fourth best talks #1 | Future of Irish Music Journalism with Dylan Murphy at River Runs Round

I'm finally doing an interview series! As part of my media partnership with River Runs Round - which you can read a bit more about on my piece about festivals, I shot a 50-minute interview with one of my favourite Irish music journalists in front of a live audience. That's out for the world to see now.

Big love to Jimmy from Plugd, the entire River Runs Round team, and of course Dylan for making the five hour + journey to Cork to permit our ceaseless yapping.

The full transcript is below, for anyone who prefers that format.

Colm Cahalane (intro): This is Fourth Best, your guide to alternative music in Ireland. And here is our first ever interview, down from the River Runs Round festival in Cork. I'm part of the board of the River Runs Round festival, but I've also sponsored this year with Fourth Best, which gave us the opportunity to put on this amazing little event in Cork, talking to Dylan Murphy, one of the most involved journalists in the Irish music scene in the last few years. But his experience, what he's up to next, he's just relaunched the Mabfield podcast, so definitely check that out once you check this. There's more to come from the festival, actually have a really exciting live set that I'll be bringing out hopefully the next few weeks. But yeah, stay tuned. Enjoy the show.

CC: Welcome, everyone, to the fourth best talks. This is the first episode of an interview series I’ll be conducting, with figures around music in Ireland: musicians, industry people, journalists, etc.. We're running this for the first time at River Runs Round in front of a live audience, which is more than I could ask for; and definitely not just because I'm also involved in running River Runs Round that this happened at all.

I'm joined today by Dylan Murphy, who is just incomparable - having done five years as Head of Culture at District Magazine, getting really deep into Irish music; and I guess was one of the people who was the first I saw doing an independent thing years ago with the Mabfield podcast – which you're bringing back now, right?

DM: Yeah, thanks for the introduction. I started it about six years ago and I've kind of come full circle and bring it back sort of in a new iteration.

CC: So when it came to the idea of, like choosing to go independent again and restart the Mabfield podcast, my first question is – what do you see as your purpose? Who do you see as your audience? Is there something that you're doing for yourself and for the sake of story? Are you doing it to serve artists, the community, just like the world...

DM: I guess any answer to a question like that is kind of a mix of everything, to be honest. Part of the reason that I left District is because it kind of was gravitating away from grassroots journalism. And I think that's kind of what I really care about. So when I first started, it was literally me and my housemate at uni just sharing playlists and stuff on Facebook. So why is kind of like for me discovering things that excite me. And but then as I was doing it I was just seeing the impact it was starting to have. You build relationships with artists and and also I just really care about music a lot. It's kind of a messy answer, but it's kind of a mix of all that.

CC: I kind of agree with that, right? I think of it the same way with fourth.best and kind of starting out doing this from my own side. I'm coming out from like such a position of relative inexperience next to you. I mean you saw us setting up and recording an interview for the first time. Doing that with so many people in the room as well was a tough one. I remember Mabfield, I actually was like very lucky to be on the podcast.

I consider that to be such an important moment because you were doing it from a room in your gaff, interviewing people who like I really cared about who I felt weren't getting attention from like the media outside, like a couple of sources, right? It was like District, there was you, there was like people who are really excited about this stuff on Twitter. But there was a threshold that wasn't being crossed yet. And I guess I was excited to see you making a go of it. And then your star just rising so quickly. I mean, starting with District, like getting real budgets, doing big productions.

What was your highlight? Like what's the best project you've been involved in so far?

DM: Shit... I think it one of the first things I did at District, to be honest. Like when I first joined, it was transitioning from like a physical magazine into digital. So we were all kind of learning on the job like, this is pre TikTok, this is pre everybody knowing how to create content, everybody creating video content. And so it was very much like, okay, we're going to work this out as we go along. But the sort of like tail-end of the physical magazine culture was still there.

So yeah, the first thing we got to do was interview JPEGMAFIA for the first digital cover at District. So this was kind of like the merging of both those worlds. And I remember I was just so excited. Like, like you said, I literally was coming from interviewing random people in my mom's house and in a very DIY way, like you didn't know. And I still think that a lot of what I'm going to do is going to be like that. But basically I was so excited. I was waking up at like five in the morning, no shit, for like a month just to read as much as I possibly could about one of my favourite artists.

I'd actually met him maybe like four months before in America. I was going travelling and he was supporting Injury Reserve and yeah, I got to meet him and talk to him and then I interviewed him about five months later. I just remember like digging so much. And it was one of those moments where I asked him a question about feeling like he was at the mercy of the industry because that was kind of like the through-line. I watched every interview, read every interview with him, and it was never put in explicit terms, but he was just feeling like he'd been thrown about, wasn't getting paid properly when he was on labels. He wasn't being respected. And it was kind of the response I got when he was like, No one's ever asked me that question. And he went off on one and started talking about all this stuff. And it was one of those moments. I don't think I've ever had it since - where it was like, you feel like you get that genuine connection where you kind of unpick what's going on for someone and what really matters to them and their art kind of and, and yeah, he, he was like sharing it. James Blake was like commenting on the interview on his Instagram and stuff. It was crazy. I think I kind of peaked a few years ago, to be honest. Like that was... That was, yeah, probably my favourite memory to be honest.

