He's Electric: Will Kinsella rounds up the latest Irish releases

Mark Greene releases his next EP on Steve Mulder’s Orange Recordings on March 29. Titled Manipulate, the EP features a remix from Saytek, fresh from releases on Darren Emerson’s Detone, and Carl Cox and Christopher Coe’s Awesome Soundwave. This follows on from Mark’s hugely successful release with Carl Cox’s label Intec late last year, which reached number two on the Beatport techno charts. This will be Mark’s third outing on Orange Recordings, following on from previous releases ‘Rain Dance’ and ‘Back Off’.

To commemorate the closure of District 8 on January 26, the team released a collectors’ edition vinyl, featuring tracks from Tinfoil, Hybrasil, Moduse and Mode_1. The release is available from All City Records and Spin Dizzy Records in Dublin, with a digital version expected in the coming months.

Also in release news, Hybrasil has a new offering on Sian’s Octupus Recordings. Titled ‘Lemuria’, the track features on Drunken Kong’s Binary Structures compilation, which also boasts tunes from label boss Sian, M. Fukuda, Maxie Devine, Sinisa Tamamovic and Metodi Hristov. It currently sits at number three on Beatport’s techno chart. There is also a new Hybrasil EP due out on Ronnie Spiteri’s label Kenja Records on March 15. Titled Time To Change / Inanna, the record features a remix from Spanish producer Danny Serrano. In addition, there’s a new release scheduled for Hydrozpa in May, and vinyl release on the Hybrasil label set for June.

Elsewhere, Dego released his debut album, Ten Plus One, on January 4, via his own Dego Music imprint. The album has gotten support from Phever.ie, Flirt FM and RTÉ Pulse, whilst Nialler9 featured it in his top 7 Irish Songs of the Week chart in January. It is available from degomusic.net.

George Feely, meanwhile, has released the K-Town Funk EP on JohNick’s label Henry Street Music in New York. The imprint is mostly known for launching ’90s stars Armand Van Helden, Kenny Dope and Todd Terry, and releasing mega-hits ‘The Bomb’ and ‘The Funk Phenomena’. Feely’s EP is a four-track affair with a funk-house and disco flavour, as well as a DJ Deeon-inspired ghetto-house tune. It gets a digital release on March 22, with a vinyl edition due on a later date.

Berlin-based techno label Gobsmacked Records kick off 2019 with Diarmaid O’Meara’s Untitled Noise EP, an eclectic offering boasting heavy modular sounds, unhinged heavy percussion, and innovative production styles. Notably, the tracks were all recorded in one take.

“At this point, I’m done with the whole process of constantly changing sounds after the fact,” says O’Meara. “After using that process for easily a thousand productions, it’s started to bore me. For the foreseeable future, it’s back to the roots – give me a treated studio I can trust, intuitive equipment I can jam on, and a means to record a single audio track. It’s feels more organic to me, taking that moment and immortalising it as is. Raw is more fun.”

Finally we turn to Gobsmacked Records, who last year celebrated their 10th anniversary. It began its journey as a club night in Waterford, before moving to Berlin in the summer of 2010. That relocation gave the label the chance to explore the music as it should be presented – in large, post-industrial spaces. Looking towards the future, Gobsmacked plan to continue releasing cutting edge, high quality music. They intend to use their creativity and resources as a platform, while also expanding the bi-weekly Audio Affair Broadcast radio show.