Chloe MooreChloe Moore chatted to Galway-based party, label and community Ar Ais Arís about building intimate, inclusive dancefloors rooted in DIY soundsystem culture, local community and a love for leftfield electronic music.
Since forming in Galway in 2022, Ar Ais Arís have built a reputation around a simple philosophy: big soundsystems, small safe spaces. Rooted in DIY culture, the collective has created a home for leftfield dance music while championing women, supporting queer communities and keeping its focus on Galway’s local scene.
Alongside their parties, Ar Ais Arís have developed a record label showcasing Irish producers, all while maintaining the same independent ethos. We caught up with the collective to talk soundsystem culture, community, their distinctive visual identity and the importance of keeping the dancefloor intimate.
Ar Ais Arís describes itself as “big soundsystems, small safe spaces.” Where did that philosophy begin, and how has it shaped the community around your events?
We started the night in 2022, when there was a lot of energy and optimism that we could remake nightlife to be better than it was before – and we were influenced by that. We are always conscious that providing a completely safe space is very difficult, but we want to do our best for the people who come to our parties. AAA is attended mostly by women, and a lot of the queer community come too, so hopefully they feel comfortable and safe being there. Small, safe spaces make for the best crowds and dancefloor – people mostly come to AAA to dance.
The other bit comes from DIY culture: soundsystems are important to us. We want people to have a really good sonic experience, with lots of low end, and we prioritise this in how we think about putting on a night. It was a big percentage of our budget in the early days, to be honest, and still is. We are mostly a DIY night, and we try to bring our own look and feel to the venues we work with. The soundsystem is often part of that. Since the early days, we’ve worked with the RiseUp Soundsystem a lot, for example, which is probably the best in the country.
We should shout out Áras na nGael in Galway on this also, an Irish-language cultural space and the first place we had the chance to really learn what worked for AAA. We’re so grateful to them for being open to our ideas and providing us with a DIY space to try something new. It’s a beautiful and special venue, and we have a lot of sentimental attachment to it.
Sound-system culture sits at the heart of what you do. What first drew you to that tradition, and what does a powerful, well-tuned system bring to the dancefloor that a conventional club setup cannot?
I guess our attachment to soundsystem culture goes back to the early dubstep and jungle scenes. Bass, and sub-bass in particular, is really important for those genres because of the way the tracks are built – they just work better when. That DIY culture around custom-built rigs goes all the way back to Jamaica in the 1950s.
The physicality of it brings an extra dimension to the night. We’ve used the RiseUp Soundsystem from Cork as often as we can for 4 years now. It just brings something extra that conventional off-the-shelf speakers struggle to replicate.
Ar Ais Arís is run by Alannah, Hannah, Robin and Rob. How did the four of you come together, and when did you realise that your shared ideas could become something bigger?
Galway is a small town, so it’s good for bringing people together. We more or less all met in 2022, which was the first proper year after lockdown, when music scenes were getting back on their feet and crying out for new ideas. We all worked together on a mini-festival (the Rua Sound Weekender), which was probably where we realised we each had a role on a joint project. It sort of happened organically enough. Besides, team projects are always more fun. We’re all quite different in our own ways and bring different perspectives, which makes for great results but also a hectic group chat 🙂
What did you feel was missing from Ireland’s electronic music landscape when you started, and how did that influence the kind of spaces you wanted to create?
Lots of things, but number one: Women! We’ve pushed hard to platform as many women as we can from our first event. This is something we still see lacking today, though: so many events are 75-100% male lineups. So that push clearly isn’t over.
We’ve never marketed ourselves as a queer night, but we try to be allies and provide a space for that community also. It’s a lot better now, but when we started out there were not a lot of queer-friendly dances or spaces, in Galway in particular.
The word ‘underground’ is thrown around a lot, but I guess we see ourselves as making space for less commercial dance music. Maybe counter-culture is a better word? We don’t make money from AAA, and whatever we do make we use to fund music or art projects – it’s a non-profit essentially. We’ve also been focused on making our events as cheap as possible, and we’re really proud of how relatively affordable they’ve been. For example, we put on Tim Reaper last year for a tenner – it’s a squeeze, but we find ways to make it work.