Another thing from that I'm like 99% sure he had COVID. This is like just before COVID. And he turned up and he was like either mega hungover and just spluttering and stuff or yeah, he had COVID, but he, he arrived and we were doing the shoot and he was so grumpy. Like for anybody that doesn't know JPEGMAFIA, kind of like really aggressive, like punk rap. But every interview I'd seen, he was like, lovely. But when he came into the office, he was just really grumpy, didn't really want to talk. And he was he was getting – he's posing in like Robyn Lynch like all this kind of like mad woolwear, balaclavas by a girl Lucinda Graham and you just how he didn't want to be there. And I was like, okay, you want to do the interview? And he's like, I thought we were done. I've been doing this shoot for like 3 hours. And I'd actually brought up a PS1 with his favourite game on it because my friend had it - it was a Wu-Tang game - and I went to show him and he's like, cool. And just turned away. I was like “Fuck!”.

I mean, all this effort. And but he basically was like, Well, I've got to go to get some sneakers for this show because mine are wrecked after this tour. So I had to walk along the street with him in Dublin like interviewing him, but because I had like, like prepared every morning for hours before this, I could just read that off the top of my head. So we were like dodging cars. In the audio, which you can get on the website, you can hear like “OH FUCK!” and the cars going “beeep!”. Now, that was just as a whole experience was like being thrown in the deep end of it. It was crazy.

CC: I do genuinely think that show in Dublin was like, maybe the last of the fucking “spit in my mouth, Peggy!” - just like deep, pre-COVID JPEGMAFIA vibes. You can't do that shit anymore. It's not possible.

I do want to ask you because it's interesting you’d pick such a massive international artist as like one of the things that you're most proud of. Do you see yourself, your mission being to enhance like Irish music journalism, or do you see yourself like getting ready to pursue those like greater heights a bit more as well?

DM: To be honest I don't really get the buzz as much from like big artists. And unless it's someone I really, really care about, like... To be really honest, towards the end, I was, I was interviewing Fred Again and it was a really cool interview and it was he was like at the peak of his powers at that point but I kind of came out of it at the and I was like, I just don't really care about his story at all. [audience laughs] It's just a very manufactured, weird, like major label artist that doesn't really interest me. And like, the things that do interest me is seeing interest in music that goes against the grain.

I'm being exposed to so much in Ireland. And I do get a real excitement about giving that a platform. And I was even I've recorded a few episodes of my podcast and I was listening to Henry Ernest's album in the car on the way up here today, and I was just thinking, God, this album is incredible. Like so, so good.

Big Blue, by Henry Earnest

8 track album

Henry EarnestMichael Stone

I kind of thought of like I've had five or six years experience working at a bigger magazine and stuff. What can I bring from that that doesn't compromise my love for music? That will help put artists on a platform a bit more because there is like definitely such an onus on artists to create content and be like putting themselves out there. I still think there's like such a big rule of curation, creating stories around artists and like putting people on to what's going on and really shouting about it. I think that's more important than ever.

CC: Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting you mentioned Fred Again because like, that was actually like one of the examples that's going to bring into this talk. Yeah, like I saw a screenshot of TikTok today and it was like that Fred Again gig in Dingle. It was an ad, with just a clip of that gig, but it was from an account called The Irish Scene. It's like this guy doing his like hyper manicured PR stuff like, just like someone who like Googled, like “best intimate venues in the world”; just like pop up in Dingle for a day. We're in this position now where it's it's hard to balance like authenticity in the music that we really care about with just the desire to create content, create things that like pick up things that are safe for algorithms. I don't know what it is about Fred Again, that's succeeding so hard at that. It's just that there's just so much money being thrown at it that it's beginning to stick? Or is it that there's like some innate quality to him that makes him friendly for that? Is it just so he's so inoffensive? His music kind of is this hyper tuned to like pick on specific emotions, I find that jarring. I find that fucking scary.

DM: Yeah. I mean, I think like, he's like any big pop star. It's like massive universal themes. Like he's he's able to distil those really well in a way that doesn't isolate people. And like, I kind of feel like he is if you got like For Those I Love and just like diluted down to it’s... like the least interesting part. Like don't get me wrong, like, I think he has some good tunes and stuff and his music clearly does connect to people. That's not for me. But and yeah, I think the point you're talking about about this kind of tension between like content culture and TikTokification of everything and like quality music, it kind of all gets muddled in together and it's hard to discern like, do I like this? Or is this just getting loads of push online? Do I like this, or is it just getting shoved to my face from the same algorithms all the time? Do you know what I mean?

CC: There's like a thing they want to talk about. Like, I'm not gonna name the band, right? But there's like an Irish band that since Fred Again became popular, just started doing the thing. Like, just started like threw out half the original members. There's the spoken word thing on every single track and it's like, I'm looking at this. It's like, so obvious what's happening here. But at the same time, I feel like Irish music journalism in general has this really like weird kind of disconnection from the critical voice. You know, it's hard to kind of go out there and rail against or pan something even if it feels like this is like bad in a disingenuous way. I kind of struggle to to want to be negative about music here in Ireland, because so often you just know these guys. You'll see them in the smoking areas, like. How have you been kind of balancing that? Have you made a stance on that yourself or...

DM: I've had tons of awkward encounters with people. Like I think when I was younger and I first started Mabfield, like part of it was I wanted it to be critical. And, and like Jack, who I started with, was someone who really got me into music. And I came in from the perspective of just like loving a lot of different stuff. And when I met him, he fucking pissed me off so much he would always be like, Nah, that's crap and all that shit. But he would give reasons or whatever.

