Mayo musician features on new Beoga mini album

Beoga's new mini album, Carousel, features Clare Island musician Niall McCabe on one of its seven tracks.

There will be a live album launch party tomorrow (Friday) at 8 p.m. streaming on the band's Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channels, with Niall featuring alongside fellow collaborators Foy Vance, Lissie, Ryan McMullan, Devin Dawson and Stephanie Rainey.

With an adventurous spirit and a passion for charting the road less travelled, Beoga have shown that Irish traditional music can take fresh new directions.

That world-facing potential was proven by the popularity of their collaborations with Ed Sheeran on the songs ‘Galway Girl’ and ‘Nancy Mulligan’, which have been streamed over a billion times on Spotify alone.

Beoga are now building upon that growing profile by sharing their new single ‘In A Rocket’, a collaboration with Lissie. The track, which previewed their new mini-album, finds the band focusing on creating attention-grabbing hooks with a mix of rootsy instrumentation and elements of electronic pop production.

According to the band, 'In A Rocket' is about growing, escapism and losing yourself – the idea of getting away from it all in your own metaphorical rocket, whatever that may be.

Elsewhere on the mini album, ‘Matthew’s Daughter’ (featuring Devin Dawson) and ‘Make A Mark’ (featuring Ryan McMullan) unite the worlds of American and Irish contemporary folk. The former features lyrics written by Ed Sheeran about his wife Cherry and is already Beoga’s second most streamed track at Spotify. The latter, meanwhile, shows their growing flair for merging the worlds of Irish trad and modern pop.

Other featured vocalists on the mini-album include Beoga’s old friends Foy Vance and Niall McCabe, the Clare Island native, while Grammy-nominated producer Jonny Coffer has helped the band’s fresh fusion of sounds to flourish.

The album title, Carousel, was chosen to reflect Beoga’s experiences over the past two years, during which time they’ve navigated the murky waters of the music industry, signing and then escaping two recording contracts before teaming up with AWAL.

Beoga will follow the release of Carousel with an Irish and UK headline tour later this year.

The Carousel tracklist is as follows: 1. ‘Make A Mark’ (featuring Ryan McMullan); 2. ‘Carousel’; 3. ‘In A Rocket’ (with Lissie); 4. ‘We’re Blood’ (featuring Foy Vance); 5. ‘Aurora II’; 6. ‘Matthew’s Daughter’ (featuring Devin Dawson); 7. ‘Homebird’ (featuring Niall McCabe).

*Pictured above, the band Beoga whose new mini album features Mayo musician Niall McCabe.