What
Digital producer with resonating soul.
Where
Dublin.
Why
Since Diolmhain Ingram Roche appeared on the Dublin music scene, it was clear he was an artist who had preoccupations with the peripheral genres in electronic music: dubstep, garage, footwork, bass music, and drum and bass.
As Wastefellow, Ingram Roche has demonstrated form in creating music that sounds like it exists on an abyssal plain. That is to say, his tracks are filled with familiar sounds but Ingram Roche works them in ways that give them a supernatural quality, rare yet fully informed by what has gone before.
Wastefellow’s music isn’t just an imaginative exploration of subaquatic sonics, as Ingram Roche possesses a voice of a youthful soulful magnitude, and it’s these human sounds that override the potential feeling of potential overuse of production trickery.
On his latest, and most accomplished EP, Post Human Potential, released last week on Soft Boy Records (which also released the best Irish EP of the year from Kojaque), those two defining characteristics sound like natural bedfellows.
With a concept that addresses society's relationship to technology and the digital spaces we use to communicate with each other, the songs also occupy an imagined space. Infinity Gaze's cold synths and atmosphere are reflected in the lyrics: "I feel a world unravelling / but there's no connection," reflecting our current peculiar digital predicament. Philosophy Plastic, drawing on an idea of cosmic oneness, marries Roche's falsetto with a particularly celestial backdrop that twists into a uptempo synth workout.
Those sounds, drawn from the aforementioned genres, are also a product of digital technology, aptly mirroring the concept, while Ingram Roche’s lyrics and vocals resonate simply, as a human seeking connection.
