Name: Daniel McIntyre aka Lullahush
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, producer, sound designer
Nationality: Irish
Current release: Lullahush's new album Ithaca is out via Future Classic.
Global Recommendations:
Dublin - go see Acid Granny on the street and spend some time watching them, they are the greatest living Irish artists and are the best and cheapest thing to do in the city.
Athens - go see an incredible band called Loukia. Apocalypse music for the soul.
Topics that I am passionate about but rarely get to talk about: There aren't any really. I never really shut up about the things I’m passionate about and I’m very lucky to be surrounded by people who tolerate my rants and raves.  

If you enjoyed this Lullahush interview and would like to know more about his music, visit him on Instagram, Facebook, Soundcloud, and bandcamp.



Many musicians I am talking to at the moment feel somewhat disillusioned about the impact, meaning, and value of their work. Feel free to vent some of your own frustrations and/or disappointments – as well, if possible, something that you recently experienced (or a thought that you had) that might give hope to other creatives.

Releasing music is the worst part of making music. It is so deflating after you spend hours and hours, often every second of every day, working on it. When you release it feels like it just boils down to a 10 second loop of pixels on a screen.

But then you get a message from someone who really listens and it means the world. And then when you can get back to the real work, the making of it, you remember those hours and hours you spent, that was the point. That’s where the joy and the value and the reason is.

If, for a moment, we forget about streaming numbers, target audiences, social media followers, and sales - why are you drawn to sound and music as a creator and listener? What is it that you give and receive through it?

I’m drawn to the kind of 3D expression contemporary music allows for. The creator builds a world, creates a multi layer narrative, then the listener incorporates this into their narrative, their world, the mise-en-abyme spins out endlessly. (If I was to reference something from Ithaca here it would be ‘Máire na Réiltíní’).  

Although the industry and the world generally is twisted and in bits, there’s really never been a more exciting time for the actual real true dirty making of music. The power of the technology, the availability of the entirety of both personal and public recorded history as our playground, the freedom our ears have with the breakdown of genre confines.

Nothing excites me more than listening over and over again to- and sculpting 20 seconds of sound to perfection.

In how far can music be considered "essential" for humans?

Rather than essential I would say it’s inescapable. I don’t think it’s a question of us needing it or wanting it, it’s just there.

The various degrees to which we organise, present and ascribe meaning to it, that’s another thing. But it’s an inbuilt part of this world we inhabit, we don’t have a choice.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine to your work, please, and how music and sound accompany you through it.

I just moved to a new apartment on one of the busiest streets in the city. It’s exciting (and sometimes terrifying) to have a different alarm every day, yesterday it was tanks on the street and fighter jets overhead in a display of military might for independence day.

When I’m making something it’s that thing all day and then whatever the total opposite of that is for the breaks. When I’m not making something and tackling the insurmountable to-do list of practical things it’s whatever will calm me down.

I have been working on a new album that was really helped by falling asleep while listening to it. The music would blend with the dreams and expand with the dream architecture. I feel like my music is best understood in that space between sleeping and waking.

What artists, albums, performances, or even aesthetics and philosophies are inspiring to your life in and beyond music right now and in which way? Have there been songs, albums, performances, and artists that changed / influenced your life?

I think when I first read ‘At Swim-Two-Birds’ it was pretty influential in how you can approach Irish culture with innovation.

I’m glad I found a way to get Flann in there at the start of ‘Dónal na Gealaí’.



Lately, thinking about where to go after ‘Ithaca’, I have found myself really interested in Samuel Beckett’s four short novellas (I am not ready yet for the big stuff). I really like this idea that he struggled in the wake of Joyce to write anything truly new or worthwhile. Then he found his way by rejecting all that maximalism and starting down the path towards obliteration.

I like how this period of his work points towards the direction of a future without fully arriving there. That excites me as a creative starting point.

Tell me about some of the feedback you've received from listeners about how your work has impacted them.

I’ve gotten some really lovely messages from people. Some people really seem to get it.

And there’s some amazing trad players who are into it which means a lot because I’m not from that world at all and wasn’t sure how it would be perceived, making this music as a total outsider.

What are some of the goals and ambitions you have for your music?

My ambition is for my work to be heard and appreciated in a wider cultural and historical context, beyond the illusion of hype and the emptiness of blind trend following.

