkin including the infamous Banger Cliff.
I spoke to Open Ear head of programming Dion Doherty aka Belacqua about the challenges and uniqueness of putting on an experimentally-minded festival on an island and as it approaches its 10th year, how its planning to grow its European partnerships and unearths Irish music of the underground.
 
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Our best of April's albums and songs

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, Daughter Of Swords, Bon Iver, Maria Somerville and songs from The Hives, Turnstile, mischa and the bear, Frankie Cosmos, Morgana, Myles Manley and a Crossed Wires NTS show recommendation.
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Albums and tracks mentioned
Marika Hackman; Laura Marling - Skin
Daughter of Swords - Alex LP
The Hives - Enough Is Enough
mischa and the bear - Deny
Maria Somerville - Luster LP
Turnstile - NEVER ENOUGH
Julien Baker; TORRES - Say A Prayer For Me LP
Bon Iver - SAble, Fable LP
Bon Iver - I'll Be There
Morgana - Power Cuts
Myles Manley - Indieboys of Dublin
Myles Manley - Di Fontaines
Frankie Cosmos - Vanity
Dame Area - La Danza Del Ferro
 
 

Róisín El Cherif is singing for Palestine and Ireland

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 Irish and Arabic folk music and culture.
It's best encapsulated in the Róisín El Cherif live show, which debuted at the Fringe Festival and was given a Fringe award for Astounding Performance of Political and Cultural Significance.
The next live show takes place at the Button Factory in Dublin next week, Wednesday April 30th, which will be a blend of live music, poetry and film visuals featuring clips from Arabic films, Palestinian folk music and drawing parallels with Irish mythology and folklore - the cailleach, banshees and keening which is also found in Arabic culture as wailing, and further represents and celebrates the oppressed people of Palestine.
El Cherif recently accepted the Choice Music Prize award on behalf of Fontaines D.C. by reciting part of a poem from Palestinian poet Samih al-Qasim written in 1971 called Enemy of the Sun which speaks of Palestinian resistance against Israel.
We also talk about the reaction to Kneecap's recent Pro-Palestine statements at Coachella.

Why J Dilla was such an influential producer

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 one had before.
Through his unique methods of playing with layered timing, rhythmic expectation, polyrhythm, samples stretching and feel and his ability to bend time-signatures to his will, Dilla changed how music moves, and made Dilla Time (a term coined in the 2022 book of the same name by Dan Charnas).
We explore his production work, solo music and the legacy of his final album from 2006, released three days before he died - Donuts - a sample psychedelic beat tape of melancholic beauty and a magic trick of sampling that serves as a towering and influential creative statement.
The accompanying Dilla playlist.
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Our music picks of March [Subscriber Podcast preview]

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 Emerson, Niamh Bury, Brighde Chaimbeul, Selena Gomez & Benny Blanco, Paddy Hanna, MJ Lenderman and an old choice from Cornelius.
We also chat about what we've been watching lately including Adolescence, Severance, Last One Laughing UK (which I erroneously called Laugh Out Loud), 

Moving Still's Irish-Arab electronic bangers are having a moment 🔥

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, house and more.
Jamal's project has been in the ascendancy with releases on Cooking with Palms Trax, Orange Tree Edits, Dar Disku and his latest Close To The Shams EP on the Bordello A Parigi label.
His 2022 Boiler Room set from London is an all-timer for me, and his Ouddy Bangers series has seen him put a club edit spin on pop, disco and dance classics from Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco and Kuwait.
I talk to Jamal about all of it: his big gigs, productions, edits, influences, heritage and how Ireland has been slow to catch up on Moving Still until recently. And he picks a selection of songs that has inspired his music (listed below).
Up next on the DJ front for Moving Still is the latest edition of Klub Sukar at Yamamori Tengu on Saturday April 19th. 
Tracks played:
Moving Still - Al Disco Haram
Cheick Madani - Laya Habibi
Ragheb Alama - El hob al Kabir
Marvellous Melodicos - sing oh (zagalo mix)
Moving Still -La Titasil Feeya
Haruomi Hosono - Laugh Gas
Omar Souleyman  - Warni Warni
Moving Still - Bang of Luban
Ahmed Fakroun - Soleil Soleil
Ihsan Al Munzer - Jamilah
Ettab - Ghorba Wa Moghtaribin (Exile and Exiled)
Chaba Yamina - Sidi Mansour (Moving Still Edit)
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I was duped by an AI musician

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 Best / Cork label Hausu finds parallels with what's happening with AI and music right now. AI is breaking new ground, and creating new problems and moral issues in doing so.
Colm recently posted a ruminating article on AI on Fourth Best, which talks to an artist called Kawaii Hoe who inadvertently, and relatively innocently duped me into covering their energetic AI-generated hyperpop music on the site - Like I said it's the Wild Wild West.
We talk about this scary new world of not knowing whether an artist is making music entirely with AI or not, and the implications and creative quandary of generated art.
Because you can now make a full music project with AI, does that mean you should? Are AI musicians just really gifted at prompts? Are the outputs music?
As AI music flooded streaming platforms, social media and we cannot put the genie back in the bottle, what’s next? As Liz Pelly’s book shows, Spotify will do what it can to reduce royalty rates so what’s to stop it from replacing real artist’s music with AI-generated music? Isn’t this already happening whether they allow it or not?
  
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Mood Machine - A conversation with Liz Pelly about Spotify

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 Spotify and the way it operates.
We talk to Liz about the Swedish streaming giant's outsized influence on the music industry, its gatekeeper effect on trends in music, and how Spotify has emphasised mood and passive listening above discovery and initiative.
We talk about the vast collection of user behaviour on the platform that has lead to artists chasing a more homogenous "streambait pop" sound, how Spotify uses  fake "ghost" artists and their Perfect Fit Content system to reduce royalty rates and squeeze out real artists on the platform's popular algorithmic and editorial playlists.
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