Lastly, and this is really important for us, we want to put on stuff for people who live in Galway. In Galway, so much is focused on providing stuff for tourists and students. They’re all very welcome at AAA, of course! But we wanted to build a space and community for people living in Galway. The crowd who come to AAA is really what makes the party work so well, to be honest – they’re just the most fun and lovely people. It’s their party really; we’re just making the space.
Ar Ais Arís has also developed into a record label. What prompted that move, and how does the label extend the identity you have built through your parties?
We were booking a lot of great Irish producers, and we thought we had the skills and resources to give them a common platform – so we did that. The label has been kinda wild: we sort of expected it to tip along, but it’s really reached places we never expected. Plus One’s track “Bonk”, in particular, was a bit mind-blowing. For a while there, we were getting sent videos weekly of BenUFO, Fourtet, Caribou and that lot playing it to these massive stadium crowds of up to 100,000 people, it was kind of wild. We recently licensed it out for a Modeselektor DJ Kicks compilation.
A lot of what happens with the record label exists out in the world or on the internet, and it’s lovely to see people all over the world buying those tracks. The parties then are focused on local impact, so it’s a bit separate and with a different purpose. We’ve been really proud of the label and honoured to work with some really talented Irish producers, so shouts to Doubt, Roo Honeychild, Luke Kiid, Sloucho, Plus One, Sputnik One and (honourary Irish pal) Breaka.
Your event artwork has a distinct visual identity. Who develops the creative direction, and where do the references, imagery and ideas behind each design come from?
Aoife O’Toole aka DJ Egg gets full credit for the AAA visual identity. Aoife’s been a key part of AAA since the start. They had the original idea, and they’ve just run with it, with some input and notes from us.
The concept is based on a kind of typical girly who goes to the nights like AAA (internally, we call her ‘Rave Hun’ haha), and the different scenarios she finds herself in connected to nights out. She can be a real girly doing her makeup, etc or a bit of a tomboy being kinda gross. There’s also a kind of insecurity to her sometimes that makes her kinda relatable, which I think connects with people maybe?
We’re always very excited to see what Aoife will do with her next – it’s really been the most amazing run of artwork, and we’re super grateful to them for their talent and dedication.
How closely are the artwork, line-up, venue and sound system considered together when building an event, and do you see them as parts of one larger story?
Yeah, we talk about this a lot, actually. Sometimes we start with a venue, or sometimes we’ll start with the programme. But whichever it is, we work hard to make the whole thing coherent. That includes thinking about lighting, decor, soundsystems and all the small details within that. It makes more work for us as a team, having to constantly adapt for each party. For example, in 2025 we only put on 6 events, but every one of them was in a different venue; each with its own peculiarities and requirements. Maybe we’re silly and making things hard for ourselves!
As Ar Ais Arís continues to grow, how do you protect the intimacy and safety of the spaces you create while expanding the label, sound-system culture and visual world around it?
We’re still very focused on local impact, platforming stuff outside the mainstream, and trying to give people a welcoming environment where they feel safe to dance and party. I’m not sure that scales very well, to be honest – the bigger you get, the more control you need to sacrifice. But that’s fine with us; we run Ar Ais Arís as a non-profit more or less, and we’re not trying to make a living from it – putting on good parties is the end game. We turned down a few brand partnerships in the last year, for example, just because they weren’t the best fit for us (though not ruling them out in the future).
Having said that, we are doing more ambitious things: we’re asked to curate stuff outside of Galway more and more often, and do the odd gig in Cork as well as our annual holiday trip to Pot Duggans in Clare. We’ve just launched our mini-festival, Anois is Arís (Now and Again), which will take place in different venues around Galway from 2-4 October with people like Kahn & Autumns, Trá Pháidín, Jialing, Lolz, Americhord, Kate Butler…lots more. It’s our most ambitious programme yet, but it maintains our core principles using smaller, intimate venues – so big sound, small safe spaces. Come.
