Daithi

Daithi will play a live set with special guests at Music Minds.

Daithi is an electronic music producer obsessed by the culture of Ireland. The two time choice award nominee combines nature recordings, old Irish samples and analog synths to create a unique type of house music that’s soaked in Irish culture. A mainstay in the Irish gigging scene, his live show is an improvised performance, creating on the spot dance music using synths, drum machines and live fiddle.

Leo Abrahams

Leo Abrahams is an English musician, composer and producer. He has collaborated with a multitude of musicians, including Brian Eno, Imogen Heap, Jarvis Cocker, David Holmes, David Byrne, Iarla Ó Lionáird, Carl Barât, Jon Hopkins and Paul Simon. After attending the Royal Academy of Music in England, he started his musical career by touring as lead guitarist with Imogen Heap. Since 2005 he has released five solo albums, largely in an ambient style involving complex arrangements and a use of guitar-generated textures. He has also co-written or arranged a variety of film soundtracks, including Peter Jackson‘s 2009 release The Lovely Bones and Steve McQueen‘s Hunger. Recently, Leo has produced Regina Spektor’s album ‘Remember Us to Life’, Hayden Thorpe’s ‘Diviner’, Editor’s ‘Violence’ and Ghostpoet’s ‘Dark Days + Canapés’. In March 2020 Leo will be touring Europe on an ambient show with Jon Hopkins playing in venues including The Bord Gáis Energy Theatre and an already sold-out show at the Royal Albert Hall.

Ships

Irish Electronic-Songster Duo Ships,  Simon Cullen and Sorca McGrath won the Choice Music Prize Album of the Year 2017. They will play a live set at Music Minds 2020.

Bantum

Ruairi Lynch aka Bantum is a Cork native electronic music producer who mixes elements of electronica, funk, dance and hip hop. He has been releasing music for close to 10 years, culminating in the 2016 RTE Choice prize-nominated album ‘Move’. He has performed in Ireland, the USA and the UK, held slots at festivals including Electric Picnic, Body & Soul, Sounds from a Safe Harbour, It Takes A Village and supported the likes of Chet Faker and Jon Hopkins. He has released a number of music & video projects this year with Loah, God Knows, Ben Bix and Farah Elle. Ruairi has also worked on the upcoming short film ‘VOID’ directed by Ger Duffy and produced by Motherland Films. He is currently working on another short documentary with Motherland films alongside many more music projects for 2020.

A-li-ce

A-li-ce  (*FR – Berlin) works as a live video artist and as a VJ since 2005. She uses different techniques such as drawing, animation and video in order to create her hybrid time collages in motion. Currently fascinated by biological structures, she proposes in her recent works some innovative stories between imagination and reality by using on stage what she calls « live organic editing » to create her visual journeys.  A-li-ce has showcased her work on the international audiovisual art scene (Mapping Festival (CH), Mira Festival (ES), B-Seite (DE), LPM (IT), Vidéoformes (FR), RoBOt Festival (IT), etc.), with solo and collective projects.  She won the 2nd New Medias Celeste Prize in New York in 2011. Her multi-media work Fucking Wonderland was presented in Kyoto at the National Manga Museum in spring 2014.

Mark Graham

Mark G is a lecturer in the Department of Creative and Performing Arts at Waterford Institute of Technology by day and is a drummer, vocalist and trombonist with King Kong Company by night. Mark has previously worked for Today FM and RTE Radio. His first book, A Year of Festivals in Ireland, documented his quest to attend three Irish festivals per week for an entire year. He ended up attending three Irish festivals per week for three years, while writing his Festival Fit column for The Irish Times. A Year of Festivals in Ireland won Travel Book of the Year at the Travel Writers Awards 2015. The associated Year of Festivals blog won Best Popular Culture Blog at the Irish Blog Awards.

