Ian Lynch is a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist best known as a member RTÉ Choice Music Prize winners Lankum - Ian also has a monthly radio show Fire Draw Near on Dublin Digital Radio.
Ian will join Junior Brother on Tuesday October 20th, as part of the National Concert Hall's Imagining Ireland Livestream Series - we asked him for his choice cultural picks...
FILM
I absolutely loved Richard Stanley’s Colour Out of Space. As a life-long HP Lovecraft fan I have sought out most of the film adaptations, from big screen releases to independent fan films and absolutely everything in between. This film absolutely nailed it though. Beautiful trippy visuals, high strangeness and Nicholas Cage doing what he does best – losing his s**t on screen.
MUSIC
Last Bandcamp Friday I bought Katie Kim’s Charles / VV11 and I’ve been listening to it ever since. It’s an atmospheric, rough and ready selection of unpolished, and in some cases even unfinished, pieces that leave the listener in no doubt of her singular talent. Her upcoming album is going to be amazing.
BOOK
Thirty-Two Words for Field: Lost Words of the Irish Landscape by Manchán Magan. This is a very calm and deceptively simple read, all the magic inherent in the Irish language. It reminded me of all the reasons I was drawn towards learning the language the year after I finished school, after having failed pass level in the Leaving Cert.
TV PROGRAMME
I read Lovecraft Country when it came out a few years ago, and was very impressed. Similar to Victor Lavelle, Matt Ruff dives deep into the world of HP Lovecraft while never shying away from the various forms of bigotry that run deep in his work. The TV show is a powerful and faithful adaptation, and I’ve been loving it so far.
GIG
I haven’t seen a gig in a long time now, but the An Góilín's weekly traditional singing sessions were a lifesaver during the initial lockdown.
ART
I’ve been really digging the artwork of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, based artist Andy Kehoe, which is full of dreamy magic and natural-world sentience.
TECH
People chuckle when you mention it and joke about Ask Jeeves, Windows ’98 and Hotmail, but I absolutely love Soulseek. It gives me access to so much obscure music that I would be otherwise unable to get my hands on.
THE NEXT BIG THING
I think that after the effects of 2020 have sunken in great multitudes of people are going to flee from the brink of a reality that has become too convoluted and fragmented to comprehend and instead take refuge in attempting to commune with the Great Old Ones. For anyone wondering what the logical endpoint of all this is count yourselves lucky, because the reality-twisting seers of hallucinogenic blackened death-doom Malthusian have already gotten there before you, and they have made the soundtrack. They are already huge, but most of us just can’t perceive reality on that level.
Ian will join Junior Brother on Tuesday October 20th at 8pm as part of the National Concert Hall's Imagining Ireland Livestream Series. Tickets for the upcoming Imagining Ireland performance are available via dice.fm.