It really made me rethink how I approach music and just look at it more critically and think like, what is it trying to say? Like, is it is it like, you know, is it trying to say something? Is it is it diluting down real ideas? Is it is it kind of just like stealing from what other people are doing and just doing it and really, like not enjoyable way or whatever.

But yeah, I tried to be more critical with Mabfield at the start and like my journalistic skills just weren't really tight enough, I don't think, to be able to do it and probably got called out fairly, on some things when I would have been picking apart different bits of music and stuff.

I think I think that's part of it. It is difficult I think, in such a small place as Ireland as well. But I feel more confident now after, you know, five, six years of doing it. And I think that there's value to genuine credit like journalistic criticism. You know, I think there's just so much stuff like...

For example, I've seen like Stormzy recently doing that, like a house party and it's like run in like this massive big three storey building in London. And it's perfect for viral content that, you know, Complex are picking up, resharing it like “Stormzy's doing this house party” and you go in and he has like a person dressed up as a police officer, pretend to walk around and all this kind of stuff. And there's just a lot of criticism from the black community in London being like, like, can no one really see the double standards of a lot of these things going on?

But if you don't have good journalism, people within the culture here are able to pick that apart. You know, these things will just go on unseen and it'll just become cultural norms to just like give people free reign to move weirdly, you know what I mean?

CC: I mean, another thing that I kind of see in all your work is that like you often kind of focus on this kind of class of Irish artist that absolutely thrives online and internationally, but seems to like not get picked up locally. I mean, we're talking like Jordan Adetunji, who you’ve very recently spoken about but I’ve also noticed you've said the same... You had a very interesting interview with Eden - I think that was a digital cover for District, right? Yeah. And you had kind of for a long time - for as long as I've known you - you've been talking about Bearface from Brockhampton. So it's like I guess I'd like really like to know, you know, have you kind of began to crystallise a general theory of what is happening in Ireland that’s stopping them? Is it the media, is it the audiences, is it just that these people are making stuff that exists in a scene that's not here?

DM: Yeah, I mean, like I used to have more of a monoculture, right? We have like MTV basically decided who was big, like Nirvana drops the Smells Like Teen Spirit video and instantly they're fucking huge because, like, MTV just holds all of the cultural cachet. Now. Everything is so divided into so many different spots, like there's people like selling out arenas who most people haven't heard of. It's really strange. We have these little pockets of online artists who are really popular within their niches, and Eden is a massive example of that. Someone that has hundreds of millions of plays on Spotify is like, touring the world. And I think one of the quotes from Nialler9, from like ten years ago was like, how is this artist from like it was Dun Laoghaire, selling out shows in LA, Japan, blah, blah, blah and not a not a word back home.

I think there's there's that that's going on, which is just like a wide scale thing where there's just like micro cultures can exist online and, and then there's also kind of like I think a lot of artists who don't kind of subscribe to like a lot of the just really cringe Irish stereotypes, just kind of just kind of living up to that kind of thing.

CC: Lads with guitars.

DM: Basically. Yeah, But I mean, some of that someone like Jordan Adetunji for example, who signed to the same label as like Megan Thee Stallion, PinkPantheress, all these people in America, 300, he's grown up in Belfast his most of his life, and he always will mention, "Yeah, I grew up in Belfast" this year, but he doesn't like fucking wear a paddy-cap, wear an Ireland shirt everywhere he goes, like it's like, it can be part of your identity without being all your identity. And I think, you know, so there's just sp much stuff in media where every person from Ireland that's on a red carpet. Yeah. Chicken Fillet Rolls. You get asked these really stupid, like.

Jordan was playing like a BBC introducing gig as the headliner and he it's literally the the thing in the bio was to introduce these acts to people and then they put Snow Patrol as a secret headliner the day before. So everybody that turned up was a Snow Patrol fan and I think there's just this whole thing in Ireland, like it's just pointless. Like, you know, it's a BBC introducing gig and it's just run from itself for that.

I think that people don't get as much credit if they don't don't hold that as close to their musical identity.

CC: You've worked with the BBC before. You've done kind of stuff around. I don't know if you're specifically around BBC introducing, right, but you've kind of at least gotten some familiarity with their model and how the introducing system works. I know that like here in Ireland there was a kind of attempts to be like, we're building the "2FM Rising portal", we're doing that exact same thing. I don't know if that project ever materialised. I thought I would have heard of it. People keep telling me that was definitely a thing that was going to happen. It just never did. Yeah, but I guess it's like you kind of through living in Belfast and working with artists up there, you've kind of seen maybe how things differ on either side of like the line in terms of opportunities for artists. I guess like are there things that we can be bringing to the South that are driving up in the north, or is there kind of nearly the same issues there?

DM: A lot of the same issues that the one thing I would say though, is like having the BBC, like BBC One Xtra and there's been some criticism of it recently because they're playing a lot of American music, but they have been so important for so many black artists in the UK and the north of Ireland where they'll get play time and so many artists owe a lot of success in their career to just getting the spotlight on radio. And I think something like that's really important. But to be honest, like we are kind of in a stage where until you're at a certain point in your career, you need to pass through the threshold. I don't really think that, like traditional media helps that much. Like it might make you familiar with audiences, but they're going to be passive listeners and it's kind of a complicated line that I'm trying to work out, like what really matters nowadays, and I don't really think getting played on BBC Introducing apart from maybe the pay packet you'll get from the royalties matters as much as it used to even five years ago.

