guest post: ‘one thousand one hundred and one’ by Matthew Xavier Corrigan

In the first guest post for the site, Matthew Xavier Corrigan reflects on five entire years of cataloguing the music he listened to, tracing an outline of the life he lived.

jarjarjr's Catch the Dusk is the Fourth Best album of 2024

How far would you go to create a total work of art, when the world wants you to be something else? Catch The Dusk twists the rules of music's zero-sum game – we must not let it be punished as a result.

fuckin’ ‘diddly-diddly-aye’: assorted notes on Irish music at the end of 2024

Getting through some writer's block with a good old-fashioned rant about an interview from 2019... although it's a weirdly optimistic one. With praise for new music by Pippa Molony and RÓIS, among others.

"I'm a silly-wave advocate. There's beauty in the absurd." – a conversation with Ahmed, With Love.

Meeting at the launch of the rapper's mixtape "COMMA, FULLSTOP.", we caught up about pro wrestling, Four Loko, the Irish Hash Mafia, dissing Jamiroquai, Brazillian influences, and more.

avhlive1(Dm104) | Live at River Runs Round

AVH is a new live-focused electronic project by Jack Corrigan and Drew Linehan of Hausu Records. Fourth Best caught their first live set on video at the River Runs Round festival.

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

In front of a live audience in Plugd Records at the River Runs Round festival in Cork earlier this month, I checked in with Dylan from Mabfield‬ as he prepares to re-launch the beloved Irish music platform. We talk about Irish music media and how to make Johnny Giles stop answering your calls.

all of this unreal time – Féile Na Gréine & the type of festival we deserve

Thoughts on the festivals I love, including last weekend's phenomenal Féile na Gréine, and why I've gotten involved in the mammoth task of trying to build a new one.

some new essential music videos with jarjarjr, Princ€ss & Ahmed, With Love

Two wildly different Irish hip-hop cuts and a performance by one of the country's most fascinating experimental groups. All they have in common is that I think they're class.

trá pháidín, best band in the country, in perpetual motion

The best band in the country already has three albums out. Trá Pháidín's music strikes this absolutely gorgeous middle ground between post-rock, jazz and Irish traditional music. Under the surface, landscape, infrastructure and psyche combine.

Video Premiere: lxverboy & Sophie Moon - BRB CRYING

Sophie Moon's debut single comes with two versions - one a lowercase acoustic pop piece, another in all caps and breakbeats with lxverboy. The low-res video is weaponised nostalgia.

"export readiness", the Irish Hash Mafia, and the twin futures of the scene

It's a story about the tension between industry and DIY, between going global and putting your friends on, between NEW MUSIC OTW and unexpected zip file. Between major label, indie label, and just hitting upload.

if you get a few sound heads pointing cameras you can make Limerick the centre of the world

Lessons learned about the archive from a handful of livestreams from empty venues, some shit I have lying around on my SD card, and Limerick's spirit of defiance.

Essay

a price to pay - TCXL, Curtisy, Fynch, and The State of Irish hip-hop

We're so back? From the Bandcamp tapes all the way up to the charts - maybe Irish hip-hop is better than ever? NUXSENSE has been operating at peak efficiency, dropping EP after EP of work that by right should skyrocket them into the international hip-hop underground, Kojaque and

Essay

notes on an algorithmic deterritorialisation: the Fourth Best view on streaming

Spotify has an algorithmically generated "daily wellness" playlist that's just clips of meditation podcasts cut with generic-sounding lo-fi hip-hop beats and Bressie interludes. Its local coverage is almost entirely dead.

algorithm spirits: why Rachael Lavelle's "Big Dreams" is the Fourth Best album of 2023

If you really wanted, you could make the argument that this is the album Enya would make if she knew who Dril was.