Max HeyraudThere is something beautifully unpredictable about Eoin DJ’s approach to music, where instinct takes precedence over convention, and the unexpected is always welcome.
Irish-born, Berlin-based Eoin DJ has spent the past 15 years carving out a distinctive place in contemporary club culture, moving effortlessly between the worlds of DJing, production and party curation. Known for a genre-spanning approach that blurs the boundaries between house, electro, techno and breakbeat, their sets are guided less by convention than by feeling, instinct and an unwavering commitment to the dancefloor.
From their formative years shaping Galway’s underground scene through nights like Shivers and Tome to becoming a regular fixture at institutions including Draaimolen, Horst, FOLD and Club Are, Eoin’s trajectory has been one of patience, curiosity and an unwavering adoration for the primal effect the dancefloor can have on people.
With a string of acclaimed releases behind them, the launch of their own label, World of Worlds, and a landmark year that has seen them reach new milestones as both a DJ and producer, Eoin is firing on all cylinders. We caught up with them to discuss creative independence, Irish identity, the spaces and people that shape their music, and finding a sense of transcendence on the dancefloor.
Thanks for chatting. It feels long overdue. You’ve had a bit of a juggernaut of a 2026, with releases, touring and some pretty major milestones. How’s life?
Hey, thanks for having me! Long-time reader, first-time talker. Life is very busy right now, but no complaints. I’ve been trying to lock myself in the studio to finish lots of music before embarking on a lengthy tour of Australia in November/December. I have maybe three EPs I’m hoping to wrap up before then so I can enjoy the trip to the fullest.
I’m also lining up the next few releases on World of Worlds, working with some amazing artists and remixers. Lots in the pipeline that I can’t wait to share. Music stuff aside, I’ve been trying to touch a little grass here in Berlin as Autumn makes its presence known and the days get shorter. It’s all go!
You’ve been building your career for quite a few years now, and it objectively feels like you’re hitting your stride as a fully fledged artist and DJ, with releases on Big Saldo’s Chunkers, Rhythm Section and Radiant Records, gigs at Panorama Bar, Draaimolen, Horst – I could go on. What’s your headspace like as an artist now, having been in the game for some time and getting your flowers as of late?
Thanks! It’s been 15 years since I started DJing, so it’s nice to see things happening, though it feels like I’m only just learning to play and produce (same thing, I think every year). It’s been a gradual process, and I’m really grateful for the opportunities I’ve had. I think having that time to develop is essential in honing your sound and skills as an artist. People get lucky, but nothing happens overnight. I work really hard, and it’s nice to see it pay off.
Mainly, I try to focus on the music. It’s very easy to get caught up in the social media maelstrom and compare yourself to others or wonder if you’re doing something wrong. It’s very important to unplug from the matrix and focus on the tunes. I just try to appreciate what I have and how far I’ve come (and how far I have to go). Trends will come and go, but big beats will never die.
Speaking of Panorama Bar, how was that experience for you, and what did that gig mean to you?
It was very fun, and it means a lot. I used to have DJ anxiety dreams a very long time ago about being booked to play there and then showing up with nothing working and everyone leaving. That didn’t happen, so that was good.
I’m a feelings kind of DJ as opposed to a genre-specific selector; I’m very grateful to Sedef for trusting me to close after her; it was very meaningful. It was extra special to play to so many familiar faces in the crowd, particularly when the shutters opened and the morning light poured in. When you’re touring, it’s pretty rare that you get to play for your friends, which, when you strip the rest of it away, is what it’s all about.
Congratulations on the new EP – it sounds great. It’s also your debut release on your own imprint. Was there a thought process behind putting out a couple of releases on the label before debuting yourself?
Yes and no… The first two releases came about very organically, and it was really nice to put music out from friends that I really believe in (and rinse! Thanks to Maria, Bella and Elliot for the trust).
