And it’s good night to the Small Hours

Last Thursday night/Friday morning saw the broadcast of the last ever edition of the Small Hours on Today FM. Since 2004 (and since 1997 in a different format) Donal Dineen’s graveyard shift show had been the best and most exploratory music show on Irish radio. Years of late nights spent zoning out to the weird jams presented by the softly spoken Kerryman were an introduction to a wider musical world for many Irish people, including myself, over the years. All day you’d have the chart drudge, the ‘rock classics’, news-and-weather-on-the-hour, gimmicky PR-driven giveaways and then, the other side of the witching hour, DJ Shadow kicking off the show’s intro and a sudden swerve into the deepest and most fertile undergrowth of music new and old. Reggae, UK garage and regular garage, blues, hip-hop, funk, folk, every type of electronic music…Donal didn’t discriminate. Four nights a week you’d have music lovers all over the country drifting off to sleep with new sounds washing through their room. Then, on the cusp of sleep, the tranquility would be shattered by an arm flailing wildly through the still night in search of phone or paper with which to take down the name of a track. I often woke up to a jumbled mess of letters indicating some act to check out in the drafts folder of my phone, and sometimes those acts turned out to be the producers of my favourite music. It wasn’t uncommon either to wait anxiously for days after a show for Donal to update the playlist details on his blog. The advantage of listening to a DJ like Dineen is that the osmotic process of soaking up new music is involuntary. While skimming through blogs, it’s not really practical to hit play on every single widget, so eventually you start to just click into the familiar names and genres. At times, the information overload is just too much. When Dineen joined ‘Radio Ireland’ (as Today FM was originally known) to present the Small Hours’ precursor, Here Comes The Night in 1997, the concept of music blogs and downloading was still very much in its infancy. That’s why the show at first was such a revelation for Irish radio, and Dineen managed to keep up the appeal and incentive to listen well after the proliferation of the Irish music blog scene, Twitter and the spreading influence of international music sites. And while Dineen’s DJing peers on other stations (particularly 2fm) offered little beyond conventional guitar rock, the Small Hours consistently brought new genres, particularly electronica, to Irish airwaves.

You couldn’t get a more atmospheric show than the Small Hours, with Dineen’s whispery commentary bubbling over the keys of some contemporary classical composer or German techno artist as rain lashed the windows and cars streamed past outside. Doing Leaving Cert biology homework to the Small Hours was an intense experience. It was nice to think of people all across the country, from the narrow rural roads of Buncrana to those looking out on yellow streets in central Dublin from tiny apartments all tuned in to the same vibes, as the finer details of the photosynthetic process or lymph system winded into memory. And as beats from the likes of Flying Lotus, Pantha du Prince, Burial, Boards of Canada and Four Tet piped from radios in cars, bedrooms and fuel stations across the country, the night grew late and quietened and listeners chilled hard.

Last week’s four shows were a pleasure to listen to – a particular highlight came in the first hour of Wednesday night’s show with Moths’ live set (some tracks cleverly reworked with vocals) –  as Donal brought in musicians such as Patrick Kelleher and Solar Bears to perform and talk about music in the last days of his Today FM residency. While Dineen has a number of side-projects – notably Parish Records – he really belongs on the airwaves. With luck, he will not go unnoticed for long and the chance now exists for some station to prove its seriousness in the business of Irish radio and offer Donal a slot. Time for Lyric FM to make a brave stand perhaps? In the meantime, 504 of Donal’s shows over the past three years have been archived here. Do yourself a favour and tune in to the last ever show to see what a unique broadcaster Donal Dineen is and was. Be warned though – if you start listening, you might regret what you can no longer have. Onwards and upwards Donal.

Four Tet/Burial – Moth (Parish rework)

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