Downtown: A celebration of the top 50 Cork tunes!
Jason Busteed: Delivers with style. Pic: Glen Bollard
Netherlands-based Dave Barrett usually uploads at least a dozen new productions to his Soundcloud each year. Most, like this one, feel like exercises. Even so, there’s a cheeriness to these experiments in electro.
“Running Out of Battery” may be the title, but this has got Duracell bunny levels of groove. Topped by baleful synths, this runs on a chugging, hyperactive bassline.
With its diaphanous female vocals and Teutonic groove, the Glanmire melodic techno duo deliver their usual Romantic European brand of techno.
The evocation of scale and grandeur feels crucial to the Fusion sound. Here it is almost baroque in its grandeur.
Fusion turn to the dystopian anime classic for inspiration. The combination of an evocative digital soundscape with their usual orchestral moodiness is a winning one.
Ian Ring knows when to put the foot down on this electro pop banger, and he has a great foil in Cleo Simone’s kittenish vocals. Explosive.
Driven by distorted bass and doom-laden synths, this is pretty remorseless stuff by DROKKR. Taken from a various artists compilation.
Gavin Desmond had a sensationally prolific year. This is the first of four entries by the Carrigaline producer in this chart. Each with its own flavour. This goes for a mystical melodic techno vibe.
Meanwhile, Gavin’s brother Hugh Def returned to his moody techno alias for this smouldering and almost hallucinatory three-track EP. Lose yourself in them at your leisure.
Featuring on the compilation album (for Medical Aid for Palestinians & Gaza Soup Kitchen), “Qabal’s” uptempo electro becomes suddenly lost in a squall of distorted melodies. Kinda like when you were tuning in an old FM radio station and suddenly an adjacent pirate station began bleeding in. Beauty in the chaos.
Coming from a similar place is ELLLL’s spectral deconstruction of the 1955 rock classic, “ ”. It’s the conceptual theme of a various artists compilation album called for Medical Aid for Palestinians. ELLLL contribution sounds like a haunted dancefloor of Upsetters-esque dub of sunny ska classics on scratchy 78 shellac.
Coming from a similarly inspired place, “ ” features on another various artists compilation of experimental sounds titled . Bubbling with ghostly agitated loops and underpinned by a ragged if defiant snare drum, this is quite rhapsodical.
2024’s Vol. II Cortis album by West Cork-based musician and producer Klu was a joyous collision of world music rhythms and contemporary urban grooves. Last year, he invited a number of producers to remix tracks. London’s Wrongtom’s re-dub turns “ ” into a hazy, sun-drenched Afro-soul sizzler.
is very much in line with the more left-of-field house tracks the pair occasionally do, but very much informed by the sounds and structures of their last two gorgeous studio albums. Incorporating suspenseful spy movie piano motifs and distorted vocal samples buried in the mix.
There is absolutely no messing from Busteed here. Layering a powerhouse vocal with rapidly cut edits from it, on top of a relentless piano groove and driving drums.
Jimmy Wormall describes this as braindance, after the legendary UK club night of bonkers beats championed by Aphex Twin and Rephlex Records. There’s so much going on in this tapestry of intricately knit synths and rhythms, your brain can only wobble like jelly.
The original version of this, which was released as a single in 2024, was my second favourite Cork-made track of that year. Remixes of songs that great can only disappoint, but UK producer Jinjé manages to deliver something energetic and epic.
Hooligan and Doiléir deliver two typically moody cuts but, with its ominous rhythm and creeping beats, Mejmi delivers one of the album’s highlights.
Driven by a throbbing bassline, a calypso rhythm and an appropriately dreamy vocalist, Busteed delivers his most pop-song production to date.
A split release featuring Kerrie and Italian duo Dynamic Forces for her own label. Her track, “
” is a rattling, machine funk of quivering grooves.
The alias of Cathal Singleton, this six-track EP, free to download on his Soundcloud, is a compelling journey through deep and at times claustrophobic techno. He achieves a disquieting atmosphere that is at times paranoia drenched, which is evident on the muffled, confused vocal on “Blistering Sun.”
Two very complimentary tracks that veer towards ambient house territory courtesy of their use of cinematic strings, stately piano and nature sounds.