With the first release, Maria and I were playing at the same party. I was playing this sort of electro-tinged house stuff, and she mentioned that she was trying to make music like that. I told her I wanted to start a label and would love to put it out. Fast forward a few months and Maruwa sent me a fully fledged EP, and that was that. The label was born! I later saw a video of DJ Koolt playing one of the tracks to a bumping Solstice Festival dancefloor, which was pretty cool. We were both very happy to see that.
With Bella [Sarris] and Elliot [131bpm], they sent me two tracks they’d been working on the night before, and I immediately loved them. We picked some remixers we both liked, I contributed a mix of one of the tracks, and the EP came together from there. I hear the tracks out all the time!
So the first two releases happened very naturally and are both a nice representation of what I’d play in a DJ set. The label is more about a mood than any particular sound, and I’d rather let people make up their own minds about how to describe it. I never really saw it as a label just for my own music. I wanted it to be a home for things I loved that might not necessarily fit neatly together on paper.
With my own EP, I wanted to release tracks that were all a little different but still made sense together. They’re all pretty floor-forward but draw on a range of influences without being too on the nose, which captures the ethos of WOW quite well. I just saw that Gabrielle Kwarteng played ‘U can have it’ in her Radar set at Dekmantel, which is cool! The label is a little bit like a puzzle. The more releases that come out, the more sense it will make.
The EP was heavily inspired by Ireland’s curated, anti-disciplinary cultural residency and biennial arts festival, “Drop Everything”. Can you tell me about your relationship with the festival, and how it influenced this body of work?
I’ve been going to Drop Everything for 10 years now, and before that I was playing at and attending smaller events they were putting on. I’ve tried to help out wherever I can at each edition since.
Mary Nally, who set it up and runs it, is a true force of nature. She has this amazing ability to bring interesting people together from so many different places and backgrounds. Nearly every creative discipline has an outlet there, and because it’s so small, it becomes an incubator for inspiring collaborations that otherwise might never have happened.
At the previous edition in 2022, Byron Yeates and I wrote ‘Artificial Intelligence’, which came out on my first EP, so we were both keen to get into the studio on the island again.
For me, there’s a sense of expansiveness about being out in the Atlantic and away from everyday routine that I find creatively refreshing. The music I make feels a bit truer and more emotionally resonant when I’m out there. I don’t know if it’s the sea air (it’s really something!) or being around so many interesting people with fewer distractions, but it feels good for the soul to tap into the energy of the island.
The EP was written between Berlin and Inis Oírr – two places with drastically different landscapes, aesthetics and energies. Was that contrast intentional, and how did you go about bringing those two worlds together musically?
It’s funny because there’s actually a really big Berlin connection with Drop Everything. When I lived in Galway and had just started visiting Berlin (a very long time ago), I felt like Drop Everything had this Berlin flavour. It was queer, very mixed and had people of all ages there, which I hadn’t really experienced in nightlife until visiting Berlin. One of the first times I went to Berghain was after playing at DE event in Berlin way back when.
At this time, there were also precious few places to listen to this strand of house in Galway, and the festival opened my ears to so much good music. I remember seeing DJs like Steffi, Virginia, Hannah Holland and Or:la playing intimate island dancefloors.
Now Byron and I both live in Berlin and are residents at the festival, so it’s all very full circle. I always feel hopeful after the festival, and I hope I managed to harness some of that light on the EP.
Musically, I tried to bring the two together by weaving references to the island into the tracks, while also thinking about the kind of music that works on its dancefloors. Incidentally, that’s the same sort of stuff I’d play in Berlin, so perhaps the two worlds aren’t as far apart as they might seem. World of Worlds, anyone?
You sampled a bodhrán on ‘Drop Everything’, and I’m interested in how you approached combining a traditional Gaelic instrument with modern breakbeats and production. It’s an interesting cocktail. Can you give me a bit of insight into that process?
