Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell

After a decade of DJing, film scoring, party-planning and television presenting, Shampain is releasing new music. The Inverin native’s debut mixtape, Catching Up With Myself, arrives this week, accompanied by a launch gig in Nun’s Island Theatre on Saturday night.

It is difficult to negotiate a fresh introduction for an artist that already has a large audience and catalogue of music, albeit not his own, out in the world.

Fans of Shampain – or Cóilí Collins as he was christened – may have their own expectations around his sound and, as he points out, trying to connect with someone over five tracks is a very different experience to structuring a two-hour set.

This release comes in a settled period of Collins’ life. He is back living in Galway having spent time abroad in London; he is the co-owner of local, independent barbershop Poblacht with close friend Evan Fahy; his Freak Mag events have developed a staunch enough following to ease the burden of promotion that rests on most DJs. To those ends, any sort of risk or uncertainty around releasing music is gone.

“I really, really deeply enjoy DJing,” Collins says. “I love it, and I love getting music that I like across to people. That’s why I never really felt too compelled to make music. But it got to a point where there was a lot of music that I was really enjoying that I felt like I couldn’t really play out. I wanted to use my knowledge from the time I’ve spent listening to dance music in order to incorporate the same sorts of moods that I like listening to.

“I’ve always [felt] I have a good thing going with the DJing so why would I put something out that I’m not fully sure of and then ruin the momentum I have there? Now, especially with having the barbershop and stuff, the expectations don’t really matter. I’m not a slave to expectations – I can do what I want and if people don’t like it that’s fine. Being in Galway and owning my own business has allowed me to just go with what my intuition tells me.”

Though Collins spent a long time thinking there was no real need to make his own tracks, this project has been in the works for a while. Catching Up With Myself is an expansive collection, laced with synths and drones that feed into dancier, club-ready pulses.

There are modulated poetry readings and high ends evoking alien lasers and referees’ whistles. These weren’t the first tracks to fall out of his head, and they actually may have benefitted from the writing that preceded them.

Pictured: Shampain…debut mixtape and Nun’s Island gig.