CC: So I mean, I guess there's like a couple of things come out of that, right? One would be, is it even possible to be a musician without doing the content game without yourself or someone around you just like making TikTok as much as possible, gaming the algorithm, just absolute flood. And like if that's the case, how many artists are we going to just burn out before they ever take off?

I think the ones that are able to survive without making content are like the exception to the rule. So someone I've got on the podcast on the new iteration is an artist called Sign Crushes Motorist. Have you heard of them?

CC: Yeah.

DM: So for people who don’t know him, he's a kid from Donegal and he's 19 and he has 14 different aliases and he's releasing music under all of them. And I think like the listenership ranges between 400,000 a month to 6 million a month, you know so he's he's making bank doing it. He has no manager, no label, he doesn't even have TikTok but he's huge on TikTok like the music is constantly trending - and I think he's kind of the exception to the rule.

I think being visible online is a necessity for for most artists. And in terms of burnout, like that's that's the million dollar question. I don't really know how anyone gets through that because even for what I'm doing, like, it's it's different. But you have to be visible online, you have to be posting and even, you know, this pressure, if you're not if you're not doing it every so often and you start looking at the numbers, it's like, fuck.

And you feel like you have to do it again, but it shouldn't really feel like you're having to create because you're being chased by something or you're chasing something. You know what I mean?

CC: 100%. Like I, I think that when I started Fourth Best, that was like one of the things I wanted to do was like, where are those artists who are making stuff that's not going to necessarily thrive on the algorithm, you kind of have to bring an audience to them. And I think that while traditional media used to be good, it's, as you say, we're no longer in a monoculture.

So it's like I'm trying to build an audience of people who will subscribe to a newsletter about Irish music... to then be like: have you heard about this absolutely freakish trad-jazz project from Connemara? Yeah, like I went on the website, I did this article. It's literally just called Trá Pháidín - Best Band in the Country. And I made my case was like, I love these guys so much and I don't know how we're ever going to be in a world where they're like going to like, just randomly pop off on TikTok. And I know it's like...

They're not trying to become the biggest artists in the world, but they deserve festival crowds. They deserve the word of mouth. And it's like, I want to try and essentially offer that kind of boost to artists. I feel like, you know, I've grown up around so much in Cork. I know the scene so well here. I'm beginning to feel really integrated in Dublin as well.

I just want to kind of communicate like just lessons from deep within it. I'm concerned that what I'm going to do is only ever talk to other people who care about the exact same bands. I do. But I've kind of been enjoying the work so far, and I think one of the big things on that is like festivals, events, doing things like this, programming, having people kind of stumble into things by chance.

Have you like thought about how you're going to do events and kind of being in the real world with, with Mabfield going forward?

DM: Yeah, absolutely. And I think what you're talking about, like smaller festivals and stuff are becoming more important than ever. I don't know about anybody else, but I feel like such a fatigue of like bigger festivals all run by like MCD and stuff that all just mirror each other and like, you can almost see the Live Nation map across the UK and Europe where Barry Can't Swim... I like his music, but he’s playing every fucking festival this summer, you know what I mean?

Like it's the agents have so much power nowadays that a lot of these festivals are just being imprinted and being copy and pasted. Like that's what happened in America with Live Nation at the start. So it doesn't feel like there's actually a lot of choice when you go to these things like feels like the same acts are playing everywhere and there was a festival a few weeks ago in Dundalk called “If You Know, You Know”, and it was run by a lot of people in Belfast and there's no real headliners.

And it was a lot of artists. The kind of artists you're talking about that deserve these crowds. So there's new headliners and there's only a few stages, so people would get... every act would get a big crowd, and it was more about the sense of community and just being there. And it was a bit more, you know, a bit more wild maybe than a bigger festival.

I think those things are so much more important and building community has become a bit of a buzzword online. I think it's kind of been like co-opted by...

CC: Blockchain? [laughs]

DM: ...I'm just like, anything, what are you trying to do anything online? It's just kind of like you need to build a community, you need to build a community. And it's like, I don't know if people are saying I need to build a community or it's I need to have something to put all my followers on there.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah, it kind of feels inauthentic a lot of the time.

CC: When I made the Fourth Best Discord, I was kind of thinking it'd be nice to tap into what my audience is thinking, like discover music through those kind of connections. But mostly I was just thinking, these people get a notification if I post something. even if they’re not on my email newsletter.

DM: But there's nothing wrong with that. It's important and it's about, bringing your audience together. But I just have become kind of cynical about its use online with certain things. But when it comes to events, like I kind of just want to do some stuff like we're going to host like a launch party in a few weeks and I don't even know if we're going to post about it online or anything. We're just going to do it and invite people. And that's going to kind of be it is going to be like a load of friends come together that like music. We're going to have some people DJ and that's I kind of want to bring some stuff offline and a little bit. And so that by its very nature, it's not being designed to be like me and Rory [Sweeney] were saying there, you go to some events and there's more videographers than people, and it feels like it's all designed for social media. And I think that's kind of dangerous for actually building genuine communities. And, and yeah, when it comes to events like I'd love to do some live gigs, but it's fucking hard putting them on and trying to get people in the door.