I’d wanted to imbue the EP with references to the island. I saw Ronan Kennedy play the Bodhran at one of the pubs in the run-up to the festival, and I noticed he was playing these polyrhythms and tuning the drum with his left hand behind the skin. It sounded amazing, and I sort of knew that this would give the track its final touch if we could link and record.
Lo and behold, the next day I found out that he was recording with some of the other artists who were performing on the island, so we jammed a bit over some of my tracks. I then mixed the recording gently into the arrangement so it’s sort of echoing around in the background, a bit like a little memory.
It’s maybe a slightly different take to some other trad/ dance music fusions, but I’m happy with it. For those curious, I recommend listening to Whirl-Y-Reel 2 by Afro Celt Sound System, which is a bit more up front with the instrumentation, if you will.
More broadly, a lot of Irish artists seem to be leaning into their heritage at the moment, merging elements of history and tradition with a contemporary lens. What’s your own relationship with that, and why do you think there’s been such a resurgence of Irish identity and culture within contemporary music?
That’s a good question that I don’t really have the answer to, but I think for me it’s been a case of leaving Ireland and seeing its beauty and treasures with new eyes from a distance. There’s so much wisdom and creativity to draw from, and I suppose it goes hand in hand with wanting to share something about who you are through the place you come from.
And how could you not, when you look at the rich tapestry of art that Ireland has consistently produced (predating historical records too, mind!). There’s such a treasure trove to explore. I’m heavily inspired by Irish mythology and writers like Flann O’Brien and the late, great John O’Donohue, who, little-known fact, actually baptised me lol.
Even World of Worlds was partly inspired by The Third Policeman, Tír na nÓg and this concept of the spiritual landscape that John O’Donohue talks about. The idea that there’s more to existence than just the physical world we inhabit, and that other worlds might be closer than we think. I suppose there’s a parallel with music in that sense. A really special dancefloor can feel like stepping outside of everyday reality for a while, into something that’s hard to put into words but very real when you’re experiencing it.
Before Berlin, you were running nights back home in Galway. Tome was selling out 600-capacity venues on a Thursday night, while Shivers brought over the likes of Jamie Tiller, Paramida, Sunil Sharpe, Kris Baha, Young Marco and Tama Sumo, even giving Anthony Naples his Irish debut. Looking back, what was the scene like at that time, and what drove you to put those nights together?
There was this era in Galway when we were coming up when there was a lot of really sick music on offer. There was basically one club, Factory/Electric, that gave promoters free rein to push things sonically. I remember seeing a bunch of these artists on consecutive weekends and having my mind blown. I wish I could go back in time and listen with the knowledge I have now, just to appreciate it all fully. It was such a formative time, and being exposed to such a wide range of artists taught me that there aren’t really any rules. If you like something, just do it. Shivers was just one part of that whole ecosystem. Between the nights at Electric and a few boat parties we did, they were very special years. It was also cool to see some of the pictures used and the night mentioned across a few different interviews in Record Mag by artists like Paramida and Budino.
With Tome, it was totally the right place, right time. I was studying in Galway and my friend Dylan, who sort of knew everyone in town, knew a guy who had access to a disused venue called The Vic. I was building my record collection and looking for any opportunity to play, and another friend had a Funktion-One system that we could use for a great price. We linked up with another friend who hosted the party, and the rest is history.
I think the combination of doing it on a weeknight, in a venue that wasn’t used for anything else, with a huge sound system and a fairly bangers-forward music policy made it work really well.
Tome is a bit of Galway slang that basically means cool, and this was at a time when Facebook events actually worked to promote gigs. There was a real thirst for dance music, and for a few years it was something pretty special, until the hotel we were running it in decided to lean more into being a hotel. What’s new?
We also did a few afterparties a wee bit out of town that were total chaos and quite hard to believe actually happened in this day and age. I’m very thankful nobody got hurt or that nothing went too wrong.