A Brian Ring alter-ego that reveals his house and disco roots. The spirit of this is found in the hookiest of basslines, which came via Mood II Swing’s “
”.
One of the highlights of the great Vol. II Cortis album with its Afro-Caribbean funk flourishes. As ever, Fish Go Deep do their best work on the dub.
A Jackson Polock-like splattering of hyperactive synths, peculiar wibbles and wobbles and bouncing-off-the-walls beats feels like an exercise in abstract expressionism. Yeah, braindance is about right.
An affiliate of the Kabin Studios, Brady is influenced by the hip-hop productions of J Dilla and Nujabes, but this feels like it came from more obscure corners. The jazz sources seem way more high-end. “
” has a classical grandeur. And there’s an almost 1920s Jazz Age nostalgia to “
”. It’s an EP that feels like a timeless window into a sadly departed gilded age.
Usually so moody, Fusion swap the magnificence of their soundscapes for something more dancefloor-friendly and intimate. Playing around with a simple two-note riff, Fusion depart from their usual regimented sound to twist and loop it into something funky, sultry and far more elaborate.
Darragh Toal was working on this track for two years, but his eureka moment came when he witnessed Bicep’s use of breaks on their Chroma series gigs, and he added breakbeats and a vocal sample unlocked this seductive, euphoric beast.
Magnificently moody and gloriously groovy,
veers from breakbeat and amyl house through to progressive house and melodic techno. “
” recalls the bassy, tension-filled London garage of his 2022 album In the Event of Capture. The urban-soul-filled vocals conveying an ecstatic sense of urgency.
Patrick Hatchett serves up what surely must be one last plate of sunshine from 2024’s wonderful Vol. II Cortis album.
A second dose of Dowling feels like I’m being spoiled. She almost sounds menacing when she asks: “Tell me what you really feel”, but her commanding vocals soar and weave through a multitude of points. Fish Go Deep’s “
” mix dazzles with chunky bass and trance-like synths.
Fish Go Deep propel South African producer La Deep’s original to delirious heights. You’d follow vocalist Sindiswa Vinqi anywhere, not that this song leaves you with any choice to do otherwise.
Kerrie Anderson’s second release for Berlin’s mighty Tresor label delivers tightly coiled no-nonsense bangers like “System Awakens” but she raises them with tiny sonic details that feel so simple but add immeasurably to the intensity. Those circular synth riffs in “Together in a Rural Place”? Lift your dome off!
Local beat junkie CLM got genius New York rapper Gabe ‘Nandez on the lead track , and while it is effortlessly cool it does not dwarf the laidback, compulsively head-nodding beats CLM assembled on the other tracks.
A rare and very welcome release from
DJ Colm K. The title track channels the eclecticism of the cult club night in its blending of his love of hip-hop, quality house and jazzy vibes.
The original track by Stuttgart’s Jakob Mäder, with its electro pop trimmings, is tailor-made for the Ring disco treatment as he injects some sultry synths, big handclaps and a choral alchemy that brings out the eroticism of JULIENT’s yearning vocals. Dreamy and delicious.
I think Kerrie most often delivers her best work on James Ruskin’s label and the four tracks here have a similar intensity and focus on repetition and groove, while the electro influences maintain the funk.
Pure simplicity and pure bliss from Ring as he gently builds around a shouty slogan, while adding some spare jazz-like keys.
Ruairi Lynch’s self-titled third album may not have received the accolades of his Choice-nominated predecessor, but each and every single taken from it felt like a bigger banger than the last. “ ” is another casually delivered disco funk stomper.
Febrile electronica with Orbital levels of blissing out. Although not released together, let’s include the
remix of this track in this package. Sublime.
Ballincollig producer John Nolan (Nalón) teamed up with prolific UK producer Chris Sterio for this monster progressive house track. It may proclaim resistance, but at the same time it’s futile in the face of this.
A quiet year for Cork’s Vision Collective, but their third various artists vinyl release is more than enough. The gorgeous ache of QuestionmarQ’s “ ” is the highlight as it shifts from languorous to explosive. Mick Verma and Shane Breen also deliver, and we get a rare sighting of Adam Dunbar with his “ ”