CC: Do you see the work that you're doing as building a community or serving a community?

DM: Good question. I kind of like a lot of it, to be honest, is I think there's not a lot of people, or publications, in Ireland like being like, this is what I like. I'm sharing it with people. It's more just reporting on everything and I want to do it for me in that sense because I just want to share my taste.

That's kind of it's like a selfish thing. But I think that that that's also a good thing because you, you, you're doing it for artists. What was the question again, sorry.

CC: Are you trying to build a community or do you just kind of want to fit into the community that exists?

DM: I guess, yeah, a bit. Building community does become part of it because at the end of day, like it's very isolating to just do something on your own. And I've kind of been. Like my friend Saul runs a magazine in Belfast called YEO Magazine and like, we've just help each other for free in a way that because we're mates, obviously like that, but it feels like to try and do creative stuff nowadays you have to have a lot of money and people don't. And I think like sort of bridging those things and helping each other out like is is important.

CC: Yeah, for sure. Like, as you say, doing this kind of stuff takes a lot of money. Like I'm kind of I'm bootstrapping Fourth Best myself, like with the kind of money I've gotten from the day job. But there's still like a lot of stuff - I've looked into like the cost of like renting a podcast studio and like getting people in and all that and it's like it's fucking adding up to even, like take the smaller steps and stuff, which is like, you know, it's going to take a small audience. Everything is just expensive now, but I'm excited about, you know, what I'm doing. Excited about what you're doing and I guess like one of the things I've really come to know is, is in Ireland, there is like such a huge crossover between like all the festival organisers are doing these smaller things. All of the people are like starting.

I was like, you know, doing music journalism like yourself, myself or Eoin Murray... Like people are really willing to help each other out and that's awesome. Like, I feel like I've got this thing with Fourth Best, which is so many people who I consider to be like the most talented music writers in the country are coming up to me saying, I'd love to do something for the site. I don't know if that's what I want to do. I originally wanted to do the same as you said: it's like personal taste, kind of like not dictated by just I didn't want to become a news website and yeah, I don't care about because I think it's like one of the things that happens we get a certain kind of scale is like the things you don't post about become obvious. I kind of want that. I want people to fill in the blanks.

DM: I think that's important and you don't have to like everything. And also, you know, so many people in the past when I was at District would call me every name under the sun if I didn't share the music. And it's like me, to be honest, like it, it doesn't even matter if you get shared on District. It's nice, but it's not going to change your career. Ultimately, I think that people should be allowed to have their own taste and exist in their own worlds and stuff like that. And I think like I think they create scarcity as well. If you're saying no to stuff the stuff you're saying yes to holds more weight.

CC: Absolutely. I mean, last year when I did a talk at River Runs Round - it was called Dancing About Architecture. It was like, you know, writing about music is this impossible thing. It was me. And at the time I was like, really in my PR mode. I was still doing Hausu Records. I sent like a hundred press releases.

I went to that talk doing the same thing I did on Mabfield like five years before being like, If you're going to email someone, you got to do it in this way. But then like over the course that talk last year, I kind of began to get more and more of just absolute doomerism. As the thing progressed, I went from like here’s how you write a press release to “you don't fucking put music on streaming platforms.”

If no one is looking for you on a streaming platform. Spotify is not going to put you out there. I really wonder why it's never been the case that, like the people who run streaming platforms don't just like make more of a point of inviting tastemakers in. It's such a fucking weird thing where there's a very small number of gatekeepers who are intentionally faceless. So I kind of wonder, you know, do you think about like your what you do as being kind of in opposition to streaming, or do you see it as like kind of an entirely other field, right?

DM: I think it is like I think the nature of wanting to showcase stuff that isn't necessarily popular on streaming or isn't necessarily popular in traditional publications is kind of counter-cultural. And ultimately, the stuff I've learned over the years working with different artists and stuff, you know, you learn how to work within these systems, how to how to do PR, how to, how to work with streaming and how to work with labels, all this kind of stuff. But it brings me very little to no joy, you know what I mean? Yeah, like, and you've got to pay your bills sometimes, but it's one of those things where, yeah, I think it is in opposition and like happily in opposition to that kind of stuff because I think everyone's tired, everyone's like Spotify is convenient, but I don't think everything the script is convenient.

In fact, I actually find the best stuff is majorly inconvenient. There was a guy I worked with Curtisy last year from Kerry, a producer...

[off-screen] Rory Sweeney: Thom Delhi.

...yeah, Thom Delhi. He dropped the tape with like over 100 songs on it and I just like left it all to my speakers one day in the house and just went about my job, like just working, waiting for the Curtisy song to come on because it wasn't even labelled. That's class though!

CC: I think maybe two days ago I went on the Fourth Best Discord. I asked: Can someone tell me where to start with Thom Delhi? And I feel like that's the wrong question to ask. It's like you start by just hitting play on the SoundCloud.

DM: Those are the kind of artists and the stories that I felt like blogs back in the day, like really cherished and supported and have just gone completely missing because like you mentioned, like it doesn't really work for the algorithm unless you can be like this Irish artist had a Chicken Fillet Roll and dropped 100 songs and then, you know, it's like there's ways you can share this kind of stuff that makes it good for engagement, but doesn't necessarily lend itself to people actually reading the shit.

