Old Earth by Rory Sweeney

Rory Sweeney returns in 2025 with his 2nd album, ‘Old Earth’, set for release on October 24th. Beautiful, tense, existential and playful all at once, ‘Old Earth’ is Sweeney at his most dazzling and undefineable. The album is heavily inspired by Stone Tape Theory, which posits that ghosts, hauntings and supernatural phenomena are the result of events being imprinted into the land. Sweeney uses the memory of the land and his own personal memory to reflect on accelerating tech capitalism, hauntological non places of modern ireland, the irish otherworld and personal moments, playing with anacronism and physical sound. Old Earth is a reflection on disappearing time and memory in the information age, while trying to reckon with history and the esoteric.

Written between Dublin, Manchester, Letterkenny and Sligo, Old Earth is built on tension and release, tight, patterned electronics unravel into freer piano, bell & synth passages. Musically it owes a debt to the work of Autechre, Enya, The Haxan Cloak, Steve Reich and Oneohtrix Point Never.

Features include: Saoirse Miller, Róis, Risteárd Ó hAodha, Celine Starling, EMBY, Emily Beattie, Ahmed, With Love., Curtisy, Ushmush, Roo Honeychild, and Julia Louise Knifefist - a highlight reel of the grassroots, burgeoning talent Ireland has to offer.

The album sees Sweeney at the peak of his powers on his highly anticipated sophomore album, following his 2022 debut Trash Catalogue. Introducing an emotional depth never before heard in his music, the album was conceived in 2020 and represents a culmination of five years of evolution as an artist which includes a series of cult classic releases, an 2023 AVA Festival Producer of the Year win, and a 2024 RTÉ Choice Prize nomination for Best Album (What Was The Question by Dublin Rapper, Curtisy). Old Earth is a bold, intense, and mesmerising body of work — one that only Sweeney could create.

Rory Sweeney is a Dublin-based electronic artist known for raw, genre-warped approaches to sound. Equal parts Enya and Autechre, Rory uses dense production and a DIY ethos to create his post internet music. A key presence in Ireland, Rory’s work with MCs, vocalists, and visual artists has garnered extensive critical acclaim, making him a central figure in Ireland’s flourishing musical ecosystem.