Ian Nyquist's Gilded is the Fourth Best album of 2025 Each year, Fourth Best recognises an Irish record that deserves a bigger place in the end-of-year conversation. It might not be the best album of the year. But it might be the fourth. Today, what the ...

4. our album of the year is a collection of bodhrán synthesis landscapes drawing as much from Aphex Twin as from pub players. www.fourth.best/ian-nyquists...

on being the small-town critic an interlude before the fourth best album of the year piece

3. a secret article I avoided posting on social media
www.fourth.best/on-being-the...

in search of Old Earth 👴🏻🌍 reflecting on Rory Sweeney's solo return to the boundary of the silly and the sublime, live on stage at the Button Factory in our second public Q&A of the year

2. Rory Sweeney in conversation
www.fourth.best/in-search-of...

i still see their marks that they left in the stone the future of our past, fourth best's original sin, a manifesto in reverse, and one of 2025's best albums: Carving The Stone by For Those I Love

I forgot to post a bunch of articles here.

So:
1. music against technofeudalism and how we live with the guilt
www.fourth.best/i-still-see-...

Irish digital culture!

music is what we want for our children – the fourth best view on ai featuring: chats with AI artist "Kawaii Hoe" and the journalist who felt "duped" by them! north kerry noise! a björk quote! a niche trading card game! indonesian tiktoks! the choice music prize! techb...

lost the way of myself earlier in the year and wrote a way-too-long piece towards the same point. bigger models won't fix the fact that it's a profoundly cynical way to think about making music in the first place, and all AI for "creative work" suffers a version of it www.fourth.best/music-is-wha...

As promised a long time ago, I will be making the photos I take over the course of the Fourth Best project available for public use under CC BY 4.0 through Wikimedia Commons. commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special...

a Painful conversation with Alex Gough talking his debut album, the changing shape of curation, the value of events ranging from Clash at the Quays to Blue Niall's Oisín. "I’m giving it five years: the thing a young person says is their fa...

THE DROUGHT IS OVER
www.fourth.best/a-painful-co...

atn in review: do we just call it a victory lap? a review of sorts about the All Together Now weekend; nothing new, but everything bigger than before

all together now festival: Good (...and 3,985 more words)
www.fourth.best/atn-in-revie...

thoughts on the movie #sinners, the past, present and future of #irish #folkmusic, two of my favourite albums of last year, artists digging deep into Irish history, the communities we're building, and... TikTok video by Fourth Best

can we make tiktoks without resorting to slop? an investigation www.tiktok.com/@fourth.best...

maybe we should do merch

the rooms I've been in lately highlights of the year so far featuring Cold Summit, Peter O'Sullivan, Rita Lynn, OUCH™, and the many gigs that I wish I covered sooner

ode to gigs of various shapes and sizes www.fourth.best/the-rooms-iv...

NOT BAD

oh so that's why this has been getting clicks again huh

Cover artwork for Mineral Stunting - Come Rain Come Shine The cover features a small square with a video still of a first person perspective of someone riding a jetski. you can see the person's hands and in the corner is the symbol indicating this is from an Instagram reel. The word "Sacrifice" is superimposed over the Jetski. This small square is on a much larger square of dark green that is otherwise completely blank besides the artist name "Mineral Stunting" in the top left corner and the album name "Come Rain Come Shine" in the top right corner

An image of the musician Mineral Stunting. They are photographed from the shoulders up and in an angled profile from the camera. They are wearing a black jacket and a green hat. There is a slight blur to the photo. Image credit: Izabela Szczutkowska

Handdrawn logo for Drift Ritual. The logo is black on a white background. The logo also contains two drawn candles

A picture of the artist Mineral Stunting. They are facing the camera and looking beyond it. They are photographed from the chest up. They are wearing a beige t-shirt, glasses and a green hat. They are in front of some rocks and the sea. The photo is brightly lit by the sun which reflects light in the water Image credit: Izabela Szczutkowska

Announcing the new album by Mineral Stunting, ‘Come Rain Come Shine’ on Drift Ritual
two singles, ‘Sink Dub’ and ‘Chasm’ available to hear now
full album releases on April 8th, available as Digital and CD
mastered by The Bastard

driftritual.bandcamp.com/album/come-r...

next year with the w
bitb!

only one person has posted the Choice winner on BlueSky so we could totally take over with a disinformation campaign that says it's actually Curtisy right

Fragments of Eternity YouTube video by SLOUCHO

certified classic www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2oJ...

writing this drove me genuinely insane. I don't ever want to think about this ever again. if you listen Jason by O Emperor instead of reading this article I'd be equally happy

music is what we want for our children – the fourth best view on ai featuring: chats with AI artist "Kawaii Hoe" and the journalist who felt "duped" by him! north kerry noise! a björk quote! a niche trading card game! indonesian tiktoks! the choice music prize! techbr...

MAYBE WE LIKE THE MISERY
chats with @nialler9.bsky.social and AI artist "Kawaii Hoe"! north kerry noise! a björk quote! a @peretsky.bsky.social shoutout! a trading card game! indonesian tiktoks! the choice music prize! techbro scum! charli xcx! JPEGMAFIA! father ted!
www.fourth.best/music-is-wha...

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.

five years of listening to music and scribbling about it in a google doc in this site's first guest post www.fourth.best/guest-post-o...

in the Whelan. straight up "watching it". and by "it", haha, well. let's just say. Ones

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...

👑🌇🌆 www.fourth.best/jarjarjrs-ca...

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 oth...

When the likes of Hozier and Fontaines DC play the 3Arena, do they owe us an Irish support act? For the Fontaines, it might settle an ancient score. My latest: www.fourth.best/fuckin-diddl...

"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.

In October I shot another interview with Ahmed, With Love. The footage ended up being... pretty unusable, I'm still new to this. It still ended up being one of my favourite things I've written for the site though. www.fourth.best/im-a-silly-w...

avhlive1(Dm104) | Live at River Runs Round 2024 YouTube video by fourth best

also from the River Runs Round files; Fourth Best planted an old sony handycam propped up on a can of Zyns to record the first ever AVH live show. it's listed as a movie on letterboxd for some reason www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmi4...

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 pla...

From this September: an hour-long chat with Dylan Murphy at River Runs Round about the future of Irish music media: www.fourth.best/fourth-best-...

Féile na Gréine, unreal time & the festivals 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.

From this August: thoughts from the ground at Féile na Gréine, a festival that made me rethink festivals www.fourth.best/feile-na-gre...

Fatboy from the band Bricknasty hits a "rock on!" pose while crowd surfing at their headline show in the Academy. He is wearing a balaclava. Their drummer stares into the crowd from the stage. Lilac light bathes the subjects.

dudes rock