CC: I would never suggest to any artists I've worked with to like, dilute themselves to Irishness for the sake of it. And because of that, I don't really consider myself to be much of a manager because like we put on some fantastic shows, we've got some incredible memories together. I'm not really someone who gets to say like, I've allowed someone to be a full time musician. That's like my goal.

I want to either through my journalism or through work with artists directly, the goal is you just you should just get to do this. In another life you would get to do this.

You would get to do this. And that's deeply concerning to me. And I don't I don't think like anything, that I do, is going to be the answer by itself, but I hope to exist in a system that brings that back. And I'm really enjoying like that. The culture is seemingly getting us. I mean, I saw someone posted in the Fourth Best Discord - a Blackbird Spyplane article which is titled “Streaming is an Affront to God”. And the whole thing is like your spiritual connection to music is going to be deeper if you're just like deep in SoulSeek, like just digging through like 40 MP3s to find the right one. And I saw like, as you say, like convenience is not a good and probably doesn't even make it easier for you to understand art.

Like if you want me to prove that, just ask anyone who likes Dean Blunt. You ask someone what's the deal with him and they're like "yeah, it's on a Bandcamp under like a name that he used maybe like twice back in 2015. But like, yeah, no, it's really good. Just check it out!" and then you go and look it up. It's been like, deleted nine days ago.

I get those exact same vibes from like Thom Delhi or whatever or like wherethetimegoes up in Dublin as well. I love that when like they put out that album they had this year by Princ€ss and they're like, this is a supergroup. And like Pitchfork went and reviewed them like "Who's in Princess? We don't know. It could be Mica Levi or something like that." And you go to the gigs; it's just like the same lads who have been in a bunch of projects in Dublin. This is good. You need to just mess with with the aesthetics of all of this.

Princ€ss, by Princ€ss

10 track album

wherethetimegoeseverett

You got to make yourself a little bit inaccessible and just allow yourself to do it all for the sake of the music at the end of the day and you break through, sometimes you don't. And the solution to that is not going to be through PR, It's not going to be through like, just like making the same song 100 times over and posting them all on Spotify for Artists or whatever.

I have this whole thing of Spotify For Artists because I think it was like so funny when they're like, everyone who's ever gotten a song on one of our playlists has had to fill out this form, and you can fill it out too. And then you go to like one of their events at Ireland Music Week. It's like, here's the email address. Use it to actually reach us.

I think every single Fourth Best article, that has been about one band, has been “this is a nexus you can use to reach other like related similar artists”. In this way, I think that like that's kind of me almost like just doing the manual work of an algorithm. In the past we just called it being a radio DJ. I want to do that more.

You tried out live radio for a bit. Is that something you thought about returning to? Is broadcast in your future?

DM: I'm not really sure. Like, I'm kind of just working everything out. I'd like to be honest. I'm kind of doing everything by myself at the moment. So I've got like relaunching the podcast this week. I've got six episodes recorded and I'm hoping to do some events. I think something I kind of want to DJ as well. I was doing a bit of DJing before.

I think if I could, I would. I would do a bit of radio stuff, but I don't have time. But I think what you're talking about, like given context, is stuff like, that's kind of the whole point, isn't it? It's like, you know, you're handed music by an algorithm. It's devoid of any context of why it's interesting.

Like for me, it's all about stories and the artists I connect with the most deeply. And it's been through interviews with them or it's been through them talking about their experiences and it's like, this is why they're rapping about this. this is why the production sounds like this. And, and I think that's why being to forensic about these kind of things is important. Like the most niche stuff you're talking about one band in Ireland, given the depth that it that you are and then it means that there's a point of reference for these other artists and then suddenly it becomes like a gateway for someone to understand music that they couldn't even stand at one point.

That kind of stuff is important. Like there's so many things that once you're given like a reference for, for it, you just become so much more connected to it to what it is.

CC: I thought that that record that came out in, in March, Irish Hash Mafia, they just like it connected so many like strands of like the Irish hip hop community in a way that like, really made sense. Like I wasn't like up to like yeire13 or anything like that at the time. And I just gave me this document I could use to understand, like so much about, like what's just really exciting about Irish rap music at the moment, Like, no, like list of people was going to do that. But like bringing everyone together, like, you know, doing events, doing cyphers, doing like mixtapes like that I think is vital.

And that's I kind of want to circle back to like that thing I said earlier, which is like a lot of these Irish artists that thrive internationally don’t thrive locally. Like is it just that these people don't have access to like the networks of people that could help them thrive? Like, do we need to just encourage more participation or do you think that it's like deeper than that?

DM: For the artists that are thriving internationally?

CC: I guess... everyone's going to London, right? Yeah. And like everyone's going to Berlin. It's a hundred answers: it's venues, it's media, it's like opportunities to record, it’s spaces, all of that.

But like, what can we do to like, try and like turn that tide, right? Like, what are the, what's the most important thing for you? Because like, for me, it is like probably festivals, probably stuff like this.

DM: More shit, like that record. More shit like these small festivals. Like you need reasons to want to be somewhere, you know what I mean? And like everybody, everybody has those memories of doing specific things are like going to certain gigs. I can't even remember, like going to see. I think it was like Hazey Haze and Strange Boy, like in Other Voices, like years ago. It’s still burned into my brain, you know, those kind of experiences.

