Interviewer & Writer: Antonina Schubert
Irish trio Chasing Abbey open a new chapter with Cyber Celt, an album shaped by tradition, experimentation, identity and a desire to make music that means something. We spoke with Ronan Bell, Jonathan Byrne and Ted Conway about finding their sound, the power of the Irish language, creating music with purpose and bringing their live experience to North America.
There is something immediately inviting about Chasing Abbey's music. It pulls you in before you necessarily have time to figure out exactly what you are hearing, weaving together sounds that feel both familiar and unexpected.
That instinct to follow whatever interests them is something the Irish trio have carried with them since they first started making music together. Nearly a decade into their journey, that curiosity has led them to Cyber Celt, an album that looks deeply at where they came from while continuing to question where their music can go next.
For Chasing Abbey, the process of getting here has never been about following a predetermined path.
When the three began making music together as teenagers, they could tell there was something different about their chemistry, even if they could not have known exactly what it would eventually become. They remembered one of the earliest moments when that possibility became clear: entering a radio competition and hearing friends react to what they had created.
There was a realization that maybe they had something.
But looking back, what stands out to them just as much is how uncomplicated those early years felt.
“You know, you're really just doing it for the love of it and you spend your whole life trying to do music that way. There’s a real innocence to it.”
That sense of innocence has returned in a different form while making Cyber Celt. After years of developing their sound and learning the many technical sides of creating music, they have found themselves enjoying the simplest part again: waking up, picking up an idea and figuring out where it can go.
That freedom is especially important for a band whose sound developed from two seemingly different musical worlds.
The members grew up around traditional Irish music and learned to play it from a young age, but they were also drawn toward the electronic music surrounding them as they grew older. Electronic production offered an entirely different kind of creative possibility.
“There’s no limit to electronic music. That's kind of what drew us in. Like, you could make any sound from anything with electronic music and that kind of interested us.”
The challenge was figuring out how to bring that limitless electronic world together with the live feeling and musical foundation they already had through traditional Irish music.
“We had no kind of mold to follow. No one had done it, so we didn’t know how to do it.”
It took years of experimenting, writing, recording and producing to figure it out. The members of Chasing Abbey handle those elements themselves, meaning their evolution has not only been about becoming better songwriters and musicians, but also learning the technical craft behind the recordings.
They spoke about learning EQ, recording and production as skills that take years to hone. Every project gave them another opportunity to understand their sound a little better.
By the time they arrived at Cyber Celt, they had spent roughly a decade figuring out what happens when they stop trying to choose between their influences and simply let them exist together.
That same willingness to experiment extends to the album's lyrics, particularly through the use of the Irish language.
For Chasing Abbey, writing in Irish is not simply a way to highlight their heritage. It has changed how they communicate.
“It allowed us to express ourselves in a way that we had never been able to in English.”
The band explained that certain ideas can begin to lose their impact when they are expressed repeatedly in English. Putting those same thoughts into Irish can restore some of their weight.
“It hits different.”
That difference became an important part of Cyber Celt. The language gave them another way to approach their lyrics and allowed them to express certain ideas in ways they felt they could not in English.
There is also something powerful about that choice from the listener's perspective. Even without understanding every word, the emotion behind a song can still come through. The sound, delivery and feeling can communicate before the literal meaning ever does.
When I brought that up during our conversation, the band said that was exactly what they had hoped for.
That connection between artist and listener becomes even more important when looking at what Chasing Abbey want their music to say.
Cyber Celt explores ideas of heritage, history, greed, corruption, oppression, colonialism and empathy, but the band does not speak about those subjects as though they are simply themes to place inside songs. They see them as part of a larger responsibility that comes with having a platform.
Their own exploration of history and social issues while making the album gave them a different perspective on the world. They talked about trying to understand why systems exist, approaching difficult subjects with an open mind and learning to look at people and situations with more empathy.
Ultimately, they said the journey of making Cyber Celt made them better people.
That idea of empathy is especially important to the band's understanding of their own history. They spoke about the responsibility to recognize what their own people have experienced while also refusing to wish that kind of suffering on anyone else.
For them, it comes down to actively trying to be a good person and questioning the systems that cause harm.
And that is where their music becomes more than simply an expression of personal identity.
They see art as a way to inspire people, start conversations and remind listeners that they are part of something larger than themselves.
That philosophy is particularly evident in songs such as “Greedy Pigs,” which uses the idea of unchecked greed to explore the consequences of always wanting more without considering who or what gets hurt in the process.
The band's willingness to confront those subjects does not mean they want every listener to approach the music in exactly the same way. If anything, they seem most interested in creating a space where people can experience it together.
