Popular Raidió Na Gaeltachta late night DJ Cian Ó Cíobháin visits Limerick’s Trinity Rooms this Friday night, for the launch of the second volume compiling the most popular tracks from his show. Ciarán Ryan spoke to the man who mixed the heady musical brew to be found on the disc. 

With daytime music radio becoming increasingly lacklustre, as even more stations appear, it seems that it is still late night radio that provides the little havens for the braver listener.

One such slot is Raidió Na Gaeltachta’s ‘An Taobh Tuathail’, a programme which for almost a decade has favoured a more varied mix than the daily chart attack: minimalist techno, new weird America, dupstep, and alt-indie sit side-by-side on this wondrous nightly two-hour fix.

So, it probably seemed logical that the man behind it, Cian Ó Cíobháin, would lend his deft touch at selecting quality tracks to compile ‘An Taobh Tuathatil Vol 1’ last year, and after the success of that album, Volume 2 has followed recently.

“To be honest, it was something I always wanted to do to. When I was sixteen or seventeen, I used to make all these cassette compilations, and I still have the copy book where I had all the tracklistings! I even had my own imaginary record label, Warsaw Records (named after his fanaticism for Joy Division), with catalogue numbers for each compilation,” Cian admits.

Ó Cíobháin’s refusal to see him typecast as such means that his compilations significantly echo his radio output. “They are tracks that were played a lot over a period of time on the show; it is definitely stuff that I’ve enjoyed and that has a good shelf life. At the same time, they all seem to have a slight elegiac and autumnal feel to them. There were a couple of other tracks that just didn’t sit there as well, so I dropped them.

“I kept programming and sequencing the tracks differently to see which way they’d work best. I suppose in my mind, it was like I was working on my own second album.”

Because of this criteria, ATT favourites such as Mice Parade, Boxcutter, Colleen and Chequerboard all appear. The latter act, the alter-ego of Dubliner John Lambert featured on the first compilation, as did Galwegians Cane 141 who make a return visit also.