What kind of music/art do you feel the world needs right now - does it need “healing,” “shaking up,” “an escape from reality,” “consolation,” “a sense of community,” “holding up a mirror,” something else?

It needs shaking up.

The start of the end of the world should not be soundtracked by regurgitated soundalikes and algorithmically derived wallpaper music.

What are some of the non-musical topics and causes you feel strongly about? Do you keep them separate from or try to connect them to your creative work?

I’m pretty interested in how we express tenderness in the digital age. I think both the albums I have made deal with that and digital fragments of lived reality, samples from the archives we make of our lives.

My work tries to emphasise the fragile and the vulnerable. I think this is the way to find something meaningful in electronic music and a path towards an interesting sonic future. More and more I’m thinking about distance, disassociation. Getting lost in those fragments of memory.

French Saxophonist Sakina Abdou told me that she "witnessed a powerlessness towards a world that is in absolutely no way in line with my values," and that she hasn't "yet found a way to overcome this in ways other than music, but I admire the activists around me who do it." Can you relate to this and what does it say about the role of music in overcoming our sense of powerlessness and actually empowering us?

I do very little in my life apart from make music. I hide my head in the sand about most things and lead an existence of very little responsibility.

The older I get the less I understand beyond what I do in Ableton. When I make music, life is something I can control and understand. I feel a bit like Luzhin with the chess board. Increasingly, nothing else makes sense to me.

What do you make of the idea that music and sound are a universal language - and how can artists use its specific and universal qualities to bring about change on a global scale?

I don’t think music is an adequate force to change the world, but it certainly can provide shelter and respite from its challenges.

Maybe I operate in too microscopic of a field, but I don't understand how artists can bring about change. I think the qualities required to be responsive to music as a force of change - the appreciation of nuance and subtlety, the ability to listen for listening’s sake - are not engaged in the discourse surrounding most of the world’s problems.

But I agree that music and sound can be a universal language. Everybody uses the same cracked plugins. I’ve extolled the virtues of Waves Real Time Tune with people all over the world.

How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

I’m not sure. I think both senses feed each other. I think my music would lack vitality if it wasn’t born of a longing and hunger caused largely by visual stimulation and the pangs of visual memory.

I think personally if I paid less attention to looks I’d get into less trouble and my life would probably be a lot easier. Parties would probably be a lot better. Maybe the 21st century would be saved from its self devouring feedback loop. But I don’t know.

Maybe there’d be more influx into the trad futurist intricate sound design sector and I’d be out of a job.

Performing music or creating sounds with others opens up the possibility of resolving conflicts in a different way. From your personal experience in collaborations or group performances, how does this work and do you believe it is possible to apply these approaches to areas outside of music?

I am sort of a selfish creator. I’m an anxious and easily frustrated control freak. Music is the place where I can make my own perfect world and put everything exactly where I want it to be.

I wish it wasn’t like this, I would probably have a lot more fun. I wouldn’t really recommend applying my approach to music to anything, including music.

It is possible for someone with an entirely different world view from your own to love or appreciate your work. How, if at all, is it possible to use this power of sound and music to enter into a dialogue?

Absolutely. You can connect to something in music and not know why. There is a vagueness, an ambiguity that allows for those grey areas of the soul to find expression.

Especially in our climate of hard identity politics there can be a softer refuge in music, where there’s space for subjective interpretation. I don’t know if you enter into a dialogue but maybe your work can be a bridge towards understanding.

That’s why we share it, isn’t it. We say look I’m here, I exist, let me show you what that’s like.

In human history, music is a universal across cultures and eras of development. Still, musicians are possibly being exploited more than ever. How do you feel they can see beyond their personal limitations, and form bonds and communities capable of tangibly furthering their cause? How can we get people to listen?

I honestly have no idea. I am far too shy to know how to answer that. Music for me is a place to hide. I take every day at a time and just do my best to keep going. I feel very lucky to be able to do this but I live with the constant feeling of dread that it's not sustainable.

My way of combating it is to dive further inward and take refuge in my sonic hideaways. I know that sounds defeatist and is not helpful for furthering any cause, but I feel increasingly disconnected from community and skeptical of the likelihood that people will listen.