That is perhaps why our conversation about the live show kept coming back to the same idea: community.
When asked what it feels like to look out at a crowd where people who may not know each other are suddenly united by the same music, their response was immediate.
“It’s literally like peak existence.”
They expanded on that feeling, describing the live experience as:
“Like, I don't really think you can be in a better place. Like, it's healing, it's fun, it's raw, it's emotional, it's just a human experience that it's absolute peak, to be honest.”
One of their favorite parts is watching the audience transform throughout the night.
They can tell who arrived as someone else's plus one.
“Like when you're looking out in the crowd at the beginning of a show, you can nearly tell who the plus one is, you know? Like they're upright and they're kind of taking it in but then by the last song, you can see they’ve begun to be engrossed in the show.”
The band said that when they watch footage back, the crowd during the opening song can look like an entirely different audience from the one captured during the final song.
That transformation says something about what Chasing Abbey are trying to create. The music may begin with three people on a stage, but it does not stay there.
That feeling is something the band has begun experiencing in an entirely new way through their first North American shows.
After primarily building their career in Ireland, they arrived in the United States without knowing exactly what to expect. What followed surprised them.
They watched dates sell out and venues grow, sometimes multiple times over. They joked that they:
“felt like someone was pulling a big prank on us.”
The response became particularly surreal because they had not been to these cities in America that they were preparing to play. They were looking at photographs of venues they had never visited, trying to process the fact that people on the other side of the Atlantic were showing up for their music.
Now, following the release of Cyber Celt on September 18, Chasing Abbey are heading back across North America for a new run of shows beginning September 25 in Arizona and continuing through October 29 in Texas.
One of those stops will bring Chasing Abbey to Columbus, Ohio, on October 13 at A&R Music Bar, where I will be there with Voltage Live Media to cover the show.
That makes the Columbus date particularly exciting from my perspective. After spending time talking with the band about the ideas behind Cyber Celt, I will get to experience the live side of that music firsthand.
The members have already been working new songs into their set, continuing to discover how Cyber Celt translates from a recording into a room full of people. At the same time, they have made a deliberate choice to give every city the same experience rather than creating city-exclusive songs.
For Chasing Abbey, they do not want fans traveling hours to another city because they think they might hear something unavailable closer to home. They want everyone in the room to share the same experience, regardless of where they are seeing the band.
It is another reflection of the community that runs through both their music and their live shows.
And there is still plenty of room for discovery within that shared experience.
When I asked what still excites them about creating music together after all these years, their answer was one of the simplest and most revealing moments of our conversation.
“The unknown.”
They continued:
“Because like, we could wake up tomorrow and create the best thing we've ever created. That's always a possibility.”
That idea is at the heart of Cyber Celt.
The album is not Chasing Abbey deciding they have finally figured themselves out. It is the result of continuing to question, experiment and follow their instincts. It is traditional music meeting electronic production, familiar ideas being expressed through a different language, and personal history being considered alongside the experiences of people far beyond Ireland.
When asked which songs from Cyber Celt they were most excited about, the band quickly landed on “Íorónta” and “Arís Is Arís.”
They described creating “Arís Is Arís” as a defining moment in the album's development, explaining that it:
“was the first one that kind of inspired Cyber Celt and this whole era. I remember the moment we made it very vividly and it just kind of didn't feel real at the time.”
They weren't sure exactly what they had made. They just knew it was different.
That feeling captures so much of what makes Chasing Abbey's creative process compelling. Their most exciting discoveries seem to happen when they stop trying to know exactly where they are going.
That is the space where tradition can become something new. Where a language can take on a different weight. Where three musicians who have been creating together for years can still surprise themselves.
And that may be the most exciting thing about Chasing Abbey entering the Cyber Celt era.
They are not finished finding out what their music can become.
They are still chasing the unknown.
With 13 tracks spanning Irish-language songs, explorations of heritage and identity, and the band's ever-evolving fusion of traditional and electronic influences, Cyber Celt gives listeners a full picture of where Chasing Abbey are creatively right now. The album is available now across major streaming platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music, giving listeners the chance to experience the record before the band brings it to stages across North America.
For those who want to experience Cyber Celt in a room full of people, Chasing Abbey's North American tour runs from September 25 through October 29. Fans can find the full list of tour dates and ticket information at https://www.chasingabbey.ie/pages/tour-dates
Cyber Celt Tracklist
- “Gorta”
- “T.a.L”
- “Íorónta”
- “Mar Sin”
- “Scartha”
- “Greedy Pigs”
- “Seachain”
- “Culchie”
- “Sean Tír”
- “Arís Is Arís”
- “Saoirse Saoirse”
- “Colonised Minds”
- “Is Rud Crua”
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