And even in Belfast, just like smaller gigs, seeing artists coming through, like I remember those so well. And those are the kind of things that make me want to stay, but also seeing the kind of music that's going against the grain. And it gets you excited because, I mean, ultimately, like there's kind of the kind of thing if you're in Ireland, like it's easier to stick out as well, you know, like you can progress your career and be a big fish in a small pond in a way, and I think that that's kind of people need to use that to their advantage in a way. And and I think celebrating those acts and going to like gigs is important, like how you get people to go to them. I don't fucking know because I think it's a question that everybody's asking themselves.

CC: It's interesting you mentioned Hazey Haze as a breakthrough moment for you because like, I remember one of the last pre-pandemic shows. Where like Irish hip hop was going through this massive phase and everything's blowing up. Part of that was like the ways that people organised. I saw Hazey Haze in the Workman's Club and they had The Mary Wallopers opening and like it's the thing was like, that makes sense if you know these people are and who they've worked with and like, oh they did music videos together, these people are also friends with these people...

But like if you were just coming in there, like you'd be completely just confused. Like it's, it's entirely different worlds of music. It's just connected by like the scene, like people programming, people putting each other on.

I mean, I think we kind of always had some of that with the [River Runs Round] festival. I mean, before Rory's DJ set, I saw him at like the folk gig over at Coughlan’s last night. The people who went from Rory's DJ set – I want to create those exact moments of clash. These are the same people, it's the same community, but the variety is so massive.

DM: I think like the Internet kind of often can collapse that kind of context when it comes to social media and stuff like that, where people are are aren't one dimensional. You know, you can enjoy lots of different things and there's like three lines, but on paper, like those things don't fit into the same Spotify playlist. There's one Spotify playlist that puts those two gigs together, right?

But there's like a mutual understanding between like minded people that the Mary Wallopers and Hazey Haze makes sense. Yeah. And you can't really put it into words, but it's like an attitude or an outlook on life and stuff like that. And I think that's why these events are important because, for example, Belfast is so techno heavy and it's something represents maybe the wrong word because I do like techno, but as a hip hop head, I'm like, I want more hip hop.

When I've come across people making like bassline music or someone like EMBY, a guy from Belfast rapping over electronic music, then I'm like, okay, this is me being from Belfast, connecting to the music I love and It's kind of that satisfaction that you can't get anywhere else. And I think that that's, why, just to circle back...

It's like why these events are important. These are the kind of things that keep people staying in the same place and, and that can't really be diluted into a neat playlist or something.

CC: One of the things we talked about last year is like Spotify’s whole... thing. They had like this big presentation, CEO saying things like context is the new genre, and that's kind of like, it's an exciting thing, right? You can like take music from across the spectrum and like put them into the same context.

But what Spotify has actually ended up doing pretty much deliberately is they just remove almost all context around music so you can’t discover scenes, you know, like people will probably like just listen to like AI generated stuff they find on Spotify or Spotify or even start piping that stuff in directly and people won't notice.

I mean, there is this like big scandal in Sweden. There's this one guy who like had like a couple hundred aliases in Spotify and he was just like making like the most generic ambient music possible. He had a plug that would put him on like playlists every time. This one guy was pulling in more money than ABBA or he's like the most, like, successful Swedish musician just he was able to like to stay undetected. He's on the most generic playlist you can think of, right? And so it's like, I mean, I think that you can't do context without depth. You can't do context without conversations. You can’t do context without writing these massive essays are like trying to like draw maps of the scenes, but festivals us fantastically. I was at Féile na Gréine, I wrote this piece called All of This Unreal Time: I feel like there's this wonderful sensation of being at a festival where like the normal flow of time just stops like you'll be seeing like Curtisy in like square in the middle of Barcelona at 2 p.m. and then you'll be like seeing like JPEGMAFIA ending that same festival at five in the morning and everything just flows.

There's a natural sense of like anything is possible. Anything can kind of breakthrough. And I almost think that like the ideal festival is summed up in that Mary Wallopers to Hazey Haze transition. I want to do as much stuff like that as possible, but I write about music and instead of programming festivals, so maybe next year I'll try and like launch a competitor to River Runs Round, even though...

But now, I want to ask you just maybe the most open ended question of all, right. What excites you? What are you optimistic about for the future here in Irish music?

DM: I think there's loads like to be honest is kind of I think I got a wee bit disillusioned towards the end of working District - I don't think it's anything to do with the job itself and it's just kind of like the way my brain works is I need to kind of shift and change and do new things to get excited.

It kind of lit a fire on my ass to just be like, digging for more music and stuff. And I think the thing that makes me excited is just that if you actually look, there's so much incredible stuff. And I think it's more exciting to me that most people don't know about a lot of the things - the nerd in me enjoys that - and the thing that makes me excited to do is just like the quality of music and when it comes down to like the kind of stuff that's going against the grain because, you know, for better or worse, like during the pandemic and afterwards, people have become so proficient at branding themselves online, you know, creating content and stuff, which is great, is professionalising yourself in your career. But it doesn't often it doesn't leave a lot of room for this kind of stuff. we're talking about: the Thom Delhis of the world who are just dropping 100 songs, and you have to try and find the songs in between.

The thing that does make me excited is that even despite the kind of homogenous way that music is being distributed, there's still tons of people doing exciting things. And I think it's the age of people is kind of like blowing my mind... were producers, for example, in the last five years, like I've come across so many teenagers doing like crazy things and like that guys Sign Crushes Motorist that I was talking about has an album coming out with an artist called KayCyy.