Susan O'Neill

SON is the stage name of Susan O Neill, a woman who argues through her song, for a transnational melding of musical styles, encompassing the old and new.  SON was shortlisted as PureMzine’s ‘One to Watch’ but more recently won a trip to perform at the Milwaukee Irish fest in conjunction with Tradfest Temple bar. Hailing from picturesque Co. Clare, the prodigiously gifted singer-songwriter honed her musical skills as one of the youngest members of the Ennis Brass Band and gained her first gospel influences with the Really Truly Joyful Gospel Choir. ‘In Clare, there is always a song in the air.’ Later venturing to Waterford to study a BA in Music, SON has been collaborating with festival favourites King Kong Company and Propeller Palms.

Steve Wall

Steve Wall is an Irish musician and actor, lead singer and songwriter with legendary Irish bands The Walls and The Stunning. Known for roles in Vikings, Silent Witness, Moone Boy, Rebellion and An Klondike, his latest project is playing the jazz musician Chet Baker in ‘My Foolish Heart’, a new Dutch feature about the trumpeter’s last days in Amsterdam.

Emma Langford

Winner of the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Award for ‘Best Emerging Artist in 2018′, Emma Langford has wasted no time making her mark on the Irish & international folk scene. Emma is described by song-writing legend Phil Coulter as ‘a breath of fresh air’. Noted for a vocal timbre which dances playfully among the nuances of ‘folk’, her voice is at once defiant and ethereal, her lyrics insightful yet loaded with wit and whimsy. Comparisons are often drawn in style and sound to historically-famed songwriters such as Joni Mitchell and Janis Ian. Hailing from Limerick City in the South-West of Ireland, her fusion of home-grown brazen wit and piercingly insightful lyrics combine to create the enthralling live presence for which the young artist has become so well-known. The Irish Times describe Emma Langford’s debut album Quiet Giant as ‘music that weaves a spell as you listen to it’.

Fergal Davis

Fergal Davis has had a long career as a recording and mixing engineer, and has been mastering records since 2001. He started as a bassist in numerous bands and soon found out that his heart lay in the studio. He started learning his craft at the Sound Training Centre, Dublin, and spent many years subsequently working in numerous Dublin studios especially within Sun Studios and Apollo Studios in Temple Bar.  His mastering credits include Fontaines DC, Sinéad O’Connor and Muse and countless clients from all genres of music from the past 2 decades. The fact that artists return to his studio again and again is testament to his talent and professionalism in mastering.

Richard Dowling

Over 30 years Richard Dowling has worked as a dedicated mastering engineer. Richard is one of the most experienced audio engineers in Ireland. With the only purpose-built hardware-based mastering room in the country in his native Limerick, Wav Mastering is a tour de force both in Ireland and internationally. Previously, Dowling was house engineer for Pete Waterman’s PWL standalone mastering facility Transformation (the Stock Aitken Waterman hit machine) working with Simons Cowell and Fuller and acts as diverse as Kylie Minogue, Napalm Death, Suede and Westlife. From the current base, acts such as Jape and SOAK have been Choice Award winners and the diversity continues from Beoga to Christy Moore to Pillow Queens to The Rubberbandits.

Eleanor McEvoy

As well as being the chair of IMRO, Eleanor McEvoy achieved star status in Ireland in 1992 when her song “A Woman’s Heart” was the title track for the A Woman’s Heart anthology album.  A Woman’s Heart has since gone on to become the best-selling album in Irish history. She graduated from Trinity College Dublin with an honours degree in music and was accepted to the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland as a violinist.  She released her eponymous debut on Geffen records followed with tours in the USA, Europe and the Far East. She moved to Columbia Records in New York for her second album “What’s Following Me?”. “Precious Little”, the first single, was a top ten radio hit in the US. Since then, Eleanor has gone on to become an artist and performer known throughout the world. Her critically acclaimed canon of work spans thirteen albums, fifty singles, and appearances on numerous compilation albums. She has also had numerous cover versions of her songs by performers such as Emmylou Harris, Mary Black, Phil Coulter, Mary Coughlan and Bella Hardy.

Steo Wall

Steo Wall is an emerging talent on the Irish music scene, a striking wordsmith with a unique musical style. His live sets have been described as pure alchemy. Steo has an eclectic taste to his music which shines through the multi-genre array of songs at his disposal.

