A Celebration of Manx-Made Music in 2021
2021 was a big year for music on the Isle of Man ー and we would know. When it’s been allowed, we’ve been up and down the island listening to it in action. More and more people have been discovering the island’s music scene, and we’ve made it our mission to spread the word to as many people as possible. With that in mind, we’re taking the time to celebrate the wonderful singles, albums (and even some vinyl records) that Manx musicians have released in 2021.
This isn’t a ranking, and nor is it a review. It is our privilege to uplift these people and share their musical love with as many people as possible, and to put them in some kind of order of preference would be futile. In fact, many of these bands can’t be compared to one another; the nature of a relatively closed music scene like the island’s means that all genres co-exist. Venues will mix genres on the same line-ups; people at all levels of the industry will work with all music styles.
A lot of the music on this list was recorded at Ballagroove Studio, the island’s favourite recording studio.
To learn more about Ballagroove, check out this interview we did with founder Gyp earlier this year.
You can listen to (almost) all the tracks in our list on this Spotify playlist.
Singles
Releases not available on Spotify are linked below, alongside interviews with artists we’ve done over the past year.
Terence George and The Shakies
The Birds / Off Into The Clouds
Mae Challis
Bad In Me
AJ Maxwell
Imaginary Lifestyle
Jon Lightfield
Dancing with Stars / The Eternal Silent Bliss / Just Another Hurdle / Another Lockdown Framed
Callum Brew
Maple Spirit
Voodoo Bandits
Chandler / I’m a Loser / Nice T-Shirt
The Getaways
Kicks / M. A. S.
Man in the Woods
Icarus Landing
Biskee Brisht
Christmas Morning
Janet Lees / Tromlhie
“What I Fear Most is Becoming a Poet”: Prize-winning film & music to accompany poetry by Katerina Gogou
Alice Dudley
Merry Go Round / Marigold / Hunker Down
Sabina Jarzabek
Beautiful Trainwreck / Colours of the Rainbow (with Steve Nash)
Sunset Jet
Shitshow
Albums & EPs on Streaming & CD
Click on the images below to stream / download the albums.
Albums on Vinyl
All of these albums are on-sale in Sound Records.
BAAD ACID, Aboo / Sound
The boys from BAAD ACID walked us through their first vinyl release back in August:
You can listen to some of the tracks from this EP (and some unreleased ones) in the first of our Sound Sessions:
Mad Daddy, Mad Daddy
Earlier this year, we spoke to these punks all about the worldwide reach of their debut album.
PMIX, Pick ‘N’ Mix
“PMIX have been releasing music for the last few years primarily on their Soundcloud, supporting up-and-coming producers by premiering their tracks there and sharing them with an ever-growing community. If you’re after House/ Disco edits, minimal and anything in-between this is the album for you.” ー Babystep Magazine.
Manx Punx, Locked in the Dressing Room
We spoke to Twist and Dolyn from Manx Punx all about the collective and what being a punk really means.
While we’ve made every effort to include as many releases as we could find, we may have skipped over a few in our excitement. If that is the case, please let us know and we can make sure they’re on our radar.
Thanks to all the Manx musicians for providing us with one hell of a year of music. Here’s to the next twelve months!
Written by Owen Atkinson
