MacD on Music: The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades

Reading this column, you’d think Derry is the greatest musical city in Ireland. It is, but the rest of the country can certainly hold it’s own too.

Long-time readers will be familiar with Colin Cronin and The Future Cork Local Band, who I first spoke to in February 2023. Since then, Colin has been keeping busy, with a number of releases last year and a new album released in January.

I caught up with Colin recently to talk about the album as well as his upcoming projects.

What have you been up to since our last chat?

Hi Domhnall, and thanks for having me today! Since November '24, I've released a follow-up studio album to last year's album, ‘The Highway Singles’. The follow-up album, titled ‘Dopamine Diaries’, by me and my one-man music group, The Future Cork Local Band, was released with great success and received positive feedback from the public, charting well on the online music streaming charts.

As a matter of fact, ‘The Highway Singles’ album got a physical release on CD and was made available in Cool Discs in Derry.

Tell me about your new album.

The new album coming up is full of classic songs that I wrote over ten to fifteen years ago, which have never made it to the studio until now.

The album will feature me, Colin Cronin, and we'll be using old guitar backing tracks recorded years ago for a string of classic songs that I wrote. It will include Denis, my father, on guitar, and his brother will make a guest appearance on lead guitar for one track. Additionally, we hope to include the fantastic Cork female vocalist, Maria McCarthy, for backing vocals and harmonies. I've collaborated with her before, and we met in music college years ago.

However, timing and scheduling may affect her involvement. There has been no release date announcement as of yet. The album is in the final stages of production, with 90% of the work completed, including new vocals that have been re-recorded alongside old guitar riffs and recordings that have been dusted off, along with other studio instrumentals like drums. We expect to share more soon.

We have a working title for the album: ‘What It Means To Rock: The '25 Edition’. It will be available on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and all other major music streaming platforms.

Did you have any particular goals in mind when you were making it?

Let me put it this way: I've been writing and recording songs and music for almost 20 years since I was 18 years old-that's almost two decades now. A lot of that time was spent with my father, recording demos, testing sound quality, and always looking to improve our recordings.

My dad loved to sing while we demoed songs. He performed many of the demos we recorded on old recording machines while I handled the songwriting. Recently, I've discovered a music app (MusicLab) that lets you split vocals from music tracks, which is playing a huge role in our new album and its release. The new recording technology available today in 2025 is mind-blowing!

READ MORE: MacD on Music

As mentioned above, the artists involved in this production will all have important roles to play on this album. This will be the first studio album recorded and released to all major music streaming platforms that The Future Cork Local Band will be participating in as a one-off four-piece music group.

That makes me hugely excited, and it should excite the other band members and our listeners as well!

Tell me about your album that came out in January.

Yes, the January '25 release was a special homage to other artists and a throwback to a more retro time-those good old-fashioned 8-tracks. Remember them? We paid homage to Sid Vicious on the cover art, and you can find bits of David Bowie, Nirvana, Eminem, Sting and The Police, even Lynyrd Skynyrd, among others.

You really want to sit down and analyze the album, from the cover art to the opening track and through to the last track, to pick up on all the small homage pieces. The January release was titled ‘Colin Cronin (8 Track)’, just in case anyone wants to delve into that!

Have you got much lined up for the future?

Yes, we will be very busy in the coming months and even the year ahead, as we have a lot of old, vintage, classic demos and material that need re-recordings, reissues, and fresh releases.

I'm looking forward to it, and I hope our public and fanbase are eager to hear a few of our classic tracks by The Future Cork Local Band get a new light and fresh sound.

And that’s it from Colin Cronin. His latest album, ‘Colin Cronin (8 Track) is out now on all good streaming platforms. The Future Cork Local Band can be found on Instagram @TheFutureCorkLocalBand and Colin himself @cronin621.