Dr Kerry Hagan

Dr Kerry Hagan is a composer and researcher working in both acoustic and computer media. She develops real-time methods for spatialization and stochastic algorithms for musical practice. Her work endeavours to achieve aesthetic and philosophical aims while taking inspiration from mathematical and natural processes. In this way, each work combines art with science and technology from various domains. Her works have been performed in Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas. 

Ray Wingnut

Ray Wingnut presents Alt Spin on Spin Southwest. He owns and manages Wingnut Records.

Myriam Riand

Myriam Riand is a visual artist based in North Clare. After studying Visual Communication in Limerick School of Art and Design, she weaved between travelling and working as a Graphic Designer for events, creating visuals for clients such as Google, AIB and HP. She has recently settled as a freelance artist in Ennistymon. Inspired by the vibrant local music scene, she has started collaborating with local artists to create  album designs & promotional material. Using film photography as her medium of choice, she adapts her designs to incorporate the texture and deliberate imperfections of analog image making.

Claire Byrne

Claire Byrne is an environmental educator, politician and sustainability consultant for the events industry. Claire is the Sustainability Manager for Body & Soul festival, working to minimise the environmental impact of the festival while also using the event as a platform to inspire positive social change and climate action. The festival has won several awards for their environmental achievements in the outdoor events industry and is the leading light in sustainability in the Irish festival scene. She previously curated The Global Green at Electric Picnic and worked with Another Love Story to develop and implement their sustainability strategy. She is also a Green Party Councillor for the South East Inner City ward and party spokesperson for Arts and Culture. First elected in 2014, Claire has been working hard since to influence city policy in the areas of planning, arts and culture, environmental protection, sustainability, climate action and improving the quality of life for the citizens of Dublin.

Aaron Casey

Aaron Casey is Head of Business at BIMM Dublin. He is a Music Rights and Royalties Consultant.

Áine Martin

Áine Martin is HR, Purchasing and Green Manager at Hotel Doolin, the venue where Music Minds takes place annually.  She led the project of Hotel Doolin being certified as Ireland’s only carbon neutral hotel this year and led projects including changing the heating system from oil to an air to water heating system among several other initiatives that has led to the hotel winning the award for Best Medium Sized Organisation of the Year 2018 & 2019 at the Green Awards, Chambers Ireland Team o of the Year 2019 for Corporate Social Responsibility & Repak Business Waste Prevention Award 2019.  Hotel Doolin has also won A Greener Festival Award for Doolin Folk Festival.

Emmet Condon

Emmet Condon is a dj, promoter and music maker. Best known as head honcho of independent promotion outfit Homebeat and also as a key part of the Another Love Story team, Emmet also djs regularly across Dublin and the festival scene where the heart, warmth and love of emotion filled music that permeates the events he runs also shines through in his sets.

Peter O'Brien

Peter O’Brien is a seasoned event organiser and social entrepreneur. He is the founder of Happenings and co-founder of Music Minds and Another Love Story. Peter came from a life in professional sport before going on to manage Mexican duo Rodrigo y Gabriela, for a year, after meeting them busking on Grafton Street. He went on to found a series of socially and environmentally-conscious businesses in Dublin. His current enterprise, Happenings, evolved with the advent of social media and the possibility to create pop-up events, with little advance notice, in outdoor spaces. Happenings create a wide range of events nationwide from music festivals and shows, open air cinema and yoga classes and social debates. People and the environment are what comes first at all of these events.

Simon O’Reilly

Simon O’Reilly is a guitarist, composer, producer and co-founder of Music Minds Festival based in Lahinch on the west of Ireland where he has his studio. He has worked with many musicians including The Contempo Quartette, Davey Spillane, Twin Headed Wolf, Kila, Luka Bloom, and The Monks Of Glenstal amongst others. He has written music for award-winning films and many documentaries including Sundance award winner The Summit. His 2016 solo album Evolve was Nailer9’s Irish Times album of the week and was in 2FMs Dan Hegarty’s top 10 albums of 2016.