KayCyy from America, who wrote a lot of Donda for Kanye West, wrote a lot of stuff for Travis Scott. And I’ve listened to some of the tracks have been sent through. And yeah, they slap and it's like a kid from Buncrana made most of the music in his bedroom. That to me is exciting and and the fact that, for example, for most of these kind of trap albums coming out that Americans are making the sound very the same. But whatever way Sign Crushes Motorist has learned to make his music in rural Buncrana means that he has a very definitive sound that almost sounds like his environment. And you can hear it in the music, like hearing trap clash with Donegal is just like something that blows my mind and I think it's digging deeper and finding more stuff.

I'm working on this documentary at the moment that's based around iconic gigs and the stories I'm hearing of people from Ireland doing things. This is kind of my like thing that makes me excited most is hearing people in Ireland doing things on a global scale. I met a guy in Limerick called Tom Prendergast who a lot of people might know - where he opened a record store in New Jersey... in the 80s maybe? And the first band he signed was There Might Be Giants who did like.. well I'm not reducing them to this, but they did the Malcolm in the Middle theme. You know it's like iconic songs. And he also signed Yo La Tengo.

I had Brian Cross on my podcast recently. So like for people that don't know, Photographer from Limerick took the first photos of Eazy-E, took photos of Biggie, moved to America in the nineties, also was hugely instrumental in the second half of Madvillainy. So he had like he brought Madlib to Brazil and that actually changed the course of that whole album.

That's like just scratching the surface of what he's done. But things like that make me excited. Things like Jordan from Belfast, someone I grew up with just blown up and I seen him with Eminem the other night. You know, it's just like crazy. Like, I think the thing that makes me so excited is like the ability of people to be able to do it in spite of all the problems we talked about.

And I think it's easy to sort of get caught up in the negatives when it's kind of like I was saying about digging for stuff when it's convenient or it's not as satisfying and and all saying that I want things to stay as they are. But there is something about like the spirit of people in Ireland and that is really exciting.

CC: Do you have a dream project that's evading you? Do you have a book in you?

DM: Yeah, I really want to write a book about like sort of people that are hidden in plain sight in Ireland that are doing amazing things. Like I think that Eden article was called... something about the artist in plain sight, “hidden in plain sight”. And like you've got these people like Brian Cross, Tom Prendergast...

I read a story that, okay, I'm not really supposed to tell because the thing hasn't come out yet, but I'm working on a thing about Bob Marley's gig in Dalymount Park in the 80s. And I read this story about a footballer, Johnny Giles, who used to play for Leeds and Manchester United, and it said that basically he went on a night out in Belfast with George Best after losing the game, and Terry Hooley, the founder of Good Vibrations, the record label, he was playing Bob Marley and this is 1972, and apparently John Giles just like fell in love with this music. Eventually he met Bob Marley in 1977 when he was playing a game against Spurs in London and he was playing there and supposedly, according to all the articles, he became friends with Bob Marley, played football with him, and Bob Marley's getting invited to Dalymount. That story like fucking blew my mind. And it spread over the internet and I was like, I have to speak to him for this documentary.

And I actually got the phone number. I posted about it on Instagram the other day and someone give me his phone number and I phoned him and he says, “I've never met him. Goodbye.” And just put the phone down. At best, he just can't be bothered speaking about this anymore and at worst it really didn't happen. But those kind of gems of stories. Like that one might not be true, but those exist. And there's people I want to write a book about kind of the weird connections people in Ireland have to pop culture that people don't know about.

CC: Yeah, I when I was reading that recent J Dilla biography and I was like seeing just like how involved Brian Cross was with everything.

DM: I was when I was interviewing him, I was like, I just bought that book and I was like, yeah, I've just started it, have you read it? And he was like, Yeah, I'm, I'm in the book. I thought it was so embarrassing.

CC: I mean, we're kind of coming off to towards the end of the hour. I want to give people a chance to move on to the next gig, so we might wrap it up here, but by all means, the floor is yours.

I'm relaunching my podcast next Sunday, I think. So it's called Mabfield. It's kind of hard to define what it was. It started as a rap podcast years ago. I went to work at District and the time to do it anymore, but I'm relaunching it and it's just going to reflect the music I'm into. So the first five episodes actually don't have any rappers on it and I've got Sign Crushes Motorist and Brian Cross on it as I’ve mentioned I've got a few others. But yeah, I kind of just want to highlight stuff that isn't maybe as covered in media in Ireland as much and sort of give more time and opportunities and space to have context and deeper conversations about it and kind of document the culture as it's happening. So if anybody wants to follow me on Instagram, it's @mabfield. I think it's up @mabfield on Twitter. I don't really use Twitter.. TikTok, I'm just using @deeeemurph with 4 Es.

CC: Yeah. I had so many questions about TikTok I just skipped over. I want to learn how to do that. Fourth Best doesn’t have a TikTok but it will eventually. This has been Fourth Best Talks: Future of Irish Music Journalism. I'm really excited to have Dylan down. It's been like we've been talking for years like these projects and it's really exciting.

As you're going out there, you're doing this independent again. I think, you know, the world needs stuff like that.

So yeah, I want to thank the River Runs Round festival, including me, for helping to put the show on!