Galway’s a student town, so these things can be quite ephemeral. People come and go, and eventually everyone moves on with their lives. I think we were really lucky that the right people, the right venue and a genuine appetite for interesting music all came together for a few years.
You were bringing some pretty forward-thinking artists to Galway, creating a platform for sounds and scenes that might not have had an obvious home there. How formative were those early years of promoting and curating nights for your development as a DJ and artist, and do you think that experience still informs how you approach music today?
It had a huge impact on me. Learning how to prepare a warm-up set, programme a night, understand the technical side of putting on parties and how to catch a vibe. Being responsible for the whole experience rather than just your own set definitely changes how you think about a dancefloor. All that good stuff is still with me.
I still love all the DJs I booked back then, and I’ve since shared line-ups with a few of them and become friends with others. They were all very eclectic selectors, which definitely rubbed off on me. I think that whole period opened my ears to what was happening beyond Ireland and shaped how I approach music today.
When I play in smaller cities now, I often think back to Galway and how music filters into smaller scenes differently from places like Berlin or London, which are more at the centre of the zeitgeist. People have different musical reference points, and I think it’s important to be sensitive to that while also taking the opportunity to introduce people to something they might not have heard before. Some of my most formative experiences on a dancefloor were exactly that, so it’s nice to be able to pass it on.
You’ve made your career in Berlin, but you’re also very proudly Irish. What does that relationship between the two places look like for you now?
It’s complicated. Berlin feels like home, as it does for so many people who’ve moved here from elsewhere. One of the things I love about it is that where you come from doesn’t necessarily matter all that much.
At the same time, living in another country really holds up a mirror to the values and political norms you’ve grown up with. I find Germany’s political and media discourse around Palestine disturbing, to say the least, and the increased focus on military spending alongside the erosion of public infrastructure and the rise of the AfD is completely fucked. But Berlin is an island in Germany, and people are fighting back and organising, which gives me hope.
When I go back to Ireland, I really appreciate spending time in nature and with my family. It’s nice to tap out of the studio and club for a minute and ground myself.
When did you first move to Berlin, and what impact did that move have on you, both personally and musically?
The move itself was pretty smooth. I’d been visiting Berlin regularly, had friends here, and the city felt like the epicentre of my musical universe at the time, so when a room came up here it felt like a bit of a no-brainer to make the jump.
I think the biggest thing I learned was a different understanding of time and tension in clubs. In Ireland, the whole night is often crammed into a four-hour window, whereas in Berlin you might go to a party where every DJ on the line-up has four hours to play. That completely changes the dynamics, both for the crowd and the people behind the decks.
I’d already developed a fairly patient style from visiting over the years, but living here showed me that some situations demand restraint while others call for intensity. It really depends on the room. Sometimes you’re building something gradually over several hours, and other times you’re battling to hold people’s attention because there are so many distractions.
Observing how people behave in clubs and experiencing that range of situations gave me a much deeper appreciation of pacing, reading a room and how even the smallest changes in a track can have a huge impact. There’s been a real positive feedback loop between going clubbing, DJing and producing, with each informing the other.
Kim Ann Foxman remixes ‘Shades of Shades’ on the record, and you described her as “foundational to my taste”. When did you first discover her, what impact did she have on you as an artist, and how did that relationship eventually develop from influence into a relationship between peers?
I think I first discovered her on Beats in Space back when it was on WNYU 89.1 FM. I was immediately drawn to her sound. She was playing this dreamy mixture of breaks, house and trance, full of feeling, that really resonated with me.
Something I always admired was the patience of her mixing and the way she’d let a record breathe. There’s so much emotion in the music she plays, and giving it the space to unfold really brings that to the fore. She has this ability to hold your attention without constantly needing to introduce something new, which really stuck with me.
I eventually got to know her through mutual friends in Berlin, which has been lovely after having admired her for so long.
Finally, before we close, what advice would you give to your 18-year-old self?